Joe Biden has apologised publicly to Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the months of delay in US military assistance that allowed Russia to make gains on the battlefield, and announced a further $225m (£177m) in military aid to Kyiv. Meeting the Ukrainian president in Paris, Biden told him: “You haven’t bowed down, you haven’t yielded at all, you continue to fight in a way that is … just remarkable. We are not going to walk away from you.” The US president also said the American people were standing by Ukraine for the long haul. “We’re still in – completely, thoroughly.”
Ukrainian strikes on parts of the Russian-held Luhansk and Kherson regions killed 26 people and injured dozens more on Friday, Russian-installed authorities said. A shop in the village of Sadove in the southern Kherson region “with a large number of visitors and employees was destroyed”, Vladimir Saldo, head of Russian occupation authorities in Kherson, wrote on Telegram. A Himars missile struck shortly afterwards as residents from neighbouring houses rushed to help the victims, Saldo told Russian media, putting the overall toll at 22 dead and 15 injured. The claims could not be independently verified.
A Ukrainian missile strike on an apartment block in the eastern region’s main city of the same name killed four and wounded more than 40, Russian-appointed officials in Luhansk reported earlier on Friday. Luhansk city came under a “massive” missile attack on Friday morning, according to regional head Leonid Pasechnik. A section of an apartment block collapsed and the bodies of four people were removed from the rubble, the Moscow-backed region’s government said on Telegram. A total of 46 people had received medical treatment, regional health minister Nataliya Pashchenko said.
Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron have marked the 80th anniversary of D-day with a rallying cry for support for Ukraine as Volodymyr Zelenskiy was embraced by western leaders in Normandy, France. The US president used his address at the American commemorative event to send a message to Moscow that the US and its allies “will not bow down” and will “stand for freedom”. “To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators, is simply unthinkable,” Biden said. “If we were to do that, it means we’d be forgetting what happened here on these hallowed beaches.” Macron praised Ukraine’s president during his tribute to those who fought, prompting a standing ovation, including by the other 25 heads of state and government.
Macron lashed out at what he called a “camp of pacifists” and the “spirit of defeat” over Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion, vowing Ukrainian resistance would not end with capitulation. “We know this camp of pacifists. It is the one of capitulators. It’s the spirit of defeat. We are not like this,” the French president told reporters on Friday in Paris alongside Zelensky, in an apparent jab at critics including France’s far-right opposition. Macron also said he wanted to “finalise” the creation of a coalition of military instructors for Ukraine in the coming days.
Ukraine’s government has ordered all ministries and regional authorities to stop using air conditioning and switch off external lighting as Russian bombardments forced long blackouts across the country. Reducing power consumption and saving as much electricity as possible was vital following Russian strikes on the Ukrainian power system, which now had a “significant deficit”, said the Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal. Ukraine temperatures are hovering around 25C (77F) and could rise up to 35C (95F) in July and August.
Vladimir Putin said Russia had no need to use nuclear weapons to secure victory in Ukraine – the Kremlin’s strongest signal to date that the conflict will not escalate into a nuclear war. Asked at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum if Moscow should hold a “nuclear pistol to the temple” of the west over Ukraine, the Russian president said on Friday that he did not see the conditions for using such weapons. “The use is possible in an exceptional case – in the event of a threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. I don’t think that such a case has come. There is no such need.”
Zelenskiy said his legitimacy was recognised and determined by the Ukrainian people, while criticising that of Putin. “President Zelenskiy’s legitimacy is recognised by the people of Ukraine … Our people are free. Putin’s legitimacy is recognised only by comrade Putin,” Zelenskiy said in Paris. Putin has claimed several times that Zelenskiy is illegitimate after his five-year term ended this May. Presidential elections in Ukraine were supposed to take place in the spring but martial law introduced after Russia’s 2022 invasion bans any wartime election.
A court in Moscow has ordered a French citizen accused of collecting information on military issues in Russia be held in jail pending investigation and trial. Laurent Vinatier was arrested in the Russian capital on Thursday as tensions have flared between Moscow and Paris after Macron’s statements about the possibility of deploying French troops in Ukraine.
