Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Ukrainians break through Russian defences in south, advance rapidly in east

Ukraine needs to revamp its labour laws and redouble efforts to privatise thousands of companies to repair its economy, its president’s economic adviser has said.

Alexander Rodnyansky, an adviser to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the war-torn country needed to speed up efforts to reform industries as it looked to rebuild after Russia’s invasion.

Rodnyansky told the Guardian that the Ukrainian government needed to “create the foundations for rapid economic growth” while also financing the conflict.

Ukraine faces a debt crisis as well as inflation of more than 20% as the country counts the cost of Russia’s offensive.

Rodnyansky, who is also a professor of economics at the University of Cambridge, said “receiving more foreign aid is the easiest way to fund the war”; however, efforts were being made to cut spending, collect taxes and issue debt to finance its efforts.

He said Zelenskiy and his top team were also examining priorities to rebuild the economy, including progressing efforts initiated before the war to rework 50-year-old labour regulations. “We have deep issues with our labour code, developed in the 1970s, that needs to be overhauled.

“We’re going to try to emulate a more liberal approach, like Denmark, with a flexible labour market because we need to catch up.”

And in stranger news on the annexations, Elon Musk has prompted an online row with Zelenskiy after he asked Twitter users to weigh in on his ideas to end Russia’s war.

In a tweet, Musk suggested UN-supervised elections in four occupied regions that Moscow has falsely annexed after what it called referendums. The votes were denounced by Kyiv and western governments as illegal and coercive. “Russia leaves if that is will of the people,” Musk wrote.

The Tesla chief executive also suggested that Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014, be formally recognised as Russia, that water supply to Crimea be assured, and that Ukraine remain neutral. He asked Twitter users to vote yes or no to his idea.

The tweet infuriated Ukrainians, and Zelenskiy responded with his own poll.

“Which @elonmusk do you like more?,” Zelenskiy tweeted, offering two responses: one who supports Ukraine, or supports Russia.

Ukraine’s outspoken outgoing ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, had a blunt reaction.

“Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you @elonmusk,” tweeted Melnyk.

Read the full story below:

My colleagues Luke Harding and Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv, and Peter Beaumont in Sloviansk reported this story late on Monday night:

Russia no longer has full control of any of the four provinces of Ukraine it says it annexed last week after Ukrainian troops reportedly advanced dozens of kilometres in Kherson province in the south of the country and made additional gains in the east.

On Monday, the Russian military acknowledged that Kyiv’s forces had broken through in the Kherson region. It said the Ukrainian army and its “superior tank units” had managed to “penetrate the depths of our defence” around the villages of Zoltaya Balka and Alexsandrovka.

The ministry of defence spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said Russian troops had occupied what he called a “pre-prepared defensive line”. They continued to “inflict massive fire damage” on Ukrainian forces, he claimed.

His comments are an admission that Ukraine’s southern counter-offensive is dramatically gaining pace, two months after it began. Ukrainian brigades appear to have achieved their biggest breakthrough in the region since the war started, bursting through the frontline and advancing rapidly along the Dnieper River.

Read the full story below:

Lawmakers in Russia’s upper house, the federation council, are expected to formalise the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces on Tuesday.

On Monday, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, the state Duma, approved laws on annexing four Ukrainian territories into Russia. No lawmakers in the lower house voted against the bill to incorporate the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions into Russia.

This is despite Russia no longer having full control of any of the four provinces of Ukraine it says it annexed last week after Ukrainian troops reportedly advanced dozens of kilometres in Kherson province in the south of the country and made additional gains in the east.

On Monday, the Kremlin also said that it was still determining which areas of occupied Ukraine it has “annexed”, suggesting Russia does not know where its self-declared international borders are.

The surprising admission came in a phone call with journalists, during which Dmitry Peskov was peppered with requests to clarify to which Ukrainian territory Putin had laid claim at a pomp-filled Kremlin ceremony last week.

Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian defences in the south of the country while expanding their rapid offensive in the east, seizing back more territory in areas annexed by Russia and threatening supply lines for its troops, Reuters reports.

Making their biggest breakthrough in the south since the war began, Ukrainian forces recaptured several villages in an advance along the strategic Dnipro River on Monday, Ukrainian officials and a Russian-installed leader in the area said.

Ukrainian forces in the south destroyed 31 Russian tanks and one multiple rocket launcher, the military’s southern operational command said in a nightly update, without providing details of where the fighting occurred.

Reuters reported that it could not not immediately verify the battlefield accounts.

The southern breakthrough mirrors recent Ukrainian advances in the east even as Russia has tried to raise the stakes by annexing land, ordering mobilisation, and threatening nuclear retaliation.

Ukraine has made significant advances in two of the four Russian-occupied regions Moscow last week annexed after what it called referendums – votes that were denounced by Kyiv and Western governments as illegal and coercive.

In a sign Ukraine is building momentum on the eastern front, Reuters saw columns of Ukrainian military vehicles heading on Monday to reinforce the rail hub of Lyman, retaken at the weekend, and a staging post to press into the Donbas region.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Ukraine war. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be taking you through the latest developments as they happen.

Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian defences in the south of the country while expanding their rapid offensive in the east, seizing back more territory in areas annexed by Russia and threatening supply lines for its troops.

We’ll have more on this shortly, in the mean time here is the key news from the last few hours:

• Russia no longer has full control of any of the four provinces of Ukraine it says it annexed last week, after Ukrainian troops reportedly advanced dozens of kilometres in Kherson province. The Russian military has acknowledged that Kyiv’s forces had broken through in the Kherson region. It said the Ukrainian army and its “superior tank units” had managed to “penetrate the depths of our defence” around the villages of Zoltaya Balka and Alexsandrovka.

• Ukrainian brigades appear to have achieved their biggest breakthrough in the region since the war started, bursting through the frontline and advancing rapidly along the Dnieper River. Lyman’s recapture by Ukrainian troops is Russia’s largest battlefield loss since Ukraine’s lightning counteroffensive in the north-eastern Kharkiv region in September.

• Elon Musk has prompted an online row with Zelenskiy after he asked Twitter users to weigh in on his ideas to end Russia’s war. In a tweet, Musk suggested UN-supervised elections in four occupied regions that Moscow has falsely annexed after what it called referendums. Zelenskiy responded with his own poll. “Which @elonmusk do you like more?,” he wrote, offering two responses: one who supports Ukraine, or supports Russia.

• The US will deliver four more of the advanced rocket systems to Ukraine. The High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, will be part of a new $625m aid package to be announced on Tuesday, according to US officials.

• North Korea voiced support Tuesday for Russia’s annexation of areas of Ukraine that its troops occupy, and accused the US and its allies of acting like a gangster by leading a drive at the UN against Moscow’s behaviour.

• The lower house of Russia’s parliament, the state Duma, has approved laws on annexing four Ukrainian territories into Russia. No lawmakers in the lower house voted against the bill to incorporate the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions into Russia. Lawmakers in the upper house, Russia’s federation council, are expected to formalise the illegal annexation on Tuesday.

• Russia has put Marina Ovsyannikova, the former state TV editor who interrupted a news broadcast to protest against the Ukraine war, on a wanted list after she reportedly escaped house arrest. The Ukrainian-born Ovsyannikova, 44, gained international attention in March after bursting into a studio of Channel One, her then employer, to denounce the Ukraine war during a live news bulletin.