Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Danish toy giant Lego Group has halted its commercial activities in Russia, the company told CNBC in an email.

“The LEGO Group has decided to indefinitely cease commercial operations in Russia given the continued extensive disruption in the operating environment,” a spokesperson for the group said.

“This includes ending employment for most of our Moscow-based team and our partnership with Inventive Retail Group who owned and operated 81 stores on the brand’s behalf.”

Reuters reported earlier on Tuesday that Lego had terminated its contract with the operator of its stores in Russia, Inventive Retail Group (IRG) said. IRG has also been a franchisee for foreign companies including Nike and Samsung in Russia.

Lego has 81 stores in Russia. The contract termination makes Lego one of the hundreds of foreign retailers that have left Russia in the months since its invasion of Ukraine in late February.

— Natasha Turak

Ukraine’s military says it carried out a missile strike on an ammunition depot near the Russian-occupied port city of Kherson in southern Ukraine.

The strike hit a depot in Russian-held Nova Kakhovka, roughly 35 miles east of Kherson. Ukrainian officials had previously talked about launching counteroffensives to retake land that Russia has occupied since its invasion began in late February.

Moscow denies the Ukrainians hit an ammunition depot, saying it was a fertilizer storage facility that was struck and blown up. Russia also said that the strike damaged houses, a hospital and a market, causing deaths. The information has not been independently verified.

The Associated Press reported significant damage from the blast, seen in satellite imagery, and said in its analysis that the precision of the strike suggested it was carried out with U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS.

— Natasha Turak

The European Union has so far frozen 13.8 billion euros ($13.87 billion) of assets belonging to Russian oligarchs and other sanctioned individuals and entities, according to one of the bloc’s officials.

“For the moment, we have frozen funds coming from oligarchs and other entities worth 13.8 billion euros, it’s quite huge,” EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said.

“But a very large part, more than 12 billion comes from five member states so we need to continue to convince others to do the same,” he added. He did not name the five states.

The EU has sanctioned 98 entities and 1,158 individuals since 2014 over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea eight years earlier, according to the European Council. They include Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov, numerous oligarchs linked to the Kremlin, 351 members of the Russian state parliament, and high-ranking security and military officials, among others.

— Natasha Turak

Russian forces have shelled the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Tuesday, with the city’s mayor saying that two medical facilities and residential buildings had been hit.

The mayor, Oleksandr Sienkevych, said in a Telegram post that Mykolaiv “came under massive shelling this morning.”

“According to preliminary information, rockets hit two medical facilities and residential buildings. Four people were injured,” Sienkevych said, with his post accompanied by images of fire damage and destruction.

CNBC was unable to immediately verify the information.

Russian troops continue to make small, incremental territorial gains in the Donetsk region of the Donbas, with Russia claiming to have seized control of the town of Hryhorivka, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday.

Russian forces also continue their assault along the E-40 main supply route toward the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the ministry said in its latest intelligence update on Twitter.

Russian forces are using tanks, cannon and artillery to pound various settlements in eastern Ukraine, the country’s armed forces said on Tuesday, with the U.K. adding that “Russian forces are likely maintaining military pressure on Ukrainian forces whilst regrouping and reconstituting for further offensives in the near future.”

The U.K. also noted that Russian Armed Forces’ personnel shortages may be forcing its defense ministry to turn to non-traditional recruitment. That includes recruiting personnel from Russian prisons for the Wagner private military company, a state-linked Russian paramilitary organization.

“If true, this move likely indicates difficulties in replacing the significant numbers of Russian casualties,” the U.K. said.

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukrainian forces are facing fresh assaults in the area around Kharkiv as well as a barrage of attacks from Russian tanks, cannon and rocket artillery on numerous settlements in the Donetsk region, an area now on the front line as Russia advances.

Russian forces have been using artillery and multiple launch rocket systems near the city of Kharkiv — Ukraine’s second-largest city in the northeast of the country — and surrounding settlements, Alexander Shtupun, the spokesperson for the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, said on Facebook Tuesday morning.

In the area around Sloviansk in the Donetsk region, which is a key target as Russian forces try to seize the rest of the Donbas, Ukraine said Russian forces were continuing assault operations to improve their tactical position to the north of Sloviansk.

To the south of the city, toward Bakhmut, Ukraine said Russian forces were using tanks, cannon and rocket artillery to fire on various settlements as they tried to improve their position, Ukraine said. CNBC was unable to immediately verify the information in the operational report.

— Holly Ellyatt

The death toll from a Russian rocket attack that hit a five-storey apartment block in the town of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine has risen to 34, with a child among the civilians killed in the attack, according to the latest information released on Tuesday.

Search and rescue teams were racing to reach survivors trapped in the rubble after the residential building was struck by Russian rockets over the weekend.

So far, nine people have been rescued from the rubble. “Work in progress,” Ukraine’s emergency services said in a Facebook post last night as search and rescue teams continued to look for victims and survivors.

— Holly Ellyatt

U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan said Iran is preparing to provide Russia with hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles.

He said there are signs Iran is planning to train Russian forces to use these drones, which could begin as early as this month.

Sullivan said the information illustrates the kind of costs Russia has had to endure on the battlefield and how Moscow could turn to countries like Iran for support.

The U.S. will continue to work with Ukraine on a strategy that “achieves their objectives both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table,” he said.

Sullivan made his comments ahead of President Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East, where he is expected to discuss a number of security issues, including a regional policy toward Iran. Relations with Iran have been strained as the two sides struggle for progress on a new nuclear deal.

— Natalie Tham

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Europe needs to prepare for the possibility that Russia cuts off gas supplies.

“Russia has never played by the rules in energy and will not play now unless it sees strength,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app, according to an NBC News translation.

“Now there can be no doubt that Russia will try not only to limit as much as possible but also to completely stop the supply of gas to Europe,” Zelenskyy said, adding, “this is what we need to prepare for now.”

Earlier, Russia suspended deliveries of gas to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for annual summer maintenance. The planned maintenance of the pipeline has stoked fears that Russia could lengthen the work and further delay gas supplies to Germany.

— Amanda Macias

As Russian missiles struck a key Ukrainian city, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree expanding a fast-track procedure to make Russian citizenship available to all Ukrainians, yet another effort to expand Moscow’s influence in war-torn Ukraine.

Until recently, only residents of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as residents of the southern Zaporizhzhia and the Kherson regions, large parts of which are now under Russian control, were eligible for the simplified passport procedure.

Ukrainian officials haven’t yet reacted to Putin’s announcement. The decree also applies for any stateless residents currently in Ukraine.

Between 2019, when the procedure was first introduced for the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk, and this year, more than 720,000 people living in the rebel-held areas in the two regions — about 18% of the population – have received Russian passports.

— Associated Press

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said her office has mounting evidence that Russian forces carried out unlawful killings and summary executions in Ukraine.

Bachelet said that UN investigators have verified the recovery of more than 1,200 civilian bodies from Kyiv.

She added that her office is working to corroborate more than 300 allegations of killings by Russian armed forces in situations that were not linked to active fighting.

The Kremlin has previously denied that its forces have committed crimes against civilians in Ukraine.

— Amanda Macias