Here is how things stand on Wednesday, July 9:
Fighting
- Ukraine’s air force says Russia launched a record 728 drones and 13 missiles overnight. Air defence systems destroyed 718 of the drones and seven missiles, the air force said.
- A Ukrainian attack on a beach in the Russian city of Kursk killed three people and injured seven, including a five-year-old boy, acting regional Governor Alexander Khinshtein said. The dead included a Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard) officer, Russia’s TASS news agency reported.
- TASS reported that a Ukrainian drone attack on Rylsk, also in the Kursk region, hit the Central District Hospital, an ambulance building and an administrative building, injuring two people.
- The acting mayor of Kursk, Sergey Kotlyarov, said that debris from a downed Ukrainian drone damaged several houses in the Zheleznodorozhny district.
- The governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Vadym Filashkin, said Russia’s attacks killed three people and injured 10 more in the region.
- Four people were killed and four others injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Sumy region, the regional administration said.
- In Ukraine’s Kherson region, one person was killed and four others injured, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
- The governor of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region said that Russian attacks injured 20 people and damaged at least 64 homes.
- The Kyiv Independent reported that explosions were heard in Kyiv at about midnight on Wednesday after Ukraine’s Air Force issued a missile alert for the entire country.
Regional security
- A jury in the United Kingdom convicted three men of arson in an attack on an east London warehouse that was storing equipment destined for Ukraine. Prosecutors said agents from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, acting on behalf of Russian military intelligence, planned the attack.
- Russia detained media activist Pavel Andreev, accusing him of being “in touch with agents of NATO countries and organisations that foreign secret services use to cover up their intelligence and subversive activities in Russia”, TASS reported, citing Russia’s FSB security service.
- Ukraine asked the organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague to investigate Russian forces’ alleged use of banned toxic munitions following a report from Dutch and German intelligence agencies.
Politics and diplomacy
- US President Donald Trump said he is tired of the meaningless “b*******” from Russian President Vladimir Putin during negotiations.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine will “intensify” talks with the United States on air defence.
- Europe will never abandon Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an address to the UK parliament, adding: “We will fight till the very last minute in order to get the ceasefire… because this is our security and our principles together which are at stake in Ukraine.”
