US president Joe Biden has landed in Paris where he is spending the next five days, and during which he will attend D-day celebrations in Normandy, deliver a high-profile speech and hold a formal state visit with French president Emmanuel Macron.
While in Normandy, Biden will sit down for talks with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy about the war effort to repel Russian invaders, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard the presidential flight to Paris, reports Reuters.
It has gone 10.30am in Kyiv and in Moscow. This is our latest Guardian blog covering all the latest developments over the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The US president, Joe Biden, will sit down for talks with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as they arrive in France for the anniversary of the D-day landings, the White House has confirmed.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said aboard Air Force One on the way to France that Biden will meet Zelenskiy to discuss “how we can continue and deepen our support for Ukraine”.
More on that in a moment, but first, here are the other latest developments:
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France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, will also host Zelenskiy on Friday in Paris. “As Russian strikes intensify on the frontline and against energy infrastructure, the two presidents will discuss the situation on the ground,” the Élysée Palace said. The meeting is set to take place after D-day commemorations. Zelenskiy will also deliver a speech in France’s National Assembly.
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State power operator Ukrenergo on Tuesday introduced forced electricity blackouts in several regions, including the capital, Kyiv, and frontline Donetsk and Kharkiv regions. Russian missile and drone barrages, including a major attack over the weekend, have damaged Ukraine’s energy networks and stretched its air defences.
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Air raid alerts were declared in several regions of Ukraine on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning. All of Ukraine was put under an alert after fighter jets took off inside Russia.
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Russian forces are focusing their main firepower on the eastern Donetsk region and not north-eastern Kharkiv where they launched an offensive last month, according to Zelenskiy. The UK Ministry of Defence said the Avdiivka-Pokrovsk sector north and west of Donetsk city “has remained the probable main effort of Russian forces over the last 72 hours”.
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Zelenskiy said he had met with senior commanders in Kyiv on his return to Ukraine from visits to several European capitals as well as Singapore and the Philippines over the last week. The Ukrainian mayor of Kharkiv, the regional capital and second most populous city in the country, said Russia launched 76 aerial attacks on the city in May, almost three times as many as during April.
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Ukrainian officials said eight people were injured in Russian attacks in the central Dnipropetrovsk region and also in the eastern Kharkiv region overnight into Tuesday. The head of the southern Kherson region separately said Russian artillery fire killed an elderly woman in her yard in the village of Veletynske. Shelling injured two people in the Sumy region, the local military administration said.
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Any French military instructors in Ukraine would be a “legitimate target” for Russian armed forces, Sergei Lavrov, Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister, said. Ukraine’s top commander said last week he had signed paperwork allowing French military instructors to access Ukrainian training centres soon. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said last week he would not comment on “rumours or decisions that could be made”. He said he would elaborate on France’s support during the 80th anniversary commemorations of D-day this week.
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A former Ukrainian state official faces trial for allegedly arranging to buy aeroplane parts at a price inflated sevenfold while in charge of arms imports, the country’s anti-corruption agency has said. It concerns the time before Russia’s 2022 invasion.
