Ukraine war briefing: respite for conscripts as Zelenskiy signs discharge decree
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, has issued a decree providing for conscripts serving in the two-year-old war against Russia to be discharged into the reserves within the next two months. The decree will allow some respite for service members who have been engaged in the military since even before Russian troops poured over the border in February 2022. In addition, those discharged will be exempt from further call-ups for 12 months.
Ukraine’s former commander in chief, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, is to be its next ambassador to the UK, a month after he was fired by the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, from his job leading the military.
Oleh Synehubov, governor of Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region, said a rocket attack killed two civilians in Kupiansk, an area recaptured by Ukrainian forces in late 2022 but where Russian forces are now active. Synehubov said a strike on the town of Chuhuiv, outside the regional centre of Kharkiv, injured two people. An apartment building and a shop were damaged.
In Chernihiv region, north of Kyiv, mortar fire killed one person, said regional governor Viacheslav Chaus.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy is due to visit Turkey on Friday and meet Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The presidents of Ukraine and Turkey are expected to discuss the war, the Black Sea grain deal and bilateral relations.
Ihor Zhovkva, a top Ukrainian diplomatic adviser, told CNN that it could not be ruled out that a Russian missile strike directly targeted Zelenskiy and the visiting Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as they visited Odesa. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, has denied it was deliberate.
Britain is providing 10,000 drones to arm Ukraine in its fight against Russia, the UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, has announced during a visit with Zelenskiy in Kyiv. The weaponry will include 1,000 kamikaze drones and models that target ships.
Norway will provide €140m to buy artillery shells for Ukraine, under the Czech-led ammunition initiative, the Ukrainian defence ministry has said.
The Czech Republic is suspending intergovernmental consultations with neighbour and former federal partner Slovakia after its foreign minister, Juraj Blanár, met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. It comes amid concerns Slovakia is shifting away from western policy on supporting Ukraine.
EU lawmakers have approved giving Ukrainian food producers access for a further year, rejecting a series of amendments that could have added restrictions. The European Commission has proposed import duties and quotas on Ukrainian farm produce be lifted for another year to June 2025.
The recently elected Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has issued a stark warning that Europe stands in a new prewar era just as it did before the second world war. “We are living in new times, in a prewar epoch. In fact, for some of our brothers, it is no longer even a prewar time. It is a full-scale war in its most cruel form,” he told fellow prime ministers and hundreds of MEPs attending a congress in Bucharest, Romania.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said a Belarusian man who had been planning “an act of terrorism” inside Russia on behalf of Ukraine was killed in the Russian region of Karelia. RIA cited the FSB as saying that the man had intended to blow up an administrative building in the city of Olonets, about 250km from the Finnish border.
The EU’s largest political party on Thursday endorsed Ursula von der Leyen’s bid for a second five-year term at the helm of the bloc’s powerful Commission. As the two-day European People’s party (EPP) meeting came to a close on Thursday, von der Leyen warned of the expected rise of populists in the bloc’s upcoming elections and Russia’s attempt “to wipe Ukraine off the face of (the) earth”.
Democrats in the US House of Representatives are investigating SpaceX over whether Russian forces have accessed the Starlink satellite internet service, according to a letter sent to the company.
India’s embassy in Moscow confirmed the death of a citizen recruited by the Russian army, days after a relative told Agence France-Presse (AFP) he had been sent to fight in Ukraine. The embassy did not state the circumstances behind Mohammed Afsan’s death but said it was in touch with his family and Russian authorities.