The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, on an unannounced visit to Kyiv, said Ukrainian forces were “gradually gaining ground” in their counteroffensive against Russian forces. Speaking at a joint press conference with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Stoltenberg said “every metre that Ukrainian forces regain is a metre that Russia loses”. He added “And there is a stark contrast: Ukrainians are fighting for their families, their future, their freedom. Moscow is fighting for imperial delusions.”
As part of the visit, Stoltenberg said Nato has framework contracts in place for €2.4bn (£2bn) of key ammunition for Ukraine, including €1bn (£864m) in firm orders.
Russia is set to hike defence spending by almost 70% in 2024, a finance ministry document published on Thursday showed. Since invading Ukraine last year, Russia has ramped up arms manufacturing and pumped funds into its military machine, despite contending with persistently high inflation and a weaker rouble.
On Thursday, Ukraine’s air force claimed that its air defence systems shot down 34 of 44 Shahed drones that Russia launched overnight, while a regional official said no casualties were caused by the attack. “Fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft missile units and mobile fire groups were engaged to repel the attack,” the military said on the Telegram messaging app.
Odesa regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said his region was the main target, but the attack left no casualties. “Our air defence forces did an excellent job,” Kiper said on Telegram.
There were also strikes on Kirovohrad oblast and an infrastructure object was hit in Mykolaiv. One man was killed and another was injured in Kherson overnight. Three people have been hospitalised after a strike on Antonivka, near the Dnipro River.
British defence secretary Grant Shapps discussed how to bolster Ukraine’s air defences during talks in an unannounced visit to Kyiv to meet Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president’s office said on Thursday. The visit was Shapps’ first trip to Kyiv since he became defence secretary last month. “On behalf of the whole nation, I thank you for everything you are doing for us. We are grateful for your help – military, financial, humanitarian. We greatly appreciate that we can rely on you,” a statement released by Zelenskiy’s office quoted the president as saying.
Shapps said, “We have trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, delivered hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, and provided millions of pounds of economic and humanitarian aid to help Ukraine’s citizens reclaim and rebuild what has been taken from them by Putin’s barbaric invasion”, while accompanying him, Adm Tony Radakin, chief of the UK’s defence staff, said “This visit, together with my visits over the summer, have reinforced my conviction that Ukraine will prevail. The UK will remain with them every step of the way.”
