A Russian attack on the industrial Dnipropetrovsk region on Tuesday killed at least 19 people and wounded nearly 300 in a region coming under mounting pressure. Dnipropetrovsk governor Sergiy Lysak said 17 residents of the central city of Dnipro were killed and 279 people, including children, were wounded. Two more were left dead in the nearby town of Samar. Police said an administrative building, shops, educational facilities and a children’s hospital were damaged. Russian forces recently claimed to have reached the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region, gaining a foothold there for the first time in the war.
The attacks came as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in the Netherlands to meet with allies on the sidelines of the Nato defence alliance summit. The summit is expected to endorse a higher defence spending goal of 5% of GDP – a response to a demand by Trump and to Europeans’ fears that Russia poses an increasingly direct threat to their security after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The new target – to be achieved over the next 10 years – is a big increase on the current goal of 2% of GDP.
Trump said he would probably meet with Zelenskyy at the summit. The Ukrainian president’ plans for a meeting with Trump in Canada last week were dashed when the US president left a G7 summit early, citing a need to focus on the crisis in the Middle East. Zelenskyy and his aides have said they want to talk to Trump about buying US weapons including Patriot missile defence systems and increasing pressure on Moscow through tougher sanctions.
Keir Starmer has announced a fresh package of military aid for Ukraine – this time paid for using the UK’s interest haul from frozen Russian assets. The UK will send 350 advanced air defence missiles, built in Britain and adapted in record time for ground launch, using £70m of interest raised through the government’s extraordinary revenue acceleration (ERA) scheme. The move marks the first time the UK has used Russia-linked funds to directly bankroll weaponry for Kyiv.
Russian air defence units destroyed dozens of Ukrainian drones over widely separated regions of Russia on Tuesday, including more than 40 over Voronezh region on the Ukrainian border, Russian officials said. Voronezh regional governor Alexander Gusev said there were no reports of injuries. In Rostov region, on Ukraines eastern border, governor Yuri Slyusar said air defence units had repelled a number of attacks in three areas, but drones had damaged a sports complex in the city of Taganrog and a grain storage area in the town of Azov.
