Here is the situation on Sunday, May 26, 2024:
Fighting
- The death toll in a Russian attack on a hardware superstore in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has risen to 11, says the regional governor, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemning the attack as “vile”.
- Kharkiv region’s Governor Oleg Synegubov reported on Telegram that as many as 40 people were wounded and 16 missing after two guided Russian bombs hit the store.
- Another strike hit the centre of Kharkiv, wounding 14 in an area with a post office, a hairdresser and a cafe, city’s Mayor Igor Terekhov said.
- Ukraine’s air force on Sunday said it destroyed 12 missiles and all 31 drones launched by Russia during its latest overnight air attack. It said the missiles and drones had been shot down over parts of southern, central, western and northern Ukraine. Two hypersonic Kinzhal missiles remained unaccounted for.
- In the eastern Donetsk region, shelling killed a 40-year-old woman and wounded four other people, according to the regional governor, Vadym Filashkin.
- Ukraine said Russia also shelled the village of Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, a railway hub in the region of Kharkiv, wounding five, the regional prosecutor’s office said. Two vehicles came under fire: a car with two passengers and an ambulance with a driver, a paramedic and a 64-year-old patient.
- Prosecutors reported that a factory and residential buildings were damaged in separate Russian air attacks on the Kupiansk district.
- Moscow accused Ukraine of shelling a small town in the Belgorod region, killing two people and wounding 10.
Politics and diplomacy
- Russian President Vladimir Putin will be on an official visit to Uzbekistan, where he will meet President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and other top officials.
- The war in Ukraine will be on the agenda as French President Emmanuel Macron travels to Germany on Sunday for a three-day state visit, followed by a bilateral cabinet meeting between the European Union’s two biggest powers.
- France, which has nuclear weapons, has pushed for a more self-reliant Europe on defence matters and has been aggrieved by Germany’s decision to buy mostly US gear for its European Sky Shield Initiative air defence umbrella.
- Germany says there is no credible alternative to the US military umbrella and that Europe does not have time to wait for a home-grown defence industry to be prepared for threats such as Russian hostility.
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Lithuania holds presidential elections on Sunday, with incumbent Gitanas Nauseda anticipated to win after a campaign dominated by security concerns in the post-Soviet state. The Baltic nation of 2.8 million people has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion. Like other countries in the region, the NATO and EU member worries it could be Moscow’s next target.
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Ukraine’s Zelenskyy is set to travel to Portugal on Tuesday, after his planned visit to Spain, according to news reports, as Kyiv seeks to reinforce support from Europe amid a more aggressive military push by Russia.
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The Group of Seven will explore ways to use the future income from frozen Russian assets to boost funding for war-torn Ukraine, finance chiefs from the G7 industrial democracies said, but offered no details of how to do so. The G7 and its allies froze between $300bn and $350bn of Russian financial assets, such as major currencies and government bonds shortly after Moscow invaded Ukraine.
- President Joe Biden reiterated his position that he does not intend to send troops to Ukraine, praising the US leadership in an address to the graduating class of the prestigious West Point Military Academy.
