Here are the key events on day 1,217 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is how things stand on Wednesday, June 25 :
Fighting
- Russian missile strikes on southeastern Ukraine killed 17 people in the city of Dnipro and injured more than 200, damaging dozens of buildings and infrastructure facilities.
- Two people were killed in a Russian attack on the city of Samara.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy named Hennadii Shapovalov as the new commander of Ukraine’s ground forces. He will also oversee military recruitment efforts overseas as part of a broader mobilisation effort.
- Russia says it intercepted dozens of drones overnight across its territory, including the Voronezh region on the border of eastern Ukraine.
- Russian forces say they captured the village of Dyliivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
- Zelenskyy said on X that Russia and Ukraine have not moved any closer to a ceasefire. “The Russians once again openly and absolutely cynically declared they are ‘not in the mood’ for a ceasefire. Russia wants to wage war. This means the pressure the world is applying isn’t hurting them enough yet, or they are trying very hard to keep up appearances.”
Diplomacy
- The White House said United States President Donald Trump will meet Zelenskyy during a NATO summit in The Hague this week. The meeting will be a second attempt after Zelenskyy failed to meet Trump earlier this month in Canada when the US president abruptly left a G7 summit.
- En route to the NATO summit on Tuesday, Trump declined to say whether he supported NATO’s Article 5 clause calling for collective self-defence. “Depends on your definition. There’s numerous definitions of Article 5,” he told reporters on board Air Force One, adding, “I’m committed to being their friend.”
- NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the security bloc’s “military edge is being aggressively challenged by a rapidly rearming Russia, backed by Chinese technology and armed with Iranian and North Korean weapons” before the summit.
- NATO members are expected to support a push to raise defence spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over the next 10 years. The move is seen as a bid to appease Trump and deter Russia.
Finance
- The Netherlands, the host of the NATO summit, announced a new 175-million-euro ($203m) aid package to Ukraine, which includes drone detection radars. The news follows another 500-million-euro ($580m) deal to make 600,000 drones with Ukraine.
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