Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy to meet Biden in push for aid

Gyunduz Mamedov, a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, said 597 shells were fired in the Kherson region over the last 24 hours, damaging a dormitory and administrative buildings. One person was killed and six others injured, he said.

Writing on X, Mamedov added that the Ukrainian air force destroyed nine out of 15 kamikaze drones that were “attacking from the south”.

These claims are yet to be independently verified.

Europeans are generally open to the idea of Ukraine joining the EU, despite the costs and risks, but lukewarm at best about the bloc’s prospective enlargement to also take in Georgia and countries in the western Balkans, according to a survey.

The European Commission recommended last month that formal accession talks begin with Ukraine and Moldova. The EU’s 27 heads of government are due to discuss the proposal at a Brussels summit this week – although Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said repeatedly he opposes opening negotiations with Kyiv.

The polling, of six EU member states for the European Council on Foreign Relations, found considerable support for the candidacies of Ukraine and, to a lesser extent, Moldova and Montenegro, but also deep economic and security concerns.

You can read the full story by the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, Jon Henley, here:

The whereabouts of Alexei Navalny, the jailed Russian opposition leader, inside the prison system remains unknown and he again did not show up at a court hearing by video link, Kira Yarmysh, his spokesperson, said on Tuesday.

Yarmysh wrote on X:

Today Alexey was again not taken to court via video, but now no one is talking nonsense about the “electrical accident”.

An employee of IK-6 stated that Alexey “left their colony,” but allegedly did not know where he was transferred.

Navalny’s allies said on Monday that he had been removed from the penal colony where he had been imprisoned since the middle of last year and that his whereabouts were unknown, Reuters reports.

They had been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” colony, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system.

Navalny, the anti-corruption activist who became a leading opponent of Vladimir Putin, has been convicted of extremism and other charges and is set to remain in prison for three decades.

He has called the charges against him politically motivated and said he believes he will not be released while Putin is alive.

Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is in Washington today, where later he will meet Joe Biden as well as US senators and the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, at a time when Congress is holding up future American financial support for Kyiv’s war effort.

Here are the latest developments:

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has flown to Washington DC, in an attempt to rescue a critical $61bn military aid package, while separately the UK hinted that it may increase the value of the arms, ammunition and training that it donates to Kyiv.

• Zelenskiy is due to meet the US president, Joe Biden, on Tuesday, as well as US senators and the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, at a time when Congress is holding up future US financial support for Kyiv’s war effort.

• Shortly after arriving in the US capital, Zelenskiy said Ukraine was counting on the US, and that delays to future rounds of military aid were “dreams come true” for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. “Putin must lose,” Zelenskiy said in a speech at the National Defense University. “You can count on Ukraine, and we hope just as much to be able to count on you.”

• Defence secretary Lloyd Austin, who introduced the Ukrainian president, said America’s commitment to Ukraine was unshakeable and supporting the war was critical to ensuring the security of the US and its allies.

• Russia’s air defence systems destroyed a Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile over the Belgorod region that was launched from Ukraine, the Russian defence ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry, in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, said the attack took place at about 5am (0200 GMT). It did not say whether there was any damage as a result.

• The International Monetary Fund’s executive board (IMF) on Monday approved a $900m disbursement for Ukraine from its $15.6bn loan programme, hours before the IMF chief, Kristalina Georgieva, met Zelenskiy.

• Alexei Navalny, the jailed Russian opposition leader, has not been heard from for nearly a week and his lawyers have been unable to contact him, his supporters have said. On Monday, Navalny’s supporters said he again failed to appear by videoconference for a court hearing, with prison officials blaming a power outage. Later that day, Navalny’s lawyers were told he was no longer listed as a prisoner at IK-6, the penal colony where he has been incarcerated in the Vladimir region near Moscow.

• A decision to start talks on Ukraine’s EU accession is on a knife-edge after Hungary said it would not bow to mounting pressure to give the green light. Viktor Orbán’s threat to veto the launch of negotiations is being taken seriously, with Ukraine’s foreign minister warning of “devastating consequences” for his country if the talks are blocked.

• Russia will hold its presidential election in four annexed regions of Ukraine, Interfax news agency quoted the country’s central election commission as saying.

• Russian forces have unleashed a major offensive on Avdiivka, with 610 artillery shellings reported near the eastern Ukrainian town over the past day, according to the Ukrainian military.

• Britain has said it delivered two mine-hunting ships to Ukraine. The mine hunters, originally HMS Grimsby and HMS Shoreham, were renamed Chernihiv and Cherkasy in Glasgow in June, and will help Ukraine to maintain a critical route for merchant shipping travelling across the Black Sea.