As the war enters its 498th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Thursday, July 6, 2023.

Fighting

• Oleksiy Danilov, who heads Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces had been “particularly fruitful” in recent days, although he did not go into detail.
• Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar reported gains around the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut amid fierce Russian resistance. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces struck three Ukrainian army groups near Bakhmut.
• Ukraine’s military said it destroyed a Russian “formation” in Russian-controlled Makiivka in the front line Donetsk region. Moscow-installed officials and media said one civilian was killed and dozens wounded in the attacks.
• The governors of Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions say the areas came under fire from Ukrainian forces across the border. No casualties were reported.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) requested “additional access” to parts of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine after Kyiv and Moscow accused the other of planning attacks at the site. IAEA experts based at the plant said they had seen no evidence of mines or explosives but needed access to areas including the rooftops of reactor units 3 and 4, parts of the turbine halls and some parts of the cooling system.
• Tension around Europe’s biggest nuclear plant rose. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow was creating “dangerous provocations” at the site, while the Kremlin claimed there was a “great threat of sabotage from Kyiv”.
• Russia plans to send more Chechen fighters and convicts to fight in Ukraine and fill the gap left by Wagner mercenaries who have been pulled out from the front line, according to a report from Bloomberg News, citing European intelligence officials.
• The United Kingdom’s defence ministry said last month’s short-lived Wagner mutiny had “worsened existing fault lines within Russia’s national security community”. It noted senior officers including General Sergey Surovikin, commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Force and deputy commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, had not been seen in public since the June 24 rebellion.
• The general staff of Ukraine’s military said there had been an increase in infectious diseases – and a possible outbreak of cholera – in the Russian-occupied region of Kherson since the breach of the Nova Kakhovka dam last month caused severe flooding.

Diplomacy

• United States President Joe Biden has said he was “anxiously looking forward” to Sweden joining NATO, as the White House renewed calls for Turkey to approve Sweden’s bid to join the alliance ahead of next week’s summit in Lithuania.
• The United Nations said it was “worried” about the survival of the Black Sea grain exports deal, which could collapse within two weeks, threatening global food security. The UN and Turkey-brokered deal to allow Ukrainian ships to transport grains from Black Sea ports to the rest of the world is due to expire on July 17.
• The Kremlin said it could not confirm a Financial Times report that Chinese President Xi Jinping had personally warned Putin against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia and China had issued statements at the time on the content of their talks and “everything else is fiction”.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a bill imposing sanctions on 18 entities registered in Russia, Luxembourg and the Republic of Cyprus which he said were linked to Moscow.
• Russia banned the Altai Project, a small US-based charity, accusing it of “sabotaging” the construction of a huge gas pipeline to China.

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