Exclusives
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Recovery conference for Ukraine opens in Poland as Warsaw-Kyiv ties hit bottom. Both presidents stayed away from Gdańsk—and the corridors talked less about rebuilding Ukraine than about whether Kyiv and Warsaw can rebuild their own partnership. |
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Russia ground forward 2.9 km a day this year. Its big prize is one ruined city. Russia’s first strategic win of the year is a ruined city—and Ukraine’s drone-centric defense may not miss it the way it once would have. |
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Ukraine’s banks got too profitable to sell—so the deadline keeps slipping. The central bank sees a “good chance” of two sales by December. The price the market will pay says otherwise. |
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Russia can’t blockade Ukraine’s grain ports, so it bombs them—exports could drop a third. The heaviest strikes are expected during the July harvest. |
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Towards clearer skies? What Ukraine gets out of the most recent Ramstein meeting—and what it doesn’t. The $4 billion buys Patriot interceptors now — but Ukraine’s home-grown Freya, five times cheaper, left Brussels with a partnership and no cash. |
Military
Drones flew 1,300 km to Russia’s Ufa—then struck Bashneft refineries. Bashkortostan’s head claimed air defenses had shot down the drones and that the damage was caused only by falling debris.
Zelenskyy: Ukraine’s ongoing Crimea operation is “carefully calculated”. The President linked it to a single condition: getting from G7 partners what Kyiv quietly asked for.
Occupied Crimea’s grid takes another night of strikes as Yalta and Sevastopol lose power. Drones came in from every direction while the occupation’s air alert lagged hours behind.
A depot supplying two Russian regions with fuel is burning after an overnight drone strike. Russian officials again blamed “falling drone debris,” the phrasing Moscow uses to avoid admitting a direct hit.
Ukraine’s drones cut Crimea’s fuel. Now, Russia can’t even move its political prisoners. The week-long paralysis leaves Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian detainees held in Simferopol indefinitely.
Intelligence and technology
Ukraine wants an AI-driven army. Its new defense center is already putting AI inside kill chain, steering drones onto target in final seconds. From last-mile targeting that beats jamming to autonomous turrets, the Ukrainian military center wants AI everywhere, but humans still pull the trigger.
Half of Ukraine’s new trainer planes were bought by Czech charity. Fund is called “Gift for Putin”. The light planes let Ukraine train future fighter pilots at home and slash the cost of every flight hour.
New robotics center opens at university in occupied Donetsk. Ukrainian monitor says it’s drone-industry pipeline. The new robotics center copies the Alabuga playbook, where students assemble the drones Russia fires at Ukrainian cities, a monitor says.
International
Russia continues targeting Ukraine’s grid. Britain’s $381.5 million package bets on nuclear fuel to keep it running. Most of the money, £210 million, is a nuclear-fuel deal first announced this month.
Ukraine passes 20 reforms to unlock $3.39 billion from World Bank. The UK and Japan backed the loan, and a $2.35 billion grant fund covered the rest.
Russia has hit Ukraine’s energy system 6,000 times. Allies pledge €375 million at Gdansk conference, but fund is still short. The US, Sweden, and Norway led the pledges in Gdańsk, but Ukraine still needs over 3 gigawatts of thermal power repaired before winter.
The UK may turn a captured Russian tanker’s cargo into cash for Ukraine’s troops. The crude came off a shadow-fleet tanker that Royal Marines boarded in the English Channel.
Washington just removed seven more Russians, two ships, and two Turkish firms from its sanctions blacklist. The Treasury’s sanctions arm gave no reason for the 24 June deletions, which restore asset access and let American companies deal with the named parties again.
Humanitarian and social impact
Russian strike on a Norwegian charity’s demining team kills two, wounds four in Kherson Oblast. The workers were clearing mines to make farmland safe when the strike hit, the group said.
Russian strike killed assistant driver in his train cab in Zaporizhzhia. The driver of the third train in Zaporizhzhia reached safety. His assistant, in the rear cab, could not be saved, the railway chief says.
In Mali, Russians and Malian army killed four civilians, then staged a corpse into a swastika. The victims near Timbuktu were herders with no ties to armed groups, local sources and a rights group told RFI.
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