Saturday, July 6

Russia’s war against Ukraine

An aerial view of the city of Toretsk, Donetsk Oblast, on July 5, 2024. The situation on the Toretsk front is tense amid continuous Russian attacks. (Jose Colon/Anadolu via Getty Images)

F-16s will challenge Russia’s aerial dominance over Black Sea, Ukraine’s Navy chief says. Ukraine wants to expand its shipping corridor, which contains only maritime traffic from the three main Odesa ports, to include the ports of Mykolaiv and Kherson in the country’s south, Navy Commander Oleksii Neizhpapa told Reuters. However, it is not possible since Russia controls the Kinburn Spit, he added.

Stoltenberg hopes Ukraine will join NATO within 10 years. Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hopes that Ukraine will join the alliance within the next 10 years, he said in an interview with the DPA news agency published on July 5.

Zelensky discusses new package of solutions to overcome energy crisis. Since spring, Russia has intensified its attacks against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure in a renewed assault against the country’s energy grid, leading to blackouts.

Lack of support from 41st Brigade led to Russian advances in Niu-York, battalion claims. A platoon leader said that the shortage of people in the 206th Battalion and lack of instruction from the 41st Brigade contributed to the loss of Niu-York’s southern territory.

Kuleba talks to new British foreign secretary. “I am grateful to my counterpart for reaffirming the U.K.’s ironclad support for Ukraine in all areas,” he said in a post on X. “We discussed next steps in our bilateral relations and also paid specific attention to the upcoming NATO Summit in Washington. [The] foreign secretary accepted my invitation to visit Ukraine.”

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Germany’s third Patriot air defense system arrived in Ukraine, ambassador says. The third Patriot air defense system pledged by Germany is already in Ukraine, German Ambassador to Ukraine Martin Jaeger said on July 5.

Russia claims civilian casualties in drone strike on Krasnodar Krai, Kyiv has not commented on allegations. Ukraine has not commented on the allegations, and the claims could not be independently verified.

Orban arrives in Moscow days after Kyiv trip, meets Putin. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrived in Moscow on July 5, just days after his first trip to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war, Orban’s press office told the media.

Labor shortages drive up wages in Ukraine, central bank says. According to the NBU’s report, the offered monthly salaries have continuously grown from around Hr 13,500 ($332) in February 2022 to roughly Hr 19,500 ($480) in May 2024.

Zelensky congratulates Labour Party’s Starmer on UK election victory. “Ukraine and the U.K. have been and will continue to be reliable allies through thick and thin,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X.

Read our exclusives

Ukraine war latest: F-16s will ‘challenge Russia’s aerial dominance over Black Sea,’ Navy chief says

The upcoming delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will challenge Russia’s “full dominance” of the skies over the Black Sea, Navy Commander Oleksii Neizhpapa told Reuters in an interview published on July 5.

Photo: Jakub Porzycki/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Old guard pushback continues to haunt Ukraine’s arms procurement cleanup

Transforming the previous leadership’s bad business practices is a monumental task for a warring country reliant on Western weaponry, and foreign companies make matters worse by upping prices for Ukraine.  

Photo: Danylo Pavlov/The Kyiv Independent

Ukraine’s airfields under fire as Russia braces for F-16s

Over the past week, Moscow carried out at least three missile strikes targeting Ukrainian airfields — in Myrhorod, Poltava, and Kryvyi Rih — all located around 100 kilometers (68 miles) from the closest Russian troops.

Photo: Pierre Verdy/AFP/Getty Images

What Ukraine’s partial Chasiv Yar withdrawal actually means

Russia’s months-long attacks on Chasiv Yar are part of its grinding, slow, and costly advances in Donetsk Oblast. Since the fall of Avdiivka in February of this year, Russian forces overran one village after another.

Photo: Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images

Human cost of war

Russian attack on Donetsk Oblast kills woman, injures 20 people. The center of the front-line village was struck with three Russian guided aerial bombs, according to the governor. The attack damaged 13 houses, four stores, two high-rise buildings, two administrative building and two infrastructure facilities, he added.

Russian attacks across Ukraine kill 7, injure 43. Russian attacks against Ukraine killed at least seven civilians and injured at least 43 over the past day, regional authorities reported early on July 5.

Meduza: 120,000 Russian troops killed in Ukraine. Ukraine estimates that the Russian military’s total personnel losses surpassed 500,000 on May 25, 2024.

General Staff: Russia has lost 548,580 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022. This number includes 1,110 casualties Russian forces suffered over the past day.

Opinions and insights

The Counteroffensive: What UK Labour’s landslide election means for Ukraine

“The United Kingdom has been a leader in rallying world support for Ukraine, and we expect that to remain the same under a Labour government. Although Keir Starmer was elected as Labour Party leader under a non-interventionist platform, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shifted U.K. politics,” Alessandra Hay and Tim Mak write.

Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images

International response

Orban’s Kyiv, Moscow trips test boundaries of EU presidency, expert says. Viktor Orban’s steps show that he is “playing a different game and using the vacuum while the compositions of these (EU) institutions are changing” after the European elections, said Pavel Havlicek, a research fellow at the Association for International Affairs.

Orban says Kyiv and Moscow’s positions on peace ‘are very far apart’. The insight came to him during a trip to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, just days after meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.

Indian PM Modi to visit Russia on July 8. It will be Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first trip to Russia since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine.

Media: Russia faces difficulties with Chinese imports as Beijing tightens control. China has tightened export controls on military and dual-use products since July 1, the Moscow Times reported on July 5. This has already made it more difficult to deliver Chinese equipment and machinery to Russia, the Moscow Times reported, citing Russian importers.

Putin believes Trump is ‘sincere’ about ending war. Speaking from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Kazakhstan, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that “we take (former President Donald Trump’s declared intention to end the war) completely seriously.”

Latvia to send over 2,500 drones to Ukraine in July, ministry says. Riga will send more than 2,500 different types of combat drones to Ukraine this month, worth 4 million euros ($4.3 million), the Latvian Defense Ministry announced on July 5.

In other news

There are ‘questions’ about some ministers, government changes not ruled out, MP says. “There are questions” regarding the work of some ministers, and the question of their dismissal may arise in the near future, Fedir Venislavskyi, a member of the parliament’s national security committee, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on July 5.

Ex-infrastructure agency head denies accusations of misusing Western funds. Ukraine’s Finance Ministry accused the agency of misuse of Western funds in a response to Ukrainian online newspaper Ekonomichna Pravda. Specifically, the ministry claimed that the EU Delegation to Ukraine was unhappy with the agency failing to use the 150 million euros allocated by the European Commission.

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Today’s Ukraine Daily was brought to you by Martin Fornusek, Nate Ostiller, Liliane Bivings, Kateryna Denisova, Chris York, Oleg Sukhov, Abbey Fenbert, and Dmytro Basmat.

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