This is what European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said ahead of an EU-Ukraine summit next week Ukraine had unconditional support from the bloc and had to overcome Russian attacks to defend European values. “We are on the side of Ukraine without ifs and buts. Ukraine fights for our shared values, it fights for the respect of international law and for the principles of democracy and that is why Ukraine must win this war.”
A Russian attack killed three people on Saturday in a residential area of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka, the regional governor said. Fourteen other people were injured in the attack, which also damaged four apartment buildings and a hotel. According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Russia carried out attacks on Konstantynivka with multiple rocket launchers.
Russia accused the Ukrainian army of deliberately attacking a hospital in a Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine on Saturday. It said a strike killed 14 people and injured 24 patients and medical staff. The attack hit a hospital in the Russian-occupied settlement of Novoaidar and was carried out using a US-supplied Himars missile launcher system, the Russian defense ministry said. The claims could not be independently verified, AP reported.
Kiev and its Western allies hold “accelerated” talks on the possibility of equipping Ukraine with long-range missiles and military aircraft, says a top aide to the president of Ukraine, AP reports. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Ukraine’s supporters in the west “understand how the war is developing” and the need to provide aircraft that can cover the armored fighting vehicles that the United States and Germany have pledged.
Ukraine said on Friday it would take its pilots about half a year to train for combat in Western fighter jets such as US F-16s, while Kiev ramps up its campaign to secure fourth-generation fighters. Ukraine received a huge boost this week when Germany and the United States announced plans to supply heavy tanks to Kiev, which now hopes the west will also supply long-range missiles and fighter jets.
North Korea on Saturday denounced US commitments over main battle tanks, claiming that Washington “further crossed the red line” to win hegemony through proxy war, Reuters quoted state media KCNA as saying. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, made the remarks in a statement, saying North Korea “will be in the same trench” as Russia against the United States.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov will meet with Lynne Tracy, the new US ambassador in Moscow early next week, the RIA news agency reported.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy redoubled efforts on Saturday to prevent Russian athletes from participating in the 2024 Olympics, saying they would try to justify war against Ukraine if they were allowed to join. Zelenskiy said on Friday that Ukraine would launch an international campaign to keep Russia out of the summer games, which will be held in Paris. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said Friday that any attempt to squeeze Moscow out of international sport over what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine was “doomed to fail”.