US congressional delaying of fresh military aid for Ukraine is already having an impact on the battlefield, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has warned at a defence ministers’ meeting. Jens Stoltenberg said he still believed Congress would eventually approve the stalled $60bn (£50bn) package.
Ukraine has said its economy should be rebuilt using frozen Russian assets after a report showed the cost of reconstruction increasing to almost $500bn. An estimated $300bn of Russian assets have been frozen since the war started. The EU, US and western allies are debating how they can be used to benefit Ukraine.
Ukraine is conducting a manoeuvre in Avdiivka to withdraw troops in some areas to “more advantageous positions”, a military spokesman said. At the same time, Ukraine has brought in reinforcements to the strategically important town, surrounded on three sides by Russian forces in what Ukraine’s military has called an “extremely critical” situation.
On Thursday, Ukraine said four people were killed in Kherson and Kharkiv following Russian air and missile attacks; while officials in the Russian border city of Belgorod said a Ukrainian rocket strike killed at least seven people.
France and Ukraine are due on Friday to sign a bilateral agreement on security. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is set to visit France and Germany.
Grant Shapps, the British defence secretary, said the UK would co-lead a major drone capability coalition with Latvia for Ukraine.
Ukrainian military intelligence has ramped up claims that Russian troops in Ukraine are using Starlink satellite internet terminals. Lt Gen Kyrylo Budanov said in the Wall Street Journal that the Russians had thousands of them and had been using them “for quite a long time” after buying them through other countries. Starlink has said it does not do any business in or with Russia, but it has failed to rule out or disprove that the Russians are somehow obtaining its terminals and using them on Ukrainian territory.
An FBI informant has been charged with lying about ties between Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company. Prosecutors allege Alexander Smirnov falsely told FBI agents that executives associated with Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016. The development sharply undermines congressional Republicans’ corruption accusations that the US president was making money from his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine.
