Volodymyr Zelenskiy has landed in Berlin, according to a post on the Ukrainian president’s Twitter feed, as he seeks to shore up support from key allies. “Already in Berlin,” Zelenskiy tweeted shortly after midnight on Sunday, arriving from Italy where he met with Italian officials and Pope Francis. The German government has announced a further €2.7bn of military aid to Ukraine, its biggest such package since the Russian invasion.
Russian missiles struck the home town of Ukraine’s Eurovision entry during the song contest. Ternopil, the university home town of electronic music duo Tvorchi, was among the places targeted, according to Dame Melinda Simmons, the British ambassador to Ukraine. Local authorities said the strike had hit warehouses owned by commercial enterprises and a religious organisation, injuring two people.
The Russian news outlet Kommersant reported that two Russian fighter jets and two military helicopters had been shot down on Saturday close to the Ukrainian border. Kommersant said on its website that the Su-34 fighter-bomber, Su-35 fighter and two Mi-8 helicopters had made up a raiding party, and had been “shot down almost simultaneously” in an ambush in the Bryansk region, adjoining north-east Ukraine.
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will push other global leaders to pledge more support for Ukraine when he attends international summits next week, according to his office. Sunak will travel to Iceland on Tuesday to meet other European leaders attending a Council of Europe summit.
South Africa’s presidential security adviser said the country was “actively non-aligned” in Russia’s war against Ukraine, after US allegations it had supplied weapons to Moscow led to a diplomatic crisis. Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had spoken to the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and urged him to help implement Kyiv’s peace plan to end the war.
Ukrainian forces have regained at least a kilometre of territory in Bakhmut amid a Russian withdrawal that reflects Moscow’s “severe shortage of credible combat units”, the UK Ministry of Defence has said in an intelligence briefing. It said elements of a Russian brigade withdrew “in bad order” from their positions on the southern flank of the eastern Ukrainian city, the scene of the war’s longest battle.
Japan has expressed concern about Russian and Chinese military cooperation in Asia and believes the two countries are strengthening their joint exercises. Foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said the security situation in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region was indivisible since the war in Ukraine started and that Russia’s invasion had “shaken the very foundation of the international order”.
Russian attacks injured three people in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, the city’s mayor said. The strikes occurred early on Saturday, Oleksandr Sienkevych said on his Telegram channel. Russian forces targeted a factory, also damaging nearby residential buildings, causing fires in three apartments and damaging an educational institution, he said.
A 15-year-old girl was among two people killed while 10 more were injured in a Russian shelling attack, Ukraine’s defence ministry said. The eastern city of Kostyantynivka was targeted by Smerch rocket launchers.
Russian-installed officials in Luhansk have said missiles fired by Ukrainian forces injured six children and a Russian parliamentarian and damaged two disused factories in the eastern Ukrainian region’s main city, about 100km (60 miles) behind the frontlines.
An unidentified object that entered Polish airspace from the direction of Belarus was probably an observation balloon, Poland’s defence ministry said on Saturday. A spokesperson for Poland’s territorial defence force said a search for the object was under way.
Police in the Russian city of St Petersburg have created an anti-drone unit after a suspected attack on the Kremlin last week. The unit was launched on Tuesday during the annual second world war Victory Day celebrations on St Petersburg’s Palace Square, the city’s interior ministry said.
The UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Grossi, plans to present an agreement with Russia and Ukraine on protecting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the UN security council this month, indicating a deal is close, four diplomats have said. Grossi has been trying for months to secure an agreement to reduce the risk of a catastrophic accident from shelling at the Russian-occupied nuclear power station, Europe’s biggest.
