July 16, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

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

An “emergency incident” has been reported on the Crimean Bridge, halting traffic on the only link between the annexed peninsula and Russia, a Moscow-backed official said Monday.

Sergey Aksenov, the Russia-appointed head of Crimea, did not specify the nature of the incident.?

Aksenov urged residents and those traveling to and from Crimea?to choose an alternative land route.?

Some context: Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar made what appeared to be the clearest admission yet that Ukrainian forces were responsible for an attack last October on the?bridge.

The attack disrupted major transport links?between Russia and Crimea, which Moscow has controlled since it seized the peninsula in 2014. It also hit Russia’s military effort in Ukraine and represented a psychological blow for Moscow and a major propaganda victory for Kyiv.

Russian President Vladimir Putin painted the Ukrainian counteroffensive as “unsuccessful” in an interview with a pro-Kremlin journalist published Sunday, and by its own account, Ukraine acknowledges the campaign has been characterized by tough fighting and limited progress.

Kyiv insists it does not feel under pressure by Western allies to deliver quick results as it does the hard work of driving Russian forces out of its territory.

On the front lines this weekend, Ukraine reported fierce battles in the east, with the two sides?swapping fighting positions?and Russia going on the offensive in some areas. Outside the long-contested city of Bakhmut, however, Ukraine’s military has reported slow but steady progress.

In southern Ukraine, heavy Russian attacks wounded multiple people in the?Zaporizhzhiaand?Kherson?regions this weekend, local Ukrainian officials said.

Here are some other key developments surrounding Russia’s war in Ukraine:

Ukrainian military serviceman Igor Ovcharruck holds a defused cluster bomb from an MSLR missile, among a display of pieces of rockets used by Russian army that a Ukrainian munitions expert said did not explode on impact, in Ukraine's Kharkiv region on October 21, 2022.

Despite saying Ukraine using cluster munitions is a “crime” — and vowing to retaliate if Kyiv uses the ones recently supplied by the US — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces have been using the controversial weapons throughout the course of the war, Ukraine and the United Nations have said.?

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office has launched a number of investigations on Russia’s use of cluster bombs since the very beginning of the war.?

Here’s what those probes and reports from international organizations have revealed so far:

Ukrainian claims: In a statement on March 27, 2022, the Prosecutor General’s Office said Russia has used cluster munitions on civilian targets in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, and that the regional prosecutor’s office has launched “criminal proceedings over violation of the laws and customs of war.”

According to the investigation, Russian armed forces made the prohibited artillery shelling with a multiple rocket launcher system, targeting a settlement in the region’s Kryvyi Rih district, the prosecutor’s office said in a post on Telegram.

“The missile was equipped with prohibited cluster munitions. In the course of the inspection of the scene, law enforcement officers and explosives experts discovered and seized fragments of the rocket,” it added.?

In a Telegram message posted on May 11, the Zaporizhzhia region military administration said Russian forces “massively attacked (the town of) Malokaterynivka with multiple rocket launchers, where 8 people were injured by cluster munitions.” Three of those wounded were ambulance workers who were responding to a call.

CNN is not able to independently verify the Ukrainian claims.?

Reports from outside organizations: Cluster munitions have been used on civilian targets in the northeastern Kharkiv region as well, a CNN investigation from last year found.

The report documented how a Russian general who oversaw atrocities in Syria led the cluster bombings on Ukraine’s second-largest city.

The UN and affiliated organizations have also published reports on the issue.

In a statement published March 30, 2022, the UN rights chief at the time, Michelle Bachelet, said credible reports indicated Russia had already used cluster munitions in populated areas of Ukraine “at least two dozen times,” just over a month after the invasion was launched.

In a report published on August 25, 2022, the UN-partnered Cluster Munition Monitor civil society group said Russian forces had “repeatedly” used cluster munitions since the start of the war.?

Ukraine’s own use of the weapons: The same report by the Cluster Munition Monitor group found that Ukrainian forces had also used cluster munitions “several times” and “mostly” in populated areas.

Ukraine has acknowledged its previous use of the weapons, saying it was using the bombs to defend its territory from a war launched by Russia.

Ukrainian and US officials have said the cluster munitions provided by the US won’t be used in heavily populated areas, even if those areas are occupied by Russian forces, and that Kyiv will make efforts to sweep areas it bombs with the munitions for unexploded ordnance.

Cluster munitions have killed at least 215 civilians and injured 474 people overall since the start of the war, according to the monitoring group’s report.?

CNN’s Uliana Pavlova contributed reporting to this post.

A Ukrainian serviceman prepares to fire a mortar near Bakhmut on July 13.

Positions on both sides are “changing dynamically” along the eastern front as fighting there has “somewhat escalated,” a Ukrainian official said.

“There are fierce battles, and the positions of the parties are changing dynamically several times a day,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister?Hanna Maliar said Sunday.?

Russia has been “actively advancing” near the city of Kupyansk in the country’s northeastern Kharkiv region for two days in a row, Maliar said. “We are on the defense,” she added.

Further south along the eastern front, Maliar said Ukrainian forces are gradually moving forward around Bakhmut and that there are “daily advances on the southern flank” of the long-contested city.

On Bakhmut’s northern flank, Ukrainian forces are trying to hold their positions, while Russian forces continue to attack, Maliar said.

“In Bakhmut itself, we are shelling the enemy, and the enemy is shelling us,” she added.?

And south of Bakhmut, Russian forces are also on the offensive in areas surrounding the towns of Avdiivka and Marinka, Maliar said.

“Our defenders continue to effectively hold them back. Hot battles continue with no change in positions,” she said.

It is not possible for CNN to immediately verify claims of territorial gains or losses by either side.?

Here are the areas each side controls in southern and eastern Ukraine:

Two children — boys, ages 8 and 10 — were badly wounded by an explosion as they played in a village in the southern Kherson region, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the region’s military administration.

The boys were among four people wounded and one person killed in Kherson over the past 24 hours, Prokudin said in a Telegram message Sunday.

The children had been playing in the street in the village of Tryfonivka, northeast of Kherson city, when they found an “unknown object on the street,” according to the official.

In his message, Prokudin pleaded with Ukrainian parents to talk to their children about staying safe and not playing with unfamiliar objects.

Russian attacks: Moscow’s forces fired 10 shells at the city of Kherson and shelled the surrounding region 69 times over the past 24 hours, leaving one person dead, Prokudin said.??

The Kherson region military administration reported that two people were wounded by shelling in the village of Rozlyv, just west of the city, but did not release further details.

Prokudin said the shelling damaged civilian infrastructure in multiple parts of the region.?

A harvester works on a wheat field in Prymorske, Ukraine, on July 5.

A crucial deal that allows the export of grain from Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea is set to expire Monday unless Russia agrees to an extension.

The grain deal will end at midnight July 17 into July 18 Istanbul time (5 p.m. ET on Monday), according to Ismini Palla, the chief UN media and communications officer for the Black Sea Grain deal.

The last ship to?travel under the deal left the port of Odesa early on Sunday,?Palla said.

The deal was first brokered by Turkey and the United Nations?in July 2022,?after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and blockaded ports.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in a phone conversation Saturday that the deal has not met its objectives.

Though Russia has renewed the deal three times, it has?repeatedly complained?about international sanctions that hinder its own shipments of fertilizers and grain.

In some previous negotiations on the deal, Putin has maintained a hard line until shortly before a deadline and then ultimately agreed to remain in the pact.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed Sunday that the US will allow European countries to start training Ukrainian fighter pilots to?use?F-16 fighter jets, after reports that Europe was awaiting formal approval.?

“Yes, we will,” Sullivan told CNN’s Jake Tapper when asked. “The president has given a green light and we will allow, permit, support, facilitate and in fact provide the necessary tools for Ukrainians to begin being trained on F-16s, as soon as the Europeans are prepared.”?

Sullivan noted that European leaders have said they need several weeks to prepare training abilities and that the US would meet whatever timeline they set out.

Remember: Ukraine’s quest for the superior US-made fighter jets received a huge boost when the Biden administration said in May that it would back a training program for pilots and would not disallow allies from supplying Kyiv with the planes. But the US has not said that it will supply Kyiv with F-16s directly.

What US lawmakers are saying: Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat and former Navy pilot who sits on the Armed Services Committee, defended the timeline for directly supplying the fighting aircraft to Ukraine.

Responding to perceived criticism that the administration is slow-walking the decision to send F-16s, Kelly said in an interview with CNN on Sunday that it will take time and resources to train Ukrainian pilots on how to fly the aircraft in the first place.

“This is going to take some time. I don’t think it’s been slow-walked, but the process is a lot longer,” Kelly said, adding that during a visit to Ukraine in April, President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team still weren’t certain what specific combat missions they wanted to use the jets for.

By contrast, Sen. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican and former Marine who also sits on the Armed Services Committee, criticized the Biden administration’s approach.

While he praised Biden for his actions at the recent summit for the NATO military alliance, he criticized the administration for “slow-rolling” weapons systems to Ukraine, specifically citing the F-16s.

“As I predicted, they’re eventually going to do it, but it’s too darn long. That’s exactly what happened,” said Sullivan.

Russia pounded the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia and surrounding areas with 52 strikes over the course of about 24 hours this weekend, according to a Ukrainian leader in the region.

The rocket attacks left three adult women and four adult men wounded in Sepnohirsk, a village south of Zaporizhzhia city, Yurii Malashko, the head of the regional military administration, said in a Telegram post Sunday.

The Russian barrage also targeted the city itself and at least nine surrounding settlements, Malashko said.

A member of the Zaporizhzhia City Council said the attacks damaged infrastructure and left parts of the city without power.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks at a press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on July 7.

The United States is running low on ammunition in its own stockpile as the country works to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia, according to US national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

President Joe Biden’s administration, upon taking office, “found that overall stocks of 155 munition, which is the NATO standard ammunition used for artillery rounds, was relatively low,” Sullivan said in an interview with CNN.

Sullivan said the administration also learned that it would take years, not months, to restock the supplies to acceptable levels — a?daunting?task for a nation supplementing the war in Ukraine.

Earlier this year, CNN reported that Ukraine is burning through ammunition faster than the US and NATO can produce it, and that the Pentagon has taken a central role in trying to ramp up production.

On cluster munitions: The national security adviser was not able to say whether Ukraine was currently using the?controversial cluster munitions Biden recently sent to Ukraine, but said, “if they have not been deployed yet, they will be in the coming hours or days.”

Sullivan confirmed that the munitions had arrived in the country, as CNN has previously reported.

“They have now very rapidly been shipped into the fight and are in the hands of Ukrainian defenders on the front lines,” he added.?

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Ukranian counteroffensive has been “unsuccessful,” during an on-camera interview with pro-Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin published Sunday.?

Putin added that Russia has an opportunity to study the military equipment of enemy troops and see what can be used by Moscow,

“There is such an expression as?reverse engineering,” he said. “If there is an opportunity to look inside and see if there is something that can be applied to us — well, why not?”

Kyiv says there is slow progress in counteroffensive: Senior Ukrainian officials and generals alike continue to describe tough fighting and limited progress on the battlefield as they look to drive Russian forces out of the country and turn the tide of the war.

Just days after Ukraine’s key partners met at the NATO summit in Lithuania, pledging even?deeper security ties?— albeit without specifying any timetable for Ukraine’s potential membership in the alliance — Kyiv insists it does not feel under pressure to deliver quick results.?

Speaking to journalists Friday in Kyiv following his attendance at the NATO summit, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, admitted the counteroffensive — seen as being underway since the start of June — was “hard work.”

“It’s not going that fast; it is slow,” he said, adding that it is important Ukrainians are told the truth about developments on the ground.

CNN’s Andrew Carey and Yulia Kesaieva in Kyiv contributed to this report.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks in Moscow, Russia, on July 13.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned he will use more cluster munitions if Ukraine also deploys the controversial weapons, adding that Russia has sufficient reserves.

Both Moscow and Kyiv have already deployed cluster munitions during the war, but the bombs have come into sharp focus after the US decided to provide Ukraine with the weapons for the first time in a recent aid package.

In his remarks, Putin argued that previously the US administration itself had considered using cluster munitions a crime. Therefore, Ukraine’s use of the weapons should be treated as such, he told pro-Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin.?

The deadly weapons are banned by more than 100 countries due to their potential risk to civilians, although not by the US, Russia or Ukraine.?

Putin claimed “Russia has a sufficient supply of various types of cluster munitions,” but has held off from fully employing it.

“But of course, if they are used against us, we reserve the right to mirror actions,” he added.

Remember: The weapons are so controversial because they scatter smaller “bomblets” across a wide area, and if those smaller units do not explode upon impact, they can pose a long-term threat to anyone who comes through the area, including civilians.

Key context: While Putin highlighted what he views as US hypocrisy on the use of cluster munitions, Washington has sought to draw a distinction between Russia’s use of the weapons and how Ukraine will employ the US-provided bombs.

To start, US officials argue, Kyiv will use the weapons on its own territory and to defend against an “aggressive war” launched by Russia.

The Pentagon says Ukraine will also use much more care to employ the weapons only against military targets, and then make every effort to sweep for unexploded bomblets, whereas it has accused Russia of “indiscriminately killing civilians” with the weapons.

Finally, the US says its version of the weapon has a much lower rate of failure than Moscow’s cluster weapons, so the risk of unexploded bomblets is lower.

Russia has rejected and disputed these characterizations.

Russian-appointed authorities in?Crimea?reported on Sunday that their air defense forces and electronic warfare units had fended off a Ukrainian drone attack overnight on the Crimean port city of Sevastopol.

The?Russian-backed governor of the city, Mikhail Razvozhaev said on Telegram several drones were shot down and called the attack “massive and prolonged.”

He said “no structures either in the city or in the water area were damaged” and the city was now “quiet and everything is calm.”

Some background: The Ukrainian military has been carrying out?attacks in Crimea?for months, with two likely goals: harass the Russian Black Sea fleet and disrupt vital Russian supply lines.

Russian-appointed authorities in?Crimea?reported in May that their air defense forces fended off at least three Ukrainian drone attacks in Sevastopol.

In April, a suspected drone strike sparked a huge fire at a fuel storage facility, also in Sevastopol.

Without claiming responsibility for that attack, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence called the fire “God’s punishment,” particularly for the civilians killed in the Ukrainian city of?Uman, where a Russian strike left at least 23 people dead.

Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and its recapture remains a goal for Ukraine.

Liberia-flagged bulker Eneida, carrying grain under UN's Black Sea grain initiative, waits for inspection in the southern anchorage of Istanbul, Turkey, on May 17, 2023.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told South African President Cyril Ramaphosa the main goal of a crucial deal allowing the export of Ukrainian grain has not been realized.

The Black Sea grain deal expires on Monday unless Russia extends it.

During a call with Ramaphosa, Putin stressed the importance of Russia’s side of the deal being upheld, including the removal of tariffs on Russian food exports, according to the Kremlin.

“(Putin) stressed that the obligations set out in the relevant Russia-UN memorandum to remove obstacles to the export of Russian food and fertilizers?still remain unfulfilled,”?the Kremlin readout of the call said.

“Moreover, the main goal of the deal, namely the supply of grain to countries in need, including those on the African continent, has not been realized,” it said.

What is the Black Sea grain deal?: The Black Sea grain deal was first reached in July 2022.

The deal – brokered by the United Nations and Turkey with Russia and Ukraine – created procedures to ensure the safe export of grain from Ukrainian ports after Russia launched its full-scale invasion and blockaded ports there.

As part of the deal, grain ships were able to navigate through a safe corridor in the Black Sea under the direction of Ukrainian pilots, and then pass through the Bosphorus Strait – an important shipping corridor in northwest Turkey – in order to reach global markets.

The agreement has proven vital for stabilizing global food prices and bringing relief to the developing countries that rely on Ukrainian exports.

The deal’s survival continues to rest in Russia’s hands. Prior to its third renewal in May, the Kremlin had remained elusive as to whether it would remain in the pact until agreeing to an extension.

Russian missiles struck the city center of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine during the early hours of Sunday, according to the city’s Mayor Ihor Terekhov.

One of the strikes was recorded in the Shevchenkivskyi district and did not cause any damage, Terekhov said.

The mayor said there was no information about casualties at the moment.

Located in northeastern Ukraine, Kharkiv is the country’s second-largest city and municipality and was considered a major target for the Russian military early in the invasion.

Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive is, by its own accounts, a grueling slog.

Recaptured territory has not come easily in areas of southern and eastern Ukraine where Russia has created multi-layered defenses and heavily mined the land.

As has been the case for months, some of the fiercest fighting is centered on the eastern city of Bakhmut. The Russian private military group Wagner claimed it captured the city and handed it over to Moscow’s troops back in May, but in the time since, Ukraine has consistently reported modest gains in areas immediately surrounding Bakhmut.

Meanwhile, one of Kyiv’s most important strategic priorities can be found on the southern front. Analysts view reclaiming Russian-occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia region as critical to the Ukrainian counteroffensive, because it could break Russia’s land bridge between annexed Crimea and the eastern Donetsk region — effectively separating the route between the territory Russia seized in 2014 and its new incursions in eastern Ukraine.

The map below shows the latest state of control for both militaries: