Here is the situation on Thursday, May 30, 2024.
Fighting
- Russia’s defence ministry said it neutralised 13 Ukrainian aerial drones in the southern Krasnodar region and close to the annexed Crimean peninsula.
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Ukraine’s air force said its defence systems destroyed seven Russia-launched missiles and 32 drones overnight. The commander said Russian forces attacked “military facilities and critical infrastructure in Ukraine” but did not provide additional details.
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The mayor of eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, said that critical infrastructure in the city was shelled last night and four people were injured.
- Ukraine reported that nine people were killed in Russian attacks in five regions of the country, including two in Nikopol in southern Ukraine. One of the dead was an ambulance driver whose vehicle was hit by a Russian drone. The man’s wife, who was travelling with him, was injured. Nikopol is located just across the river from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
- Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said search and recovery efforts at a Kharkiv hardware superstore hit by Russian bombs last weekend had ended. The death toll rose to 19 after a man who was severely burned in the attack died in hospital.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that weapons provided by the United States were helping Ukraine stabilise the front line amid intensifying Russian attacks and that Washington would “adapt and adjust” its approach to military support in line with battlefield developments.
Politics and diplomacy
- US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell accused China of supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine. Campbell said Chinese assistance was helping Moscow reconstitute elements of its military, including long-range missile, artillery and drone capabilities, and its ability to track battlefield movements. European and NATO countries needed “to send a collective message of concern to China about its actions, which we view are destabilising in the heart of Europe”, he said. Beijing says it is neutral in the war but has deepened its relationship with Russia since the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
- Wally Adeyemo, deputy secretary of the US Treasury, met Ukrainian officials in Kyiv to discuss US financial support, enforcing sanctions on Russia and using frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s benefit in its war against Moscow.
- Dmitry Suslov, a senior researcher at the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, a Russian think tank that is close to the Kremlin, said Moscow should consider a “demonstrative” nuclear explosion to cow the West into refusing to allow Ukraine to use its arms against targets inside Russia.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed steadfast US support to Moldova in areas from energy independence to democracy promotion on a solidarity visit to the pro-Western nation as alarm grows over what he described as Russian “bullying”.
- Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko joined Moscow in suspending the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) that limits the number of tanks, combat aircraft and other military equipment that can be deployed in Europe. Belarus borders Ukraine and Russia and hosted Russian soldiers before Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
- Polish security services arrested a man suspected of trying to obtain photos of military vehicles crossing the border into Ukraine, as well as three men, two of them Belarusian citizens, accused of committing arson on the orders of Russian intelligence.
- Prominent Russian nationalist and former militia commander Igor Girkin lost his appeal against a four-year jail term over his criticism of the conduct of the war in Ukraine, the RIA Novosti state news agency reported.
Weapons
- Sweden said it would donate 13 billion kronor ($1.23bn) in military assistance to Ukraine. Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch said the package would include Surveillance planes and “equipment that is at the top of Ukraine’s priority list” such as air defence and artillery ammunition.
