For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit .
Protesters formed a human chain outside the European Commission building in Brussels in solidarity with Ukraine's bid to join the European Union, The Associated Press reported. Ukrainian officials have made various pleas in the past weeks for their country to be named a candidate for EU membership, a move that would bring the war-torn nation closer to the bloc without guaranteeing its admittance.
Protest organizer Yana Brovdiy told the AP that Ukraine had shown on "many occasions" it was a country that stood for "European values."
The Interfax news agency, citing the Russian defense ministry, said Russian forces shot down three Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jets near Donetsk and Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, Reuters reported.
It’s “unacceptable” for a Canadian official to have attended Russia Day celebrations at the country’s embassy in Canada, foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly said on Sunday.
A deputy protocol chief in Canada's global affairs department, Yasemin Heinbecker, attended Friday’s event, along with representatives of Egypt, Pakistan and some African nations, Reuters reported citing a report in the Globe and Mail newspaper.
“No Canadian representative will attend this kind of event again,” Joly said in a Twitter post.
Joly also reiterated Canada’s support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, which Moscow calls a “special military operation.”
Since the conflict began on February 24, Canada has imposed sanctions on more than 1,000 individuals and bodies with ties to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Ukraine has established two routes through Poland and Romania to export grain and avert a global food crisis although bottlenecks have slowed the supply chain, Kyiv's deputy foreign minister said, according to Reuters. Dmytro Senik said global food security was at risk because Russia's invasion of Ukraine had halted Kyiv's Black Sea grain exports, causing widespread shortages and soaring prices.
Ukraine is the world's fourth-largest grain exporter and it says there are some 30 million tonnes of grain stored in Ukrainian-held territory which it is trying to export via road, river and rail, Reuters reported.
A pro-Russian separatist leader in eastern Ukraine said Sunday he would not alter the death sentences handed to two Britons and a Moroccan for fighting with the Ukrainian army, Agence France-Presse reported. “They came to Ukraine to kill civilians for money. That's why I don't see any conditions for any mitigation or modification of the sentence," Denis Pushilin, the leader of the separatist Donetsk region, which tried them, told reporters. Pushilin said the court had "issued a perfectly fair punishment" to the three fighters, according to AFP.
On Friday, Johnson's spokesman said he was "appalled" by the death sentences handed down to Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner and Moroccan Brahim Saadun.
Amnesty International on Monday accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying attacks on Kharkiv, many using banned cluster bombs, had killed hundreds of civilians, Agence France-Presse reported. "The repeated bombardments of residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes," the rights group said in a report on Ukraine's second biggest city.
Kremlin-installed officials in occupied southern Ukraine celebrated Russia Day and began issuing Russian passports to residents in one city who requested them, as Moscow sought to solidify its rule over captured parts of the country, The Associated Press reported. At one of the central squares in the city of Kherson, Russian bands played a concert to celebrate Russia Day, the holiday that marks Russia's emergence as a sovereign state after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti. In the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow-installed officials raised a Russian flag in Melitopol's city center, AP reported.