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MOSCOW: Russian forces carried out an overnight strike on the Kremenchuk oil refinery that supplies fuel to Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region, Russia’s defense ministry said on Sunday.
President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the attack on the central Poltava region as a vile strike against Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
“Unfortunately, there was damage to the energy infrastructure,” Zelensky said in his evening address to the nation.
“This is Russia’s (effort to) spit on everything that the international community is trying to do to stop this war.” He said it occurred “after the Americans asked us not to strike at Russian energy facilities.”
The Russian defense ministry’s statement said that missiles had been fired at the refinery in Ukraine’s Poltava region from both sea and air and that strike drones were also used in what it said had been a successful attack.
Russia has claimed Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region as its own and controls most of its two regions, Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukraine is fighting to stop Russia from taking control of the rest of Donbas and has said it plans to retake territory it has lost, through a combination of force and diplomacy.
The Russian Defense Ministry said separately that its forces had taken control of the village of Malynivka in the Donetsk region, known in Russia as Ulyanovka.
It also said its forces had advanced deep into enemy defenses in Ukraine’s Sumy region and inflicted heavy losses on Ukrainian units there. Sumy is not one of the regions Russia has formally claimed as its own, but it has spoken of creating a buffer zone there. Zelensky said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had recaptured Andriivka village in northeastern Sumy as part of a drive to expel Russian forces from the area.
He said Russia has amassed 53,000 troops in the vicinity.

THE HAGUE: Tens of thousands of people dressed in red marched through the streets of The Hague on Sunday to demand more action from the Dutch government against what they termed a “genocide” in Gaza.

Rights groups such as Amnesty International and Oxfam organized the demonstration to the International Court of Justice through the city, creating a so-called “red line.”
With many waving Palestinian flags and some chanting “Stop the Genocide,” the demonstrators turned a central park in the city into a sea of red on a sunny afternoon.
One of the organizing groups, Oxfam Novib, estimated that 150,000 people participated in the march. Dutch police generally do not give estimates of demonstration turnouts.
Protesters brandished banners reading “Don’t look away, do something,” “Stop Dutch complicity,” and “Be silent when kids sleep, not when they die.”
Organizers urged the Dutch government — which collapsed on June 3 after a far-right party pulled out of a fragile coalition — to do more to rein in Israel for its military offensive on the Palestinian territory.
“More than 150,000 people here dressed in red — and a clear majority of the Dutch population — just want concrete sanctions to stop the genocide in Gaza,” said Michiel Servaes, director of Oxfam Novib.
“We demand action now from our government,” added Servaes.
Dodo Van Der Sluis, a 67-year-old pensioner, said: “It has to stop. Enough is enough. I can’t take it anymore.”
“I’m here because I think it’s maybe the only thing you can do now as a Dutch citizen, but it’s something you have to do,” she added.
A previous protest in The Hague on May 18 drew more than 100,000 people, according to organizers, who described it as the country’s largest demonstration in 20 years.
Prime Minister Dick Schoof wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “To all those people in The Hague I say: we see you and we hear you.”
“In the end, our goal is the same: to end the suffering in Gaza as soon as possible.”
The Gaza war was sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The Health Ministry in Gaza says Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 55,207 people, the majority of them civilians.
The International Court of Justice is currently weighing a case brought by South Africa against Israel, arguing its actions in Gaza breach the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.
Thousands of demonstrators protested across France on Saturday in support of Palestinians and calling for peace in Gaza.
Protesters criticized France’s stance on the conflict, branding it conciliatory or even “complicit” with the Israeli government.
French trade unions, left-wing parties and pro-Palestinian activist groups called for a global weekend of protests against Israel’s offensive in the territory.
In Paris, where the largest march took place, police counted 9,000 demonstrators, while the CGT trade union and hard-left party France Unbowed said 150,000 attended the gathering.
Thousands of people also rallied in the cities of Marseille, Toulouse and Rennes.
European Parliament member Rima Hassan called on supporters to “deviate, disobey and take all necessary actions to enforce international law, to put an end to genocide.”
She recently spent three days in a detention centre in Israel after attempting to breach its blockade of Gaza on a boat with other activists.
“We don’t want what is happening in Gaza to be silenced. Every day we hear that 30, 60 people have died. It has become routine, we don’t see it anymore and I’m afraid that with what’s happening with Iran, it will become even more invisible,” said one protester.