Closing summary
Finland has made its first deployment for Nato since joining the alliance in April 2023, sending seven F-18 fighter jets to a military base in southeastern Romania where they will conduct air shielding missions with Romanian and British jets. A Finnish air force commander said the mission would help speed up Finland’s integration into Nato.
Ukraine will receive €1.5bn (£1.3bn) in Russian frozen assets revenue in July and €1.9bn (£1.6bn) under the Ukraine Facility already this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on the first day of the two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin, which is aiming to mobilise international support for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction. She also told the conference that accession talks with Ukraine to join the EU will start at the end of this month, with Ukraine having fulfilled all the necessary reform requirements to enable it to become a member of the bloc. Pleading for more air defence support, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, revealed that Russian aerial attacks had already destroyed half of the country’s electricity production since winter.
In a feisty speech to the Bundestag later in the day, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked Germans for their support since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Zelenskiy expressed gratitude to Germany “from the bottom of my heart” for the Patriot systems it had delivered to Kyiv, which he said had “helped save thousands of lives”. He also thanked Germany for giving refuge to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
Russia said it had captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine, in the latest in a string of gains for Moscow on the battlefield. Moscow’s defence ministry said Russian forces took Timkovka in the north-eastern Kharkiv region and Miasozharivka in the eastern Luhansk region.
Russia said its troops had started the second stage of drills to practise the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons alongside Belarusian troops after what Moscow said were threats from western powers. The ministry said the drills were aimed at ensuring that the two countries’ military personnel and equipment were ready to protect their sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Several Russian warships will arrive in Cuba on Wednesday, the RIA news agency cited Russian navy commander Alexander Moiseyev as saying.
Thank you for following today’s latest news. This blog is closing now but you can read all our Ukraine coverage here.
We reported earlier (based on an exclusive from the Washington Post) that a review had found no evidence of human rights violations by Ukraine’s Azov Brigade, paving the way for it to use American training and weapons.
The Azov regiment, which has far-right and ultra-nationalist roots, is part of Ukraine’s National Guard and evolved out of a battalion that was formed in 2014 and fought against Russian-backed separatists who carved out breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.
The unit said in a statement that western weapons would improve the combat capabilities of their fighters and save lives. It voiced gratitude for efforts taken to lift the ban despite what it described as Russian propaganda about the group.
“Russian disinformation has actively worked to discredit Special Forces Azov Brigade” trying to conflate it with a 2014 militia that disbanded in 2015, the state department said. “The composition of Special Forces Brigade Azov is significantly different.”
