Closing summary
The Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine is coming to a close. Here’s a round-up of today’s key events, including the results of a summit between Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and India’s prime minister Narendra Modi:
French president Emmanuel Macron denied a report that he had said there was a risk Washington could betray Ukraine. He said that unity between Europe and the US was key in the support of Ukraine, adding there is “no mistrust”. “I deny everything,” Macron said, when asked about the report. “We need the United States for peace. The United States need us for this peace to be lasting and robust.”
The US wants Europe to take over the majority of NATO’s conventional defence capabilities, from intelligence to missiles, by 2027, Pentagon officials told diplomats in Washington this week. The message was recounted by five sources to Reuters. Such a shift would dramatically change how the US, a founding member of the post-war alliance, works with its most important military partners.
Russia’s defence ministry said that its forces captured the village of Bezimiane, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. President Vladimir Putin earlier warned that Ukrainian troops must withdraw from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, which includes Donetsk, or Russia will seize it, rejecting any compromise over how to end the war in Ukraine.
A Kremlin aide said Russia is encouraged by negotiations with the US over the Ukraine war and is ready for more talks. Russia and the United States were making progress in talks over a deal on Ukraine and Moscow was ready to continue working with the current US team, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.
Russian drones struck a house in central Ukraine, killing a 12-year-old boy, officials said. Drones struck Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, destroying a house where the boy was killed and two women were injured.
Ukraine’s military said that it had carried out long-range strikes overnight on an oil refinery in the Russian city of Syzran and the Temryuk port in the Krasnodar region. Syzran’s mayor Sergei Volodchenkov said Ukraine had targeted the city with drones without providing more detail.
Also today:
India and Russia signed multiple agreements following a summit between leaders Vladimir Putin and Norendra Modi. Putin said that Russia is ready to continue to provide uninterrupted fuel supplies for India.
Russia and India will reshape their defence ties to take account of New Delhi’s push for self-reliance, the two countries said in a joint statement after the summit. Moscow has been India’s top arms supplier for decades and has said that it wants to import more Indian goods in an effort to grow trade to £75bn by 2030 that so far has been skewed in its favour due to New Delhi’s energy imports.
Russi proposed that India localise the production of stealth fighter jets, the Sukhoi Su-57, on its territory, said Sergei Chemezov, CEO of the Russian state corporation Rostec, as quoted by the state news agency TASS, Reuters reports. India is the world’s top buyer of Russian arms and seaborne oil.
Updated
US president Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were set to meet yesterday in Miami with a Ukrainian delegation but there was no official confirmation whether the meeting took place, AP reports.
Those scheduled talks came after discussions between president Vladimir Putin and the US envoys at the Kremlin on Tuesday.
Previous diplomatic attempts to break the deadlock have come to nothing and the nearly four-year war has continued unabated. Officials largely have kept a lid on how the latest talks are going, though Trump’s initial 28-point plan was leaked.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s delegation in Miami wanted to hear from the US side about the talks at the Kremlin.
Zelenskyy, as well as European leaders backing him, have repeatedly accused Putin of stalling in peace talks while the Russian army tries to press forward with its invasion.
