Eleven Russian missiles aimed at Kyiv shot down in rare daytime attack; Russia puts US senator Lindsey Graham on wanted list
Eleven Russian missiles aimed at Kyiv were shot down by the Ukrainian air defence on Monday morning. One person was hospitalised as a result of the attacks. The local authority reported that the roof of a two-story building caught fire in the district as a result of falling debris, but that the fire was contained.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that using US-provided Patriot anti-missile systems ensured a 100% interception rate and would play a role in pushing forward against Russia’s invasion. “When Patriots in the hands of Ukrainians ensure a 100% interception rate of any Russian missile, terror will be defeated,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
Any peace settlement acceptable to Ukraine would include a demilitarised zone extending between 100km and 120km into Russia, the adviser to the head of the office of Ukraine’s president, Mykhailo Podolyak, has suggested. The key topic of the postwar settlement should be the establishment of safeguards to prevent a recurrence of aggression in the future, he said.
US president Joe Biden said that in a call on Monday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan repeated Ankara’s desire to buy F-16 fighter jets from the United States, while Biden responded that Washington was keen to see Ankara drop its objection to Sweden’s joining Nato. The exchange took place when Biden called Erdogan to congratulate him on his victory in Turkey’s presidential election on Sunday.
Two people were killed and eight were wounded in a Russian attack on the city of Toretsk on Monday morning, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, said. Kyrylenko said Russian forces had used high-explosive aerial bombs in the attack at about 11:30 am local time which damaged a gas station and a multi-storey building in the city.
Russia’s interior ministry has put US senator Lindsey Graham on a wanted list after the Investigative Committee said it was opening a criminal probe into his comments on a Ukrainian state video. In an edited video released by the Ukrainian president’s office of Graham’s meeting with Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Friday, Graham was shown saying “the Russians are dying” and then saying US support was the “best money we’ve ever spent”. Russia said Graham should say publicly if he believes his words were taken out of context in the video edit.
Polish president, Andrzej Duda, said that he would sign a bill to allow a panel to investigate whether the opposition party Civic Platform (PO) allowed the country to be unduly influenced by Russia and as a result become too dependent on its fuel when it was in power. The PO party rejects the claims and says the law is designed to destroy support for the party in the lead up to the elections being held at the end of the year.
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said that her government planned to increase spending on military aid to Ukraine by $2.6bn over this year and next year. Earlier this year, Denmark set up a $1b fund for military, civilian and business aid to Ukraine. Danmarks Radio, the Danish public-service broadcaster, reported that the new funds were earmarked for military aid.
Ukraine’s parliament has passed a bill that sanctions Iran for 50 years. The bill was put forward by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The bill will stop Iranian goods transiting through Ukraine and ban use of its airspace, as well as imposing trade, financial and technology sanctions against Iran and its citizens.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin “appears to have again indirectly undermined Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authority and regime”, the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its latest analysis of the conflict. The US-based thinktank based its assertion on the response given by Prigozhin to a journalist asking about Russian state media’s ban on any discussion of Wagner.
Foreign investors who left Russia after selling their businesses there between March 2022 and March 2023 withdrew about $36bn from the country, the state RIA news agency reports, citing analysis of data from the Central Bank.
The death toll from a Russian missile attack on a medical facility in Dnipro on Friday rose from two to four people, according to the region’s governor.
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