Shelling kills at least four people in Ukraine

Russian missile and artillery strikes killed at least four people in Ukraine, as Poland and three Baltic neighbours vowed to close their borders with Kremlin ally Belarus in response to any heightened threat from Wagner group mercenaries. They also said they will seal their borders if migrants are allowed to cross from Belarus.

Ukrainian officials said at least three people were killed and five hurt when a missile hit an industrial site in the central Poltava region in the early hours of Monday, and hours later a woman was killed when her home was shelled in the southeastern Kherson province.

Heavy fighting continued in the southeast, where Ukrainian forces are slowly retaking ground in Zaporizhzhia region in a bid to cut Russia’s land link to the occupied Crimea peninsula, and in the eastern Kharkiv and Donetsk provinces, where Moscow’s troops are trying to advance towards the towns of Kupiansk and Lyman that were liberated last autumn.

Russia said it shot down a missile and two drones fired by Ukraine towards Crimea and at least one drone near Moscow, causing disruption to flights in and out of the city’s civilian airports – a frequent occurrence this month due to apparent drone attacks by Ukraine or pro-Ukrainian groups operating on Russian territory.

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Russian forces have targeted Ukraine’s ports with air strikes since withdrawing from a deal to allow grain shipments from Odesa last month. Kyiv said a second cargo ship sailed out of Odesa using a new “temporary corridor” across the Black Sea on Monday, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov played down its significance for the grain agreement.

“This is a completely different matter, and here our military authorities are of course conducting the necessary monitoring,” he said.

“This has nothing to do with prospects for resuming the grain deal,” he added, reiterating that Moscow would only consider such a move if it saw “fulfilment of promises made to the Russian side” to ease western sanctions on its food and fertiliser exports.

Polish interior minister Mariusz Kaminski hosted talks in Warsaw on Monday with his counterparts from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, to address what they called rising security threats from Belarus, a dictatorship led by Kremlin ally Alexander Lukashenko which is hosting Russian regular troops and fighters from the Wagner mercenary group.

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia border Belarus, which has become the base for an unknown number of Wagner fighters since they launched a brief uprising against Russia’s military leadership in June. Yevgeny Prigozhin and other senior members of the group were killed in an unexplained plane crash in Russia last week.

Poland and the Baltic States, all of which are in the European Union and Nato, are also on alert for another increase in migrants. They have accused Belarus of deliberately bringing people from the Middle East to their borders to increase political, social and security pressures.

“We demand from the authorities in Minsk that the Wagner group immediately leave the territory of Belarus and illegal migrants immediately leave the border area,” Mr Kaminski said. “If there is a critical incident . . . all border crossings that remain open will be closed.”