Closing summary
Ukraine and Belgium on Tuesday struck a bilateral security agreement including the delivery of 30 F-16 fighter jets, signed during a Brussels meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo. “The document includes at least 977 million euros in Belgian military aid to Ukraine this year, as well as Belgium’s commitment to providing support over the course of the agreement’s ten-year term,” Zelenskiy said in a social media post.
Ukraine will receive its first supplies of F-16 fighter jets “very soon”, but around half of its desperately needed foreign military aid is arriving late, Kyiv’s defence minister has said. Rustem Umerov, 42, told Reuters in an interview in Kyiv late on Monday that Russia was deploying more manpower and equipment to the front, more than 27 months after its full-scale invasion.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that if US president Joe Biden missed a peace summit organised by Kyiv in Switzerland next month, Vladimir Putin would “applaud” his absence. At a press conference in Brussels Zelenskiy said he wanted the US president to be “personally present” at the peace summit in Switzerland on 15-16 June.
The Dutch have launched an initiative to expedite the assembly and delivery of patriot missiles to Ukraine, the defence minister Kajsa Ollongren has announced. Ukraine has been asking for air to defence rockets for months but member states up have been hesitant to release batteries from their own defence arsenals despite recent change of advice from Nato that their security is best served by having their machinery on the frontline.
Speaking in Uzbekistan, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has said that Ukraine should hold a presidential election now that Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s official term in office expired, and that the offensive in Kharkiv was provoked by the use of western weapons Reuters reports Putin said the only legitimate authority in Ukraine now was parliament, and that its head should be given power.
French mercenaries have been in Ukraine for a long time, and the appearance of the regular military there is another step towards global conflict, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Tuesday. France has repeatedly denied Russian allegations that there are French mercenaries in Ukraine. Paris says it has not ruled out sending military trainers to Ukraine in future but has made no decision to do so.
Poland should not rule out sending troops to Ukraine, its foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has said as Kyiv struggles to repel Russian advances. But, in comments reported by Reuters, Sikorski did not specify what role such troops would play. While Ukraine’s Nato allies have vowed to supply the war-torn nation with money and weapons for as long as it takes to repel a Russian invasion, they have generally ruled out the possibility of sending soldiers to the country.
Sweden is pausing plans to send Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine in order to allow for the introduction of F-16 fighter jets, the Swedish defence minister told news agency TT in Brussels. “We have been urged by the other countries in the coalition to wait with the Gripen system,” Pal Jonson told TT. “This has to do with the fact that the focus is now on introducing the F-16 system,” he added.
Estonian defence minister Hanno Pevkur has described Ukraine’s need for ammunition as “very, very acute” as concerns have been raised that Russia is trying to frustrate arms deals with EU member states contributing to the frontline. He told reporters that Russia’s army had grown from an estimated 270,000 fighters to “close to half a million” while EU member states were still reluctant to increase their defence spending.
The IAEA was able to reach an understanding with Russia on the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Russia’s state-run news agency TASS reported on Tuesday, citing IAEA chief Rafael Grossi. The IAEA chief is meeting with a delegation from the Russian state corporation Rosatom in the western Russian city of Kaliningrad. Russian forces have occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, since the first weeks after they entered Ukraine in 2022.
Russia should stand its ground and continue what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine in response to the West’s military fervour, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, as quoted by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. At the same time, Peskov said that the West had no unanimity of opinion regarding the Ukrainian army’s strikes with Western weapons on Russian territory.
Switzerland’s upper house of parliament has backed a motion to toughen measures to expel spies, taking particular aim at Russian intelligence agents as Bern prepares to host a major summit aimed at paving the way for peace in Ukraine. Voting 32 in favour and nine against late on Monday, upper house legislators supported the motion entitled “systematically expel Russian spies and other foreign spies” that was backed by president Viola Amherd in an address to parliament.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Ukraine live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
French mercenaries have been in Ukraine for a long time, and the appearance of the regular military there is another step towards global conflict, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Tuesday.
France has repeatedly denied Russian allegations that there are French mercenaries in Ukraine. Paris says it has not ruled out sending military trainers to Ukraine in future but has made no decision to do so.
