The Russian ambassador to the UK Andrei Kelin has claimed that Russia has not yet started acting “seriously” in Ukraine.

In an interview on the BBC’s Kuenssberg show, Kelin said Russia is “yet to act very seriously” in Ukraine, and warned Russia has “enormous resources” to fight.

Ambassador Kelin also warned of a “new dimension” in the Russia-Ukraine war. He said: “It is a big idealistic mistake to think that Ukraine will prevail. Russia is 16 times bigger than Ukraine. We have enormous resources and we haven’t just started yet to act very seriously.

“We are just defending the lands which are under control and assisting Russian people over there. We are rebuilding the Donbas.

“It depends on the escalation of war that is taking place. Sooner or later this escalation might have a new dimension that we do not need and we do not want. We can make peace tomorrow, if Ukrainian side will be prepared to negotiate but there is no preconditions for that.

“The German defence minister said if we stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, it will stop the day after tomorrow,” he said and laughs, saying he is right.

“If supplies of weapons will be stopped, it will be stopped the day after tomorrow. Please, stop it.”

Ambassador Kelin’s claims of “enormous resources” come after reports that Russian forces on the ground are poorly equipped and without proper training.

Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin last week launched a scathing attack on Vladimir Putin’s war strategy. He said Russia could lose the war in Ukraine, warning he “hardly believes” Russia can hold on to the territory it has claimed to control.

Elsewhere in the interview, Kelin said he disagrees with Prigozhin’s claim that there is a chance of “losing Russia”.

A 61-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man were killed in two separate shelling attacks in the north-eastern Kharkiv province in the past day, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

Three others were injured, the governor said, adding that Russian forces attacked 12 settlements across the region.

Houses and a cultural facility were damaged in the attack, the Kyiv Independent reported.

Elsewhere, explosions were heard in the city of Zhytomyr early on Sunday morning, Ukrainian state news agency Suspilne reported.

A kamikaze drone attack damaged an infrastructure site, governor Vitalii Bunechko said in a Telegram post. No casualties were reported.

Otoy’s emotional music about the invasion ‘helps him feel alive’ despite tragedy close to home, Tara Cobham writes.

Kostyuk has been the most outspoken Ukrainian player about the sport’s response to the invasion of her home country by Russia and believes Russian and Belarusian players should have been willing to condemn their nations’ actions.

Footage from inside the room where it took place shows Graham joking with Zelensky that it’s ‘free or die’, as Ukraine requested more ‘long-range weapons’ to aid the ongoing invasion.

In a statement after the meeting, he said he expected the Ukrainian counter-offensive to ‘yield results’.

Russia‘s ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, openly defended the country’s attacks on Ukraine during a new appearance on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg (28 May).

As the journalist brought up recent devastation from a missile hitting a hospital, the ambassador appeared agitated.

“The problem is the shooting is going on for nine years”, he said, blaming ‘US weapons’ as the cause of mass destruction, and denying Russian war crimes taking place.

Instead, Kelin said he had ‘documentation’ of crimes being committed by Ukrainian troops since the invasion began.

One person died after Russia launched 19 airstrikes on the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s National Police has said.

Police said people were also injured in the attack but did not say how many. The Kyiv Independent reported that three people were injured in the attack, citing governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

A Russian missile also struck an industrial site in the city of Kramatorsk in Donetsk Oblast, the Kyiv Independent reported.

A total of 30 houses, as well as a factory, several cars and the city’s electricity network were damaged in the attack.

Attacks by Russian forces also injured a total of five people in the Ukrainian cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia over the past 24 hours, according to the cities’ regional governors.

President Zelensky has asked the Ukrainian parliament to impose sanctions on Iran for 50 years.

Iran has supplied Russia with drones and military equipment since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The sanctions include a complete ban on trade with Iran, investments, and transferring technologies, the Kyiv Independent reported.

They will also include bans on Iranian transit across Ukrainian territory and the withdrawal of Irainian assets from Ukraine.

A vote has not yet been scheduled by the Ukrainian parliament.

Ukraine’s ministry of defence claimed today that the country’s air defence shot down 52 out of 54 Iranian-made Shaheds drones overnight after Russia unleashed the largest drone attack on the capital since the start of the war ahead of Kyiv Day, killing one person.

The US and the EU have imposed sanctions against Iran for supplying Russia with drones.

At least 400 Russian soldiers were killed yesterday, Ukraine’s ministry of defence has claimed.

In a daily update posted on Twitter, Ukraine’s MOD claimed 206,600 Russian troops have been killed since the war in Ukraine began.

The Ukrainian defence ministry also said it destroyed three drones and three tanks yesterday.

The claims have not been independently verified. Neither Russia nor Ukraine publishes its combat death toll.

South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed a panel to investigate U.S. allegations that a Russian ship had collected weapons from a naval base near Cape Town last year, the presidency said in a statement on Sunday.

The U.S. ambassador to South Africa Reuben Brigety said on May 11 that he was confident that a Russian ship, which docked at a naval base in Simonstown in the Western Cape in December last year, took aboard weapons from South Africa. An allegation South Africa has since denied.

The allegations have caused a diplomatic row between the U.S., South Africa and Russia and called into question South Africa’s non-aligned position on the Ukraine conflict.

South Africa says it is impartial and has abstained from voting on U.N. resolutions on the war.

“The president decided to establish the enquiry because of the seriousness of the allegations, the extent of public interest and the impact of this matter on South Africa’s international relations,” said the statement.

The three-member panel will be chaired by Phineas Mojapelo, former deputy judge president of Gauteng province. The other two members are Advocate Leah Gcabashe, who was the former evidence leader for a state corruption inquiry that ended last year, and Enver Surty, former deputy minister of basic education. It will have six weeks to conduct its investigation.

The terms of reference for the panel include establishing who was aware of the cargo ship’s arrival, the contents that were loaded and off-loaded and “whether constitutional, legal or other obligations were complied with in relation to the cargo ship’s arrival.”

The president is expected to receive a final report within two weeks of the investigation concluding.