The US promised more military support for Ukraine, including drones, and is considering whether to send fighter aircraft, as Russian forces relentlessly shelled towns and cities in the east with the war about to enter its sixth month.
Moscow and Kyiv signed a landmark deal on Friday that raised hopes of unblocking vast grain exports from Black Sea ports.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the accord, but with heavy fighting continuing on several fronts, he said there could be no ceasefire unless lost territory was retaken.
Photo: AFP
Warning: Smoking can damage your health
“Freezing the conflict with the Russian Federation means a pause that gives the Russian Federation a break for rest,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
“Society believes that all the territories must be liberated first, and then we can negotiate about what to do and how we could live in the centuries ahead,” he said.
There have been no breakthroughs on the front lines since Russian forces seized the last two Ukrainian-held cities in the eastern province of Luhansk late last month and early this month.
Russian forces failed to establish control over Ukraine’s second-biggest power plant at Vuhlehirska, northeast of Donetsk, and troops tried to advance west from the city of Lysychansk, but were pushed back, the Ukrainian General Staff of the Armed Forces said.
A number of people were killed and wounded when 13 Russian missiles hit a military airfield and railway infrastructure in the central region of Kirovohrad yesterday, its governor said.
In the southern town of Nikopol on the Dnipro river, continued Russian shelling killed at least one person, a Ukrainian official said on his Telegram channel.
The attack on Nikopol, the target of more than 250 rockets in the past week, damaged 11 homes and farm buildings, cut off gas and water pipes, and destroyed a railway track, said Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the Military Administration of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine.
Up river in the Dnipropetrovsk region, rockets targeted a town and nearby villages, regional governor Valentyn Reznychenko said.
Heavy fighting has taken place over the past 48 hours as Ukrainian forces continued their offensive against Russia in Kherson Oblast, west of the Dnipro river, British military intelligence said yesterday.
“Supply lines of the Russian forces west of the river are increasingly at risk,” the British Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update.
In the northeast, “several powerful strikes” yesterday morning hit the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote in a post on Telegram.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not immediately reply to a request for comment outside regular hours.
Kyiv hopes that its gradually increasing supply of western arms, such as US High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), will allow it to recapture territory.
Russia’s defense ministry on Friday said its forces had destroyed four HIMARS systems between July 5 and Wednesday, which was refuted by the US and Ukraine.
Ukraine’s mayor of Russian-occupied city Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, reported that two explosions were heard early yesterday at the Azov Sea resort Kyrylivka, where he said Russia had moved material to avoid becoming targets for HIMARS.
“They hoped that neither our HIMARS nor the armed forces and the resistance movement would get them there, but someone definitely got them,” Fedorov said from territory still in Ukrainian hands.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.
The White House on Friday announced US$270 million in fresh support for Kyiv, saying it was doing preliminary work on whether to send fighter aircraft, although such a move would not happen in the near term.
The Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has caused Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945, forcing millions to flee and turning entire cities to rubble.
The Kremlin says it is engaged in a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies say the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
RSS