Ukraine-Russia war latest updates: Putin arrives to red carpet in China after Moscow launches aerial attacks on Odesa – UK Times

Ukraine’s armed forces said on Sunday that despite Moscow’s claims of a successful summer offensive, Russian forces failed to gain full control of any major Ukrainian city and “grossly exaggerated” figures regarding captured territories.

The chief of Russia’s general staff, Valery Gerasimov, said on Saturday that since March, Russia has captured more than 3,500 square km (1,351 square miles) of territory in Ukraine and taken control of 149 villages.

“Despite Gerasimov’s claims, Russian forces have not gained full control over any major city,” the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a statement on social media. “The figures presented by the occupiers regarding captured territories and settlements are grossly exaggerated.”

Instead of bilaterals and trilaterals being organised “almost immediately”, as he boasted a few days ago, Trump has had enough of Vlad and Volod.

In the words of the White House: “President Trump and his national security team continue to engage with Russian and Ukrainian officials towards a bilateral meeting to stop the killing and end the war… It is not in the national interest to further negotiate these issues publicly.”

Russia has carried out several strikes on Ukraine’s military facilities this spring and summer, its top military official said yesterday as he shared details about the advances of his troops.

Russia has carried out 76 targeted strikes on Ukrainian military-industrial facilities this spring and summer, with a focus on destroying sites where long-range missile systems and drones are produced, General Valery Gerasimov told his deputies in an address published by the defence ministry.

Gerasimov said Moscow was now in control of 99.7 per cent of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, 79 per cent of the Donetsk region, 74 per cent of the Zaporizhzhia region, and 76 per cent of the Kherson region.

Since March, Russia has captured more than 3,500 square km of Ukrainian territory and taken control of 149 villages, he said.

Russian forces this month have begun pressing into Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, open-source maps show.

According to Gerasimov, seven Ukrainian villages in the region are now under Russian control.

Finland’s air force is phasing out the use of swastikas on some of its flags, a decision largely driven by the awkwardness it creates with its Western allies.

While the swastika is an ancient symbol, its modern association is overwhelmingly with Nazi tyranny and hate groups. However, the Finnish air force began using it many years before the birth of Nazi Germany, making its historical context more nuanced.

Changes have been underway for years; a swastika logo was quietly pulled from the Air Force Command’s unit emblem some time ago. Yet, their continued Nato allies, tourists, and other foreigners who spot them at military events.

Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, joined Nato in April 2023 over concerns related to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

A Russian drone attack overnight damaged a power facility near the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, leaving more than 29,000 customers without electricity this morning, the region’s governor said.

Hardest hit was the city of Chornomorsk, just outside Odesa, where the attack also damaged residential houses and administrative buildings, said Oleh Kiper, the governor of the broader Odesa region, on the Telegram messaging app.

“Critical infrastructure is operating on generators,” Kiper said.

One person has been injured as a result of the attack, he added.

There was no comment from Russia, which has been striking Ukraine’s critical infrastructure continuously throughout the 42 months of the war that Moscow launched with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Less than two weeks after Donald Trump promised an end to the bloodshed in Ukraine, Russia pounded Kyiv with the second-worst aerial assault of the war so far on Thursday, killing at least 23 people and injuring 48.

Residents of the Ukrainian capital, which lies hundreds of miles from the front line, have been forced to adapt to a constant cycle of devastating missile and drone strikes since the beginning of the war in February 2022. The sound of air raid sirens and the retreat to bomb shelters have become a daily reality.

Some senior White House officials are under the impression that European leaders are undoing behind-the-scenes progress while supporting US president Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine, Axios reported.

US officials, according to the report, are increasingly impatient with European leaders as they accuse them of pushing Kyiv to wait for a “better deal” with Moscow.

“The Europeans don’t get to prolong this war and backdoor unreasonable expectations, while also expecting America to bear the cost,” a senior White House official told Axios.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: “If Europe wants to escalate this war, that will be up to them. But they will be hopelessly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

The US president is now contemplating if he should step back from his bid to achieve a diplomatic truce until one or both sides show greater flexibility, the official said.

“We are going to sit back and watch. Let them fight it out for a while and see what happens.”

The prosecutor general’s office said a gunman had fired several shots at Andriy Parubiy, 54, killing him on the spot. The attacker fled and a manhunt was launched, it said.

Officials gave no immediate indication whether the murder had any direct link to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Unverified footage appeared to show the moment the attacker, dressed as a delivery driver and wearing a helmet, walked up behind the politician and shot him. Ukrainian media reported that the suspect then fled the scene on an electric bicycle.

Parubiy was a member of parliament, had been parliamentary speaker from April 2016 to August 2019, and was one of the leaders of protests in 2013-14 calling for closer ties with the European Union.

He was also secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council from February to August 2014, a period when fighting began in eastern Ukraine and Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula.

Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of conning world leaders to his side after a massive attack of 582 drones and missiles killed one and wounded dozens.

“There were two large-scale attacks by Russia this week—absolutely brazen actions, through which Russia is demonstrating that without pressure from the world, there will be no end to the war. And these are all clear signals to the United States, to Europe, and to the leaders who these days are in China and will be meeting with Putin,” Zelensky said in his nightly address yesterday.

“Putin is only duping leaders and drawing them into his camp. And he is staving off the threat of sanctions. Nothing else interests him. It is important that together we press Russia into ending this war,” the Ukrainian leader said.

Russia launched a large aerial attack on southern Ukraine yesterday, two days after a rare airstrike on central Kyiv killed 23 and damaged European Union diplomatic offices.

Among other locations hit, the assault overnight into Saturday struck a five-story residential building, killing at least one civilian and wounding 28 people, including children, in the Zaporizhzhia region, governor Ivan Fedorov reported.