The Biden administration is expected to announce a new Ukraine weapons aid package on Friday that will include cluster munitions, two US officials have told Reuters. Speaking to the news agency on condition of anonymity, the officials said a weapons aid package that included cluster munitions fired by a 155mm Howitzer cannon would be announced.
Human Rights Watch has called on Russia and Ukraine to stop using cluster munitions and urged the US not to supply them. Cluster munitions, which were first used in the second world war and are banned by more than 120 countries, normally release large numbers of smaller bomblets that can kill indiscriminately over a wide area, threatening civilians.
Romania is considering opening a regional training hub for F-16 fighter jet pilots that would ultimately be available to its Nato allies and partners, including Ukraine. “Romanian pilots operating F-16 planes will be trained here, and the facility will later be open to pilots from allied states and Nato partners, including Ukraine,” the country’s supreme defence council said.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy will visit the Czech Republic on Friday to talk about defence support and the Vilnius Nato summit, before heading to Turkey later for talks with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the Black Sea grain deal and developments in the war.
Ukraine and Bulgaria have agreed on more active cooperation in the defence sector. “We discussed the military aid which Bulgaria gives to our country. We count on the continuation of the cooperation which has already saved many lives,” Zelenskiy told a press conference in Sofia, where he met Bulgarian leaders including the prime minister, Nikolai Denkov.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Bulgaria was nearing an agreement to sell two Russian-made nuclear reactors and other critical equipment to Ukraine’s state-owned atomic energy company.
Ukrainian shelling killed one man on Thursday in the village of Novopetrovka, in Russia’s Belgorod region, close to the border with Ukraine, the regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on his Telegram channel. Serhiy Lysak, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, reported that overnight the Nikopol region was struck three times by Russian forces.
The UK government has named Martin Harris as its new ambassador to Ukraine. Harris, who has worked for the British government in Kyiv and Moscow, had most recently been the Foreign Office’s director for eastern Europe and central Asia.
Five people were killed in a Russian missile attack that hit an apartment building in Lviv overnight. At least 36 others were hurt and seven people had to be pulled from the rubble by emergency services. The roof and top floor of the building were destroyed in what Lviv’s mayor called the biggest attack of the war on civilian infrastructure. Lviv is far from frontlines and home to thousands displaced by war.
Zelenskiy wrote alongside a Telegram video post showing the damaged building in Lviv: “There will definitely be a response to the enemy. A tangible one.” The US ambassador to Ukraine called the strike “vicious”, and Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, described it as “another night terror from Russia”.
Ukraine’s military spy chief said the threat of a Russian attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was receding, but that it could easily return as long as the facility remained under occupation by Moscow’s forces. Kyrylo Budanov made the comment in an interview with Reuters. “The threat is decreasing,” Budanov said, declining to give details of what had been done to reduce the threat. He made clear he believed the threat had only been postponed until later.
The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, who last month brokered a deal to end Wagner’s armed mutiny, said the mercenary group’s head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had returned to Russia. “As for Prigozhin, he’s in St Petersburg. He is not on the territory of Belarus,” Lukashenko said. “Where is Prigozhin this morning? Maybe he left for Moscow.” Lukashenko also said Wagner troops were stationed at their camps in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine and his offer to host them in Belarus remained. Under a deal brokered by Lukashenko, Prigozhin abandoned what he called a “march for justice” by thousands of his men on Moscow in exchange for safe passage to exile in Belarus.
Sweden is within reach of joining Nato, the organisation’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Thursday after a meeting in Brussels. He said it was possible that a positive decision would follow at the alliance’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next week. Stoltenberg suggested that a court verdict on Thursday that found a man guilty of attempting to finance the outlawed Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) could help end Turkey’s veto of Sweden’s application to join. He said it was beneficial in the fight against terrorism.
Tass reported Thursday that the death toll from the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Russian-occupied Kherson region had increased to 53 with the discovery of three more bodies.
Ukraine has directed more than 70 drone attacks at occupied Crimea this year and also attacked southern Russia’s Krasnodar and Rostov regions, the secretary of Russia’s security council, Nikolai Patrushev, has claimed.
