© Reuters. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, Iceland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Thordis Kolbrun Reykfjord Gylfadottir and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, meet to discuss how to help Ukraine defend itself
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(Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued a decree on Saturday sacking a senior security figure and said separately that his drive to clean up the government would continue.
FIGHTING
* Ukraine’s forces are holding their defences along the front line in the eastern region of Donetsk, including the besieged town of Bakhmut, with the fiercest battles for the cities of Vuhledar and Maryinka, Kyiv’s top military commander said on Saturday.
* Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner Group, said on Sunday that the mercenary force had taken the village of Krasna Hora, on the northern edge of Bakhmut.
* Prigozhin said on Saturday it could take two years for Moscow to control all of the two eastern Ukrainian regions whose capture it has stated as a key goal of the war.
* Galina Danilchenko, the Russia-installed mayor of the Ukrainian city Melitopol in south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region, said on Saturday one civilian died and two people were injured in overnight shelling by Ukrainian forces.
* Reuters could not verify the battlefield accounts.
NATO LEADERSHIP
* NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will end his term as planned in October, a spokesperson for the alliance said, after a newspaper reported a further extension was in the works.
POWER SUPPLIES
* Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and the surrounding region, as well as the Odesa and Dnipro regions, can avoid power cuts on Sunday, leading producer DTEK said, as authorities worked to repair power grids damaged by a major Russian strike.
DIPLOMACY
* U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov discussed priorities, including air defence and artillery, for upcoming meetings of Kyiv’s allies in Brussels, both sides said on Saturday.
* Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin said calls from more than 30 countries to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from the 2024 Olympics were unacceptable, TASS news agency reported.
* Russian athletics stars are no strangers to being barred from international competitions, and the prospect of missing next year’s Olympics over the invasion of Ukraine has piled onto years of frustration felt towards global sports bodies.
* NATO should hold an emergency meeting to discuss recent findings about September explosions at the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said late on Saturday. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote last week that U.S. navy divers had blown up the pipelines, a claim rejected by the White House.
