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Here are the key events on day 1,228 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is how things stand on Sunday, July 6 :
Fighting
- Ukraine’s military claimed an attack on the Borisoglebsk airbase in Russia’s Voronezh region, hitting a depot containing glide bombs and training aircraft. Russian officials did not immediately comment on the attack.
- Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russian air defences shot down four Ukrainian drones headed for the Russian capital, forcing one of Moscow’s main airports to temporarily halt outgoing flights.
- This came as Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defences had intercepted 48 Ukrainian drones in a period of just over five hours into Saturday evening, and 45 more during the day. Earlier, the ministry said that 94 drones had been destroyed over Russia overnight.
- In Ukraine, the Air Force said Russia fired 322 drones and decoys into the country overnight into Saturday. Of these, 157 were shot down and 135 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed.
- Ukraine’s western Khmelnytskyi region was the main target of the attack, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. Regional Governor Serhii Tyurin said no damage, injuries or deaths had been reported.
- Russian forces occupied the Ukrainian settlements of Zelenyi Kut and Novoukrainka near the administrative border between the Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions, Ukrainian military blog DeepState reported on Telegram.
- Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, warned on Saturday of a possible new Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region, in northeastern Ukraine.
- The Kyiv Independent reported that explosions damaged a gas pipeline and destroyed a water pipeline that supplied military facilities in Russia’s Vladivostok, citing an unnamed intelligence source.
Politics and diplomacy
- After speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, United States President Donald Trump said Ukraine would need Patriot missiles for its defence. Trump also voiced frustration over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s failure to end the fighting.
- Trump told reporters he was “very unhappy” about his earlier call with Putin. “It just seems like he wants to go all the way and just keep killing people… It’s not good. I wasn’t happy with it,” he said.
- In a post on X, Zelenskyy described his call with Trump as “extremely fruitful”, confirming that the pair “discussed air defence”.
- “I’m grateful for the readiness to assist,” Zelenskyy said. “Patriot systems are the key to defending against ballistic threats.”
- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned Russia’s “large-scale drone and missile attacks” on Ukraine on Friday, describing the attacks as “reportedly the largest in over three years of war”.
- Guterres also expressed alarm at the “dangerous escalation and the growing number of civilian casualties” as well as concern about disruption to power at the “Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, once again underlining the ongoing risks to nuclear safety”.
- Adam Smith, a top Democratic legislator, has dismissed the Pentagon’s claim it held up weapons shipments to Ukraine over low stockpiles. Smith told NBC News his staff had “seen the numbers” and said the US is “not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the 3½ years of the Ukraine conflict”.
Economy
- Bloomberg reported that US investment firm BlackRock paused efforts to raise funds for a multibillion-dollar Ukraine recovery fund after Trump was elected, leading France to step in to work on an alternative fund.
