Ukraine updates: Trump claims he could end war if reelected

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 10 people, all civilians, had been returned to Ukraine from captivity in Russia and its ally Belarus.

Zelenskyy said the group included a prominent member of the Crimean Tatar community, two Eastern Orthodox Catholic priests, and five people who had been captured in Belarus. The group also included two civilians held since before Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion, he said.

"I am grateful to everyone who helped. I thank our team that works on freeing the captives. I would also like to recognize the Holy See's efforts to bring these people home," Zelenskyy wrote, referring to the Vatican.

The Ukrainian president vowed to free "all our people."

At least one person died and nine others were injured, including a 7-month-old baby, when a Russian missile hit a high-rise building in the industrial city of Dnipro in central Ukraine, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Serhiy Lysak said on his Telegram channel.

Two women, aged 27 and 30, and a man, aged 29, were in critical condition. Two other people were believed to be buried in the rubble, he said.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko warned that the death toll was likely to rise as more people remained trapped in the nine-story building, where four upper floors collapsed in the attack.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on Ukraine's allies to increase supplies of air defense systems to help the military intercept Russian airstrikes.

President Vladimir Putin said Russia should resume production of intermediate- and shorter-range nuclear-capable missiles that were banned under a now-scrapped treaty with the United States..

Putin said Russia had pledged not to deploy such missiles, but he claimed the United States had resumed their production and taken them to Denmark and the Philippines for exercises.

"We need to respond to this and make decisions about what we will have to do in this direction next," Putin told Russia's Security Council.

"Apparently, we need to start manufacturing these strike systems and then, based on the actual situation, make decisions about where — if necessary to ensure our safety — to place them," he said.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned ground-launched nuclear and conventional missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (roughly 300 to 3,400 miles), was considered an arms control landmark when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan signed it in 1988.

The United States withdrew from the treaty in 2019, citing Russian violations.

Belarus' former ambassador to Germany, Denis Sidorenko, has died unexpectedly at the age of 48.  died unexpectedly at the age of 48.

Independent Belarusian media outlet Nasha Niva reported that Sidorenko had fallen to his death from an apartment block in the country's capital, Minsk, on June 23.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry confirmed the news on June 26, saying Sidorenko's passing was a "great loss for the diplomatic family of Belarus." It gave no information on the cause of death.

After serving in Germany since 2016, Sidorenko had been recalled from his position in Berlin earlier this year by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and not given a new position.

Opposition politician Pavel Latushko, who lives in exile in the European Union, told the Belarusian internet portal Zerkalo that Sidorenko's return to Belarus had become a problem for Minsk.

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Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that military pledges outlined in 20 security agreements Kyiv has signed with its partners total $60 billion (roughly €56 billion) annually for the next four years.

"According to these agreements, in the next four years, our partners plan to provide Ukraine with total military support worth $60 billion annually," Shmyhal said during a governmental meeting.

After committing €297 billion in various forms of aid to Kyiv since Russia's invasion began in February 2022, Ukraine's allies have recently struggled to keep up the momentum.

At the beginning of the year, the government was left with a gaping hole in its budget after US lawmakers delayed the passing of the latest tranche of financial support from Washington.

That $60 billion commitment was finally passed in April. 

Earlier this month, G7 leaders agreed on a one-off $50 billion payment to Ukraine, using interest earned from Russian central bank assets frozen by the West to fund a loan.

It is unclear whether the $60 billion announced Friday includes the amount approved by the G7.

The border service of Belarus said it was taking measures to further reinforce the Belarusian border with Ukraine after a security incident.

The agency said its staff had brought down a quadrocopter on Wednesday after it had illegally crossed the border from Ukraine.

The quadrocopter, a drone with four rotors, had been sent to collect information about Belarusian border infrastructure, the border service said.

Earlier in the week, the agency said materials for a homemade bomb had been found concealed in the same area.

Belarussian authorities say they are aware pro-Ukrainian Russian fighter unit was present in a Ukrainian region bordering Belarus.

Poland will almost certainly sign a bilateral security agreement with Ukraine before July's NATO summit in Washington, the Polish prime minister said.

"I must, together with the defense minister, determine how we can continue to help Ukraine, but we cannot weaken Poland's defense capabilities," PM Donald Tusk told reporters.

"There is a 99% chance that we will sign this agreement with President Zelenskyy [before the summit]," he added.

Kyiv has recently made significant progress in strengthening its security capabilities by signing defense agreements with 16 European countries, including Germany, France and the UK, along with the US.

The deals include several measures to assist Ukraine, including military, economic, and political support.

On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskky signed a longterm security pact with the European Union.

Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov ordered the military to propose a way to deal with US strategic drones operating over the Black Sea, the defense ministry in Moscow said.

In a statement, the ministry noted how US drones in the area were carrying out reconnaissance and gathering information on targets for high-precision Western weapons used by Ukraine to strike Russian facilities.

Belousov was cited as telling the army "to submit proposals on measures for an operational response to the [US] provocations."

The US move "demonstrates the increasing involvement of the United States and NATO countries in the conflict in Ukraine on the side of the Kyiv regime," the ministry added.

"Such flights multiply the likelihood of airspace incidents with Russian aircraft, which increases the risk of a direct confrontation between the (NATO) alliance and the Russian Federation."

The ministry warned that NATO countries would be responsible for any such incidents.

Russian military facilities in Crimea, the Black Sea region, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, have been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian forces, including with Western missiles.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union needs to invest €500 billion ($535 billion) over the next decade to bolster its defenses.

"We estimate that additional defense investments of around €500 billion are needed over the next decade," von der Leyen, who is chief of the bloc's executive arm said at a summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday.

She said while China and Russia's military spending had skyrocketed by almost 600% and 300% respectively since the turn of the century, the EU's combined spending had grown just 20%.

"This is even before Russia massively increased over the last two years its defense spending," she added.

EU states are pushing to ramp up their defense industries and rearm their militaries in the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, after years of underinvestment.

EU nations have hiked defense spending in the decade since Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. The trend has accelerated since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The bloc's defense agency says EU countries spent a total of €240 billion on defense in 2022.

Several EU countries have now hit NATO's target of spending 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense.  

A debate is raging over whether the EU should consider joint borrowing through so-called eurobonds, similar to how it financed its post-COVID recovery program.  

 

Kyiv says it's pressing European allies to establish a no-fly zone in the west of Ukraine by deploying air defense systems in neighboring Poland and Romania, officials told AFP news agency.

Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko said NATO should place US-made Patriot air defense systems along the Polish border.

"After all, Russian missiles have already entered Polish and Romanian airspace. This would protect the borders of Poland and Romania and this would create a safe zone in the west and south of Ukraine," he added.

AFP said that several Ukrainian civilian and military officials had made similar remarks in recent days.

Kyiv would like to create a safe space in western Ukraine where industry, energy infrastructure and civilians can be protected.

Half of Ukraine's national electricity production capacity has been destroyed in recent months by Russia's onslaught.

Every week, Russian missiles and drones strike the energy network, causing daily power outages that affect a large percentage of the population. 

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said last month there was "no legal, security or moral argument that stands in the way of our partners shooting down Russian missiles over the territory of Ukraine from their territory."

A Ukrainian drone hit a Russian petrol depot early Friday setting it on fire, a Russian regional governor said.

"A small fire broke out and it has been contained," Maxim Yegorov, governor of the Tambov region in central Russia, said on the messaging app Telegram. "There are no victims."

He added that the strike took place hundreds of miles from the border.

Later, news agencies said the fire took place at an oil reservoir for the Druzhba pipeline.

The reports said the blaze took several hours to extinguish.

Druzhba is one of the largest parts of the Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft's system, which starts in central Russia and connects West Siberian oilfields to major refineries in Europe.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, said it "intercepted" 25 drones sent by Ukraine overnight, without mentioning the Tambov region.

In the western Bryansk region, governor Alexander Bogomaz said a drone had been downed but its debris "partially destroyed the roof of an administrative building."

 

Former US president Donald Trump said he would be able to "settle" the Ukraine conflict if reelected to the White House in November's US presidential election.

During the first televised presidential debate with incumbent Joe Biden he said the feat could even be achieved before January 20, the inauguration day.

Trump also claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin "would have never invaded Ukraine" if the United States "had a real president." 

He also called on Biden to pressure European allies to spend more on supporting Ukraine.

When asked whether Russia's terms for ending the war were acceptable, Trump said they were not.

When it was his turn, Biden once again called Putin "a war criminal" who has killed "thousands and thousands of people."

The 81-year-old president then warned that the Russian leader would not stop after taking Ukraine.

"Go ahead, let Putin go in and control Ukraine, and then move on to Poland and other places. See what happens then. He has no idea what the hell he's talking about," Biden said of Trump.

When asked if Putin had tuned in to the debate, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "I don’t think you expect the president of Russia might set an alarm clock, wake up before morning, and watch the debates in the United States of America."

"We have a lot of issues that are really important for our country, which are relevant for us. These are the issues that our president is dealing with. Debates in the United States are not part of the main issues on the agenda."

Putin said earlier this month he did not believe the outcome of the US election would make much difference for Russia.

mm/kb (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)