July 12, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has moved here.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has touted the successes of Western-donated “modern artillery” after his country’s forces struck another Russian ammunition depot on Tuesday.?

“Russian soldiers — and we know this from interceptions of their conversations —?are frankly afraid of our Armed Forces,” he added.?

Zelensky’s remarks come after explosions rocked the town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region of Ukraine on Monday night. Video posted on social media showed loud explosions and a huge ball of fire lighting up the night sky.

Serhiy Khlan, a Ukrainian official who is a member of Kherson regional council, said on Facebook, “In Nova Kakhovka minus one Russian ammo?depot. They brought, brought, stockpiled, stockpiled and now have fireworks at night.”

Ukraine has been using US-donated HIMARS Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, as well as other western made weaponry, to target Russian ammunition depots, deep inside Moscow-controlled territory, over the past few weeks.?

A massive crater is seen after a Ukrainian missile hit a building — which Ukrainian officials say was being used as an ammunition depot by Russia — in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka?in the Kherson region of Ukraine. The satellite image was taken on July 12, according to Planet Labs.?

A massive crater is the only thing left after a Ukrainian missile hit a building — which Ukrainian officials say was being used as an ammunition depot by Russia — in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka?in the Kherson region of Ukraine, according to a new satellite image from Planet Labs.??

The satellite image was taken on July 12, according to Planet Labs.?Comparing it to a satellite image taken by Planet Labs on July 11, a number of the surrounding buildings have also been destroyed, or significantly damaged.??

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated when the images were taken. It was July 12 and July 11.

Ilya Yashin, center, listens to the court's decision in Moscow on June 29.?A court in Moscow has rejected the appeal of a prominent opposition figure of the 15-day jail term he was handed on charges of failure to obey police.

Russian authorities have launched a criminal case on Tuesday against Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin for spreading “fake” information about the Russian army, according to his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov.

“The Main Investigation Department has initiated the criminal case under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, against Ilya Yashin,” Prokhorov said on Facebook.?

Yashin, who is also a former Moscow city council and Alexey Navalny’s close ally, has been openly speaking out against Russia’s war with Ukraine and has been a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin for years.?

Shortly after coming back to Russia, Yashin was detained on the night of June 28. The next day, he was arrested for 15 days for police disobedience.?

He started his career in opposition politics along with Navalny and has risen to public prominence during the 2011-2012 mass protests against Putin’s third term.?

A criminal case has also been opened against another prominent opposition leader, Vladimir Kara-Murza, who now faces up to 10 years in prison.?

Similarly, to Yashin, Kara-Murza has been detained and arrested for 15 days in April before being charged for spreading “fake” information about the Russian army.?

The ExoMars rover shown in 2019 as it was being prepared to leave Airbus in Stevenage, England. ?

European Space Agency is terminating cooperation with Russia on the mission to launch Europe’s first planetary rover, designed to search for signs of life on Mars, the agency’s chief said on Tuesday.??

The ExoMars Rover, a collaboration between the ESA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, had been on track to leave for Mars in September this year. But the ESA said in February that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had made that “very unlikely.”?

Then in March, the agency suspended cooperation with Roscosmos over their joint mission on Mars in the wake of the Ukraine invasion and sanctions imposed on Russia.?

As a consequence, the agency’s board instructed him to officially terminate cooperation with Russia on the program, Aschbacher said.

“New insights on the way forward with other partners will come at a media briefing on 20 July, details to come,” he added.??

The rover was initially scheduled to launch in July 2020 but was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.?

The mission is intended to search for life on Mars and investigate the history of water on the red planet. The rover has the capability to drill beneath the surface of Mars to a depth of 6.5 feet (about 2 meters), where the scientists hope they may find signs of life.?

CNN’s Katie Hunt contributed reporting to this post.

A resident walks a bike past a building in Severodonetsk, Ukraine, on July 1.

“Unsanitary conditions are growing” in Severodonetsk and “there is not enough water and not enough food” in the city, said Roman Vlasenko, head of the city’s regional administration.

Vlasenko added that there are also issues with gas and electricity supplies.

He described the living situation as “very sad” for those that have remained even though “there are not many people left there.”

A sign in the city was repainted from Ukrainian to Russian colors on Monday.

Vlasenko said that “pressure continues on pro-Ukrainian activists” and that they continue to face serious challenges.

The United States on Monday unveiled a potential new player in the Ukraine war: Iran.

Newly declassified US intelligence indicates that Tehran is preparing to supply Russia with “hundreds” of drones – including those with weapons capability – for use in the war in Ukraine,?White House officials said.?

“Our information further indicates that Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use these UAVs, with initial training session slated in as soon as early July. It’s unclear whether Iran has delivered any of these UAVs to Russia already,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House press briefing on Monday.

Sullivan argued that news of Iran supplying the drones is evidence that Russia’s attacks against Ukraine in recent weeks are coming at the “severe” cost of depleting of its own weapons.

The announcement has raised eyebrows, and not everyone is convinced that Iran is capable of exporting large quantities of drones. “It’s unlikely Iran even has that many operational drones in its own fleet,”?tweeted?Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder of Bourse Bazaar, a London-based think tank. “It also has no experience exporting drones at scale.”

The White House’s claim comes as nuclear talks between Iran and the United States have come to a dead-end, potentially raising the specter of renewed conflict in the Middle East should they fail. But it also comes as Middle East states prepare to launch an?alliance of Arab states and Israel, reportedly under US backing, to counter potential threats from Iran. Iran has warned that it views the move?as provocative?and a threat to its national security.?

If Iran is indeed planning to sell arms to Russia for use in its war on Ukraine, it would be essentially inserting itself into a Russian-Western proxy war in NATO’s backyard. The message to the Biden administration is that Tehran too can spread its influence to faraway conflict zones where the US has vested interests.??

While Iran’s drones haven’t been known to be sought after by militaries around the world, they do pose a potent threat to its adversaries. They have been an integral part of Iran’s military strategy and have caught the attention of American officials. Last year, Gen.?Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the top US commander in the Middle East,?told Congress?that Iran-linked drones “present a new and complex threat to our forces and those of our partners and allies.” For the first time since the Korean War, “we are operating without complete air superiority,” he said.

Drone warfare was especially important in the early weeks of the Ukrainian conflict, when Turkish-made strike drones were used by the Ukrainian military to great effect. But Russian air defenses now provide greater coverage in the east.?

Iranian drones would not be a game changer but might mitigate Russian weaknesses in exploiting UAVs.?

Major General Hossein Salaami, the commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, said last year that his country?possesses drones?with a 7,000 kilometer (4,300 mile) range. According to the United States Institute of Peace, Iran’s medium-to-large drones can likely stay in the air?for up to 20 hours?while carrying fairly sophisticated sensors, payloads and a range of weapons. Some its drones, like those used by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, can carry a?payload of up to 150kg, it said.

Iranian drones have been used outside its borders before, but that has largely been in Middle East conflict zones where Tehran can smuggle them to its non-state proxies. They have been effective in Iraq, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, where they?were believed by the US?to have been used in an attack on Saudi oil facilities in 2019 that saw crude prices soar to a record high. Iran denied launching that attack.?

The arrival of Iranian weapons into Europe’s biggest conflict since the Second World War would be?a major milestone for Iran’s weapons industry and its status as an arms manufacturer. And it would represent a rare occasion when Tehran’s weapons were being employed not just by a state actor, but one that is a top global military power.?

CNN’s Tim Lister contributed to this article.

Rescue workers stand on the rubble in the aftermath of a Russian rocket attack that hit an apartment residential block, in Chasiv Yar, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, on July 10.

The death toll from a strike at a residential building in?the town of?Chasiv?Yar in eastern Ukraine on Saturday has increased to 38, including a child, according to the Emergency Services of Ukraine.?

Nine people were rescued from the rubble and “more than 320 tons of destroyed elements of the building were cleared and disassembled,” according to an earlier statement on Facebook from Ukraine’s State Service for Emergency Situations in the Donetsk region.

Emergency teams continue to work at the site, it said.

There have been several unexplained explosions and reports of gunfire in the Ukrainian town of Enerhodar in the past 12 hours, according to social media accounts and the Russian-installed mayor.

“Enerhodar did not sleep tight tonight,” said Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of the town, who is now in nearby Zaporizhzhia.

“At first, people were awakened by the sounds of several explosions that were heard either in the city itself or somewhere outside of it,” he added. “And then during the second half of the night, weird chaotic shots were heard in various residential neighborhoods.”

Unofficial social media accounts — reposted by Ukraine’s state nuclear enterprise Energoatom — claimed that the Russians had staged a firefight that damaged the local Security Services?(SSU) building.

“What is certain is that it makes no sense for our Armed Forces to fire at the SSU building, since it has not been used by the Russians themselves for a long time.”

A later post on a local, unofficial Telegram channel showed smoke rising from somewhere in the town on Tuesday morning.

Russia claimed the Ukrainian Armed Forces attempted to use a “kamikaze” drone in Enerhodar, but it was destroyed by the air defense systems of the Russian Armed Forces, a spokesperson from the press service of the city’s military-civilian administration told Russian state news outlet RIA Novosti on Tuesday.?

According to RIA Novosti, the Ukrainian military used the drone to attack a residential area.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine have just tried to use another drone in Enerhodar. It was destroyed by the air defense of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” the spokesman told RIA Novosti.

“Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, located in the city of Enerhodar, is operating normally. At the nuclear power plant itself, the situation is still calm,” he added.?

Authorities are clarifying information about possible victims, RIA Novosti reported.?

According to RIA Novosti,?the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Monday hit a building near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is located in Enerhodar, with two drones. The drones dropped two mines with a caliber of 120 millimeters, damaging the roof and glazing, according to RIA.??

Enerhodar has been occupied by Russian forces since early March and is adjacent to a large nuclear power station that is also under Russian control.

Dozens of civilians have been killed as Russian forces step up their bombardment of residential areas, while the Ukrainian military is pushing hard to regain territory in the south of the country.

Here are the latest headlines:

Firefighters work at a residential building damaged by a Russian military strike, in?Mykolaiv, on Tuesday.

Twelve people were injured and homes destroyed after the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv came under heavy fire Monday night, according to Ukrainian officials.

“The enemy shelled the city massively at night,” said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the President’s office, on Telegram.

“The Russians direct their missiles at residential areas, shopping centers, recreation centers, and apartment buildings,” Tymoshenko said.

Oleksandr Sienkevych, the mayor of Mykolaiv, said two hospitals were damaged by shelling, but there had been no injuries.

The regional military administration said Russian forces continued their fire against communities around Mykolaiv, but had caused no casualties.

Villages along the border between Mykolaiv and Kherson have become the front lines as Ukrainian forces try to penetrate Russian defenses in the region.

She further stated that “a hospital and school were destroyed” while “private houses were damaged.”

Ukrainian officials measuring the size of a crater caused by a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on July 9.

Russian forces have carried out a spate of attacks on residential areas in the last few days, causing dozens of civilian casualties.

On Monday, six people were killed and a further 31 injured in rocket attacks on Kharkiv, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office said on Telegram.

Serhii Bolvinov, head of the Investigation Department of the National Police in Kharkiv,?said a shopping center was damaged, as well as houses and vehicles.

Fragments of a rocket from a Uragan multi launch rocket system had been found at the scene of the damage.

Then Russian forces struck Kharkiv again on Tuesday morning, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration, on Telegram.

“We appeal to the residents of Kharkiv: stay in shelters, do not go out on the streets of the city unnecessarily,” said Syniehubov.

Elsewhere, 12 people were injured and homes destroyed after the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv came under heavy fire Monday night, according to Ukrainian officials.

“The Russians direct their missiles at residential areas, shopping centers, recreation centers, and apartment buildings,” Tymoshenko said.

These attacks follow the deaths of at least 35 people who were killed when Russian rockets hit a residential building?in?Chasiv?Yar?over the weekend, said?Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk region military administration, on his official Telegram channel on Tuesday.??

At least nine more people were injured and one of those who died is a child,?said Kyrylenko.

The Ukrainian military has reported widespread fighting in both the northern and southern theaters of combat over the past 24 hours, with Ukrainian forces going on the offensive in the south and Russian artillery active in Donetsk and Kharkiv.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Russian forces tried to advance in Kharkiv region – some 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the city – but were rebuffed.

However, they continued to shell districts close to Kharkiv city and other parts of the region, according to Ukraine’s military.

Two men were killed in shelling of the town of Zolochiv near the Russian border, according to the regional military administration.

“In the Kharkiv region, seven people died and 34 were injured as a result of shelling by the occupiers,” the administration said.

The General Staff said there had been no change in the front lines north of the city of Sloviansk. “All the actions of the enemy in the direction of these settlements were unsuccessful,” it said.

But Russian shelling of the city from a distance continues, and one person was injured overnight when a residential building was struck, according to local authorities.

The General Staff said Russian forces were also trying to improve their tactical positions further south in the Donetsk region, with missile and rocket attacks in several areas.?

The Russian goal is to close in on those parts of the region still held by Ukrainian forces, around 45% of the region, from three directions.

But since the fall of Lysychansk in neighboring Luhansk, the front lines in Donetsk have changed little.?

In the south: Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine, Russian forces are largely on the defensive as Ukrainian forces try to make advances into Kherson region.

The General Staff said Tuesday that “the enemy is concentrating its efforts on holding the occupied positions and preventing the offensive of units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian military’s Operational Command South said three Russian ammunition warehouses had been struck in parts of Mykolaiv under Russian control, and Ukrainian helicopters had attacked Russian positions in neighboring Kherson.

Serhii Khlan, an adviser to the head of Kherson civil military administration, said Tuesday that “our armed forces began to attack positions near Pravdyne, Oleksandrivka, and Snigurivka [in Kherson and Mykolaiv regions] with helicopters.”

“We have already launched attacks along almost the entire front line,” Khlan said.

Russian forces are now reinforcing their checkpoints “because the partisan movement is intensifying in the Kherson region…..the fortification with concrete hints that the occupiers are preparing for street battles,” he added.

CNN is unable to verify Khlan’s claims, but there has been an uptick in Ukrainian offensive actions in Kherson and Mykolaiv recently.

Russian servicemen keep watch in the main square of Melitopol, Zaporizhia region, Ukraine, on June 14.

Russia has blocked the exits from the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol for the second day in a row, according to city mayor Ivan Fedorov.

Russian forces were “so afraid of the counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that they have covered themselves with thousands of civilians as human shields,” said Fedorov, who is not in Melitopol.

Fedorov said the Russians had closed the checkpoint at Vasylivka – the main crossing point for civilian traffic trying to reach other parts of Ukraine.

On Monday, Fedorov said the Russians had blocked off the western part of Melitopol, stranding “tens of thousands of the citizens of the residential neighborhood.”

Like parts of neighboring Kherson region, Melitopol has seen strikes by Ukrainian forces far behind the front lines in recent days.

The Russian-appointed head of the regional administration in Melitopol, Yevgeniy Balitskiy, said Tuesday on his Telegram channel that?the Ukrainian government had “turned into ISIS: they blow up bridges, carry out attacks on public figures,” an apparent reference to the reported assassination attempt against a pro-Russian local official, Andriy Siguta, whose car was blown up.

“This will not change anything,” Balitskiy said.?“The people of Zaporozhzhia region have already made their choice….The liberated part of Zaporizhzhia region will become a part of [the Russian Federation] through a referendum.”

Fedorov has claimed that there were high casualties in a Ukrainian strike on a Russian garrison in Melitopol on Saturday night, saying the occupying forces “do not know where to put the bodies of the killed Russian soldiers.”

“Doctors of forensic medical examination do not want to collaborate and do not issue death certificates because they do not want to cooperate with the Russians,” Fedorov said.

Last week, Fedorov said?there had been more than 30 strikes on a single military base outside the city.

CNN cannot confirm the extent of damage or casualties caused by the Ukrainian strikes against Russian forces in the area.?

Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to Tehran to hold talks with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on July 19, according to the Kremlin.?

“Putin, [Raisi] and Erdogan will hold a meeting,” Peskov said, adding that, in addition to the trilateral meeting, there will also be a bilateral meeting between Putin and Erdogan.

The?Chief of the Economic Commission of Iran’s Parliament, Mohammadreza Pour-Ebrahimi, told Iranian state news agency IRNA on Tuesday that Putin would visit Tehran next week to discuss expansion of economic ties between Iran and Russia.

Pour-Ebrahimi told IRNA that after the recent trip by Iran’s President to Russia, “a positive atmosphere has been created” regarding Iran-Russia economic cooperation.

Seven people are missing following huge explosions overnight in the Russian-occupied town of Nova Kakhovka, according to authorities there.

The town, in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, was rocked by explosions Monday night — possibly the largest in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine since the invasion began in late February.? At least six people were killed, Russian state news agency TASS reported earlier on Tuesday.

TASS quoted the head of the town’s civil-military administration, Vladimir Leontiev, as saying the strike “led to an explosion in warehouses with mineral fertilizers. There are victims, the market, hospital and houses are damaged.”

Leontev claimed the attack was “launched from afar on the civilian population. This is no military target. It’s warehouses, stores, pharmacies, gas stations.”

“Windows flew out within a radius of 2 kilometers (1.2 miles),” Leontev said. Early Tuesday, TASS said fires continued to burn in the warehouses.

Another official in the Russian-backed administration, Ekaterina Gubareva, said Ukraine fired using American High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

Ukraine’s counteroffensive: Ukraine has begun targeting Russian command posts and ammunition dumps far behind the front lines in both Kherson and Donbas, using newly supplied Western weaponry that has a much greater range than its previous artillery systems.

The Ukrainian military has given few details about the strike.

“According to the results of firing missions by our missile and artillery units, the enemy lost 52 personnel, a ‘Msta-B’ howitzer, a mortar, seven units of armored and automotive vehicles, as well as a warehouse with ammunition in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region,” the Operational Command South said on Monday.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the name of the Russian state-run channel. It is Russia-24.

Firefighters remove a body as search and rescue operations continue after Russian airstrikes hit residential areas in Chasiv Yar, Donetsk, Ukraine, on July 11.

The death toll has risen to more than 30 following a Russian strike on an apartment block in the Donetsk region of?eastern Ukraine?over the weekend, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday.

The residential building in the town of Chasiv Yar was hit on Saturday evening as?Russia?once again ramped up its assault on cities and towns in eastern Ukraine in an attempt to take control over the?entire Donbas area.

At least 34 people died and at least nine were injured?in the attack, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk region military administration, said on his official Telegram channel on Tuesday.?One of those who died was a child,?he added.

The rescue operation is ongoing and the Emergency Services have cleared about 70% of the rubble,?Kyrylenko said.?

Some context: Chasiv Yar and other towns in Donetsk have been under heavy fire in recent days as Russian forces try to grind down Ukrainian resistance in the area and move further west towards Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

An explosion in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka, in?the Kherson?region, on Monday.

At least six people were killed following a series of explosions on Monday in Nova Kakhovka in the Russian-occupied Kherson region of Ukraine, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Tuesday.

TASS, which cited the head of the military-civilian administration of Kakhovka district, Vladimir Leontiev, said the attack was carried out by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

According to Leontiev, six were killed, adding there were “dozens of wounded” with shrapnel wounds and cuts.

He also said many people were still trapped under rubble or in their homes, with those injured being sent to hospital.

Some context: Large explosions rocked Nova Kakhovka on Monday for the the second time in four days. The town is the site of a key hydroelectric dam and a link in the water supply to Crimea. Video posted on social media showed loud explosions and a huge ball of fire lighting up the night sky.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro outside the Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia, Brazil, on Monday.

Brazil is planning on buying cheaper Russian diesel, according to President Jair Bolsonaro in a speech to his supporters in Brasilia on Monday.

He added that the first shipments should be arriving in Brazil over the next two months and that the deal would bring prices down, state-run Agencia Brasil reported.

Over the past year, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Brazil, demanding the impeachment of Bolsonaro for what they called his mishandling of the pandemic, but also due to surging inflation and high fuel prices in the country.

Less than a month ago, the CEO of the state-owned oil company Petrobras Jose Mauro Coelho, who took office in April, stepped down, according to state-run news agency, Agencia Brasil. The move came after Bolsonaro’s government announced in May that they would change the company’s president.

Petrobras was “buying [diesel] much more expensively,” Bolsonaro told his supporters on Monday as he announced the deal with Russia.

Shipments of Russian fertilizers have also been arriving in Brazil despite Western sanctions on Moscow, the Brazilian agriculture ministry confirmed to CNN in June.

Brazilians will head to the polls in October to vote in the country’s presidential election, in which Bolsonaro is expected to face a tough race against former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.

A series of large explosions rocked the town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region of Ukraine on Monday night. The town, like much of Kherson, is under Russian occupation.?

It’s the second major explosion in four days in the town, the site of an important hydroelectric dam and a link in the water supply to Crimea through the North Crimea canal.

Video posted on social media showed loud explosions and a huge ball of fire lighting up the night sky.

Khlan, who is not in Kherson, warned residents of Nova Kakhovka not to venture outdoors.?

“Please take care of yourself and do not come close to the place of the detonation,” he said.

The Russian state news agency TASS made no reference to an ammunition dump exploding but late Wednesday reported: “The Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station in the Kherson region, a source said.”

But the deputy head of the Russian backed military-civilian administration in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, said Ukrainian missiles did not hit the hydroelectric power station.

TASS later said warehouses holding potassium nitrate had exploded. Potassium nitrate is a highly combustible substance used as an ingredient in fertilizer and was the cause of the Beirut explosion two years ago.

CNN cannot confirm the cause of the explosions or what was destroyed.

“There are victims, the market, hospital and houses were damaged,” TASS reported, quoting the Russian-backed civil-military administration in Kherson.

Ukrainian forces have stepped up attacks using missiles and long-range artillery against Russian command posts and munitions sites in the past week.

Newly declassified US intelligence indicates that Iran is expected to supply Russia?with “hundreds” of drones?— including weapons-capable drones — for use in the war in Ukraine, with Iran preparing to begin training Russian forces on how to operate?them as early?as late July, according to White House officials.

A spokesperson at the White House National Security Council told CNN that the information Sullivan described to reporters was based on recently declassified intelligence.

Sullivan argued that news of Iran supplying the drones is evidence that Russia’s attacks against Ukraine in recent weeks are coming at the “severe” cost of depleting of its own weapons.

News of Iran’s supply of drones to Russia came a day before President Joe Biden’s first trip to the Middle East since taking office, with stops in Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iran’s actions in the region and its nuclear program are expected to be a major topic of discussion.

Read more here.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends the consultation and evaluation meeting of past mayors in Ankara, Turkey, on July 6.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in Ukraine and grain shipments over the phone Monday.

The Kremlin said the two leaders exchanged views on “coordinating efforts to ensure the safety of navigation in the Black Sea and grain exports to world markets.”

According to the Turkish presidency readout, Erdogan noted “it was time for the United Nations to take action for the plan regarding the formation of secure corridors via the Black Sea.”?

The Kremlin readout added that the two leaders paid “particular attention” in “further intensifying economic cooperation” on trade and energy.

The Turkish presidency readout made no mention of strengthening economic cooperation between Turkey and Russia and said that Turkey stands ready “to provide all kinds of support for the revival of the negotiation process.”

Zelensky call: The Turkish president also held a call with his Ukrainian counterpart Monday. Erdogan told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Turkey wants peace in Ukraine and is actively working on a United Nations plan to export Ukrainian grain to world markets, according to a readout by the Turkish presidency.

According to Ukrainian officials, more than 20 million tons of grain remain stuck in Ukraine due to the Russian blockade of various Black Sea ports.

Ukraine’s campaign to attack Russian supply lines and ammunition storage sites far behind the front lines continued this weekend, with Ukrainian officials reporting another long-range strike against Russian military positions in the southern region of Kherson.?

Serhiy Khlan, a member of Kherson’s regional council, said Sunday there had been “a precise hit” at the military unit of the occupiers on Pestelia Street in Kherson city.

The unit was hit twice on Sunday morning, Khlan claimed.

Images and video geolocated to Kherson showed a thick column of gray smoke rising into the air Sunday morning.

Khlan also spoke about the difficulty for civilians trying to leave the region.

“Regarding evacuation from Kherson region, there is no humanitarian corridor. People leave at their own risk through Vasylivka towards Zaporizhzhia; the queue of cars can last one to two weeks,” Khlan said.

“The occupiers demand money for departure or even take away personal belongings from our people. In case of leaving towards the Crimea, there are risks of being taken to the filtration camps.”

There is anecdotal evidence that hundreds of Kherson residents have crossed into Crimea and then traveled through Russia or Turkey.

What happened? Sunday’s attack follows a series of explosions near the airport in Kherson on Saturday, and at what appears to have been an ammunition storage site in the Donetsk region.?

The official Russian?news?agency TASS has reported four explosions in the sky over Kherson city caused by what it said were Russian air defense systems.

TASS said its correspondent in Kherson reported smoke on Perekopskaya Street in the middle of the city.?

“Leave Kherson”: Earlier on Friday, Iryna Vereshchuk,?Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, called on residents to evacuate the Kherson region.

She warned residents they could be used as human shields by the Russians and staying in the occupied districts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions is dangerous.

Alexander Khinshtein, a deputy in the Russian parliament, denied Ukraine’s claims of a hit.

“Ukrainian sources happily replicate a fake about a missile attack on the base of the Russian guard in Kherson,” he said on Telegram. “The missile hit a 4-story building, where one of the support units of the Russian Guard used to be. A day before, it was relocated to another location.”

Images geolocated by CNN show that the badly damaged building is in the middle of Kherson, but it’s unclear whether it was occupied at the time it was struck.

Ukrainian military intelligence claimed Monday to have intercepted a call between Russian soldiers, in which one said that Ukrainian forces had “hit the most important command. They hit f****ng hard.” The soldier said 12 had been killed in the strike.

CNN is unable to verify the authenticity of the call.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday that would simplify the process of obtaining Russian citizenship for all Ukrainian citizens.?

Previous versions of the decree applied to residents in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), as well as the?Kherson and?Zaporizhzhia?regions of Ukraine.

What the simplified process allows: Individuals can apply for Russian citizenship without fulfilling several requirements, including living in Russia for five years, having a source of income and undergoing a Russian language examination.

The decree also says that “military service, service in national security or law enforcement agencies of Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic cannot be considered a reason for denying Russian citizenship.”

Simplified Russian citizenship applications were initially introduced by decree in 2019 for DPR and LPR residents. In May of this year, the decree was expanded to the regions of?Kherson and?Zaporizhzhia. And on Monday, the decree was expanded to all citizens of Ukraine who wish to obtain Russian citizenship.?