Russia declared eight Greek diplomats “personae non gratae” and gave them eight days to leave the country, the Russian foreign ministry said on Monday.
Reuters reports:
The foreign ministry said it had summoned the Greek ambassador to protest over what it called “the confrontational course of the Greek authorities towards Russia, including the supply of weapons and military equipment to the Kyiv regime”.
The ministry said it had also protested against a Greek decision to declare a group of Russian diplomats “personae non gratae”.
At least two killed, 20 wounded in Kremenchuk missile strike
16:02
The deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office has said at least two people have been killed and twenty wounded in the missile strike on Kremenchuk shopping mall.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, said nine of the wounded were in a serious condition following the missile strike on the city of Kremenchuk.
16:01
Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have granted relatives permission to speak with a Moroccan citizen sentenced to death for fighting with Ukrainian forces, Russia’s RIA Novosti agency reported, citing a top official in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).
A court in the breakaway DPR, which is only recognised by Russia, sentenced Saaudun Brahim and two British citizens to death in June in what western politicians have decried as a show trial.
This post was corrected to say that relatives, not the Moroccan government, have been granted permission to speak with Brahim.
Missile strike hits busy shopping centre in Kremenchuk
15:50
A missile strike has hit a crowded shopping centre in Kremenchuk, a city in central Ukraine on the banks of the Dniprp river.
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that more than 1,000 civilians were in the shopping centre at the time of the strike, where a fire remains raging.
Reuters reports the president gave no details of casualties but said: “It is impossible to even imagine the number of victims.”
“It’s useless to hope for decency and humanity from Russia,” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram
the city’s mayor, Vitaliy Meletskiy, said the strike had caused deaths and injuries, but gave no figures.
Kremenchuk, an industrial city of 217,000 inhabitants before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is the site of the country’s biggest oil refinery.
Footage circulating on social media shows fire raging and smoke billowing from the entirety of the shopping centre, with fire trucks parked nearby.
Oliver Carroll, a correspondent for the Economist, reports “horror scenes”, citing a man speaking on the phone who said people were in the building and the walls were starting to fall in.