Russia ‘unlikely to take much more territory in Ukraine’

Thank you for following our live coverage. The key developments were:

• Russia deployed “new and noteworthy tactics” to maximise damage during its deadly missile strikes on Monday, according to war analysts. Russian cruise missiles flew at “extremely low” altitudes on Monday, giving air defence systems “practically no time to respond” before they were within close range of their targets. The UN security council is to hold an emergency meeting after the deadly attacks.
• China lashed out at Nato’s “smears and attacks” after the defence alliance’s chief accused it of supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine on the eve of a summit in Washington. The Kremlin said it would closely follow this week’s summit.
• Russia’s deepening military cooperation with North Korea has underlined the need for Japan to forge closer ties with Nato as regional security threats become increasingly intertwined, prime minister Fumio Kishida told Reuters.
• Russian forces claimed to capture another village in eastern Ukraine near the Russian-held city of Donetsk.
• Narendra Modi told Vladimir Putin that peace was “of utmost importance” and that “war cannot solve problems” at a meeting in Moscow. Volodymyr Zelensky criticised the meeting, calling it a “devastating blow” to peace efforts.
• Switzerland expanded its sanctions against Russia to include additional measures recently taken up by the European Union.
• A North Korean elite military training delegation left for a visit to Russia, the North’s state media said on Tuesday, the first military exchange between the two countries since their leaders signed a pact pledging closer military cooperation.
• China and Belarus started joint military exercises on Monday, the Belarusian and Chinese defence ministries said, holding the drills just a few miles from the border of Nato-member Poland.

Viktor Orban defends “peace tour” after Russian missile attacks.

Unrepentant Hungarian prime minister, Mr Putin’s closest ally in the EU and Nato, said on X: “Yesterday’s tragic and heinous attack in Kyiv proves that our fears were justified: as it was foreseeable, the brutality of the Russia-Ukraine war has reached a new level. This is precisely why we embarked on a peace mission nine days ago.”

“The growing intensity of the war is a call for global powers to abandon their war policy and instead create a peace policy to guide Russia and Ukraine into a ceasefire and peacetalks. This is the only way to prevent further bloodshed,” he added.

Mr Orban travelled to Ukraine, Moscow and Beijing on a criticised tour that allies were quick to point out had no mandate from either the EU or Nato.

The UN security council is to hold an emergency meeting after the deadly Russian missile attacks over Ukraine yesterday. 

Volodymyr Zelensky said 38 people across Ukraine were killed – including four children – and 190 wounded in the wave of nearly 40 missiles that targeted several towns and cities on Monday.

Russian diplomat Dmitry Polyansky said “we will inform our colleagues of facts that completely do not confirm the Ukrainian and Western version of the incident.”

Russia currently holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council and its envoy to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, indicated earlier this month he will take a firm line with Ukraine and its Western allies.

As a permanent member of the UN’s top security body, Moscow wields a veto which it has used on several occasions to thwart efforts to censure its war in Ukraine.

Russia deployed “new and noteworthy tactics” to maximise damage during its deadly missile strikes on Monday, according to war analysts.

Russian cruise missiles flew at “extremely low” altitudes on Monday, giving air defence systems “practically no time to respond” before they were within close range of their targets, said the Institute for the Study of War.

“Russian forces may have innovated their tactics and/or technology somewhat to inflict maximum damage on Ukrainian infrastructure,” the ISW said.

Former Ukrainian air forces spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat said some of the rockets flew at just 50 metres above the ground.

The attacks were the deadliest wave of airstrikes for months, raining missiles down on cities across Ukraine and killing dozens of civilians.

The strike on the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital, which interrupted open-heart surgery and forced young cancer patients to take their treatments outdoors, drew an international outcry.

The Ukrainian and Slovak governments will meet in Ukraine in the second half of September or early October, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s office said on Tuesday.

In a telephone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Denys Shmyhal, Fico also reaffirmed an offer to hospitalise patients from the children’s hospital in Kyiv, the government office said.

One of those killed in yesterday’s children’s hospital attack has been named as 30-year-old Svitlana Lukyanchuk, from Lviv.

Ms Lukyanchuk studied at the Bogomolets National Medical University and worked as a paediatric nephrologist at Okhmatdyt.

Ms Lukyanchuk, who was orphaned as a child, will be buried in Lviv near her parents at Holoskiv Cemetery.

Volodymyr Zelensky will deliver an address on Tuesday evening at the Ronald Reagan Institute in Washington, the institute said in a statement, as the Ukrainian leader looks to drum up more support for the war against Russia’s invasion during this week’s Nato summit.

“President Reagan understood the Soviet Union and Russia. He knew that free countries must stand together with confidence whenever tyranny is on the move,” Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, said in the statement.

Nato is not expected to invite Ukraine to become a member at this year’s July 9-11 gathering. Many Nato countries want to state that Ukraine’s path to membership is “irreversible” but alliance members are still wrangling over the summit declaration.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cautioned Nato allies ahead of a leaders’ summit against taking steps that could drag the alliance into war in Ukraine against invading Russian forces.

“While designing the steps to be taken to support Ukraine, we also maintain our principled stance not to make Nato a party to the war,” Mr Erdogan said at the airport in Ankara before flying to Washington to join Nato leaders at a summit meeting. 

Narendra Modi told Vladimir Putin that peace was “of utmost importance” and that “war cannot solve problems”.

“As a friend, I have also said that for the brighter future of our next generation, peace is of utmost importance,” Mr Modi said in a speech in Hindi, sitting alongside Mr Putin. “When innocent children are murdered, one sees them die, the heart pains and that pain is unbearable.”

Mr Modi said he and Mr Putin had discussed Russia’s campaign in Ukraine during his visit to Moscow.

“As a true friend, we were together and chatted on a range of issues,” Mr Modi said. “And I was happy that on Ukraine, we could both express our views openly and in detail.”

Russian forces have captured another village in eastern Ukraine near the Russian-held city of Donetsk, its defence ministry said on Tuesday.

Russian units “liberated the settlement of Yasnobrodovka”, the ministry said in its daily report, referring to a small village known as Yasnobrodivka in Ukrainian.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has defended Joe Biden ahead of a three-day Nato Summit, saying he has no concerns about the fitness of the US president.

“From the many conversations I have had with the American president, I know that he has prepared for this summit very well and precisely together with us,” said Mr Scholz.

It comes as Mr Biden, 81, has vowed to press on in his presidential race against Donald Trump, despite concern from Democrats on Capitol Hill and donors over his age.

Nato leaders are also reportedly anxious about Mr Biden’s staying power and the prospect of Mr Trump’s return. Speaking to Reuters, one diplomat described Mr Biden as bruised after a difficult political period and said their government was looking for signs about whether he would survive.

The Ukraine-Russia war is expected to dominate the Nato event. The 32 member countries have a full agenda focused on military and financial aid for Ukraine and offering some pathway toward eventual Nato membership for Kyiv.

Russian president Vladimir Putin told visiting Indian prime minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday that their countries enjoyed a special strategic partnership and thanked him for his efforts to find a peaceful solution to the war in Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelensky has criticised a meeting between India’s prime minister and Vladimir Putin, calling it a “devastating blow” to peace efforts.

“It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day,” Mr Zelensky said in a social media post which included photos of a missile strike that hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday.

Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Moscow affirms longtime ties between the two countries.

Mr Modi posted photos of himself hugging Mr Putin when they met Monday, saying he was looking forward to further talks “which will surely go a long way in further cementing the bonds of friendship between India and Russia.”

The two countries are expected to agree on a long-term uranium supply pact for a nuclear power plant and also sign an agreement allowing the military to use each other’s facilities for training, port calls and disaster relief operations.

Switzerland has expanded its sanctions against Russia to include additional measures recently taken up by the European Union, the Swiss government said on Tuesday.

Pointing to a package of measures adopted by the EU against Russia on June 24, the Swiss economy ministry said in a statement that it would impose sanctions within its jurisdiction on a further 69 individuals and 86 entities.

These sanctions mainly target “businesspersons, propagandists, members of the armed forces and judiciary, persons responsible for the deportation of Ukrainian children” and members of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), it said.

The newly sanctioned entities include companies operating in Russia’s defence industry and firms in the financial and trade sectors involved in circumventing sanctions, it added.

This meant that more than 2,200 individuals and entities are now subject to the sanctions listings, the ministry said.

“This is in line with the EU,” the statement added.

China has lashed out at Nato’s “smears and attacks” after the defence alliance’s chief accused it of supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine on the eve of a summit in Washington. 

US president Joe Biden is hosting leaders of the 32-nation transatlantic alliance for three days from Tuesday, as well as the leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference ahead of the 75th anniversary summit that their inclusion “demonstrates that our security is not regional, our security is global”.

“And that’s clearly demonstrated in the war in Ukraine where Iran, North Korea, China are supporting and enabling Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine,” Mr Stoltenberg said.

China’s foreign ministry took aim at the defence group.

“Nato’s so-called security is at the expense of other countries’ security and its actions have brought extremely high security risks to the world and the region,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said. “China is firmly opposed to Nato’s smears and attacks on China, to its willingness to shift the blame onto others, as well as Nato’s use of China as an excuse to move eastward into the Asia-Pacific and stir up regional tensions.” 

The lethal strike on a children’s hospital in Kyiv,was likely caused by a direct hit from a Russian missile, the head of the UN human rights monitoring mission said on Tuesday, citing its own analysis.

“Analysis of the video footage and an assessment made at the incident site indicates a high likelihood that the children’s hospital suffered a direct hit rather than receiving damage due to an intercepted weapon system,” said Danielle Bell, head of mission for the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

She added that her team, who visited the site on Monday, could not make a final determination but that the missile appeared to have been launched by the Russian Federation.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said earlier on Tuesday that it was a Nasams surface-to-air missile launched by Ukraine that hit the children’s hospital in Kyiv. Ukrainian authorities said that Russia struck the hospital with a Kh-101 Kalibr missile.

India’s relationship with Russia is based on “mutual trust and mutual respect,” its prime minister Narendra Modi said in Moscow on Tuesday.

His two-day visit coincides with a Nato summit in Washington expected to be dominated by the Ukraine war, although a senior Indian foreign ministry official last week said there was no significance in the timing and the visit was part of a long-standing calendar of summits between the two countries.

“Every Indian considers Russia to be India’s friend in good and bad times,” Mr Modi said.

“The commitment of our relationship has been tested multiple times, and it has emerged very strong each time,” Mr Modi said, adding that he appreciated his “dear friend” Vladimir Putin for it.

Russia has been India’s largest weapons provider for decades and New Delhi and Moscow have had close ties since Soviet times.

The Kremlin has claimed that Ukrainian anti-missile fire, not Russia, had hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov provided no evidence to support the assertion, but told reporters: “I insist, we do not conduct strikes on civilian targets.”

Ukrainian authorities say Russia struck the main children’s hospital in Kyiv with a missile on Monday and rained missiles on other cities across Ukraine, killing at least 41 civilians in the deadliest wave of airstrikes for months.

The Ukrainian Security Service has said a Russian Kh-101 Kalibr missile struck the hospital and that evidence of this was recovered at the site – in particular, fragments of the rear part of the missile with a serial number, and a part of the guidance system.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky will be in attendance for this week’s Nato talks, hoping that his allies are prepared to take an unprecedented step to end Russia’s invasion.

His top priority, securing Nato membership, has already been ruled out by the Americans, who instead are pushing for the creation of a “well-lit” bridge to accession.

The US and Germany have insisted that membership cannot be progressed without a number of structural and anti-corruption reforms undertaken by Kyiv, but also an end to the current war.

Allies are expected to mint a one-year €40 billion pledge for ongoing military support, much less than the initial $100 billion multi-year package first proposed by secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg earlier this year.

In his pre-summit remarks, Mr Stoltenberg has argued this is better than the current situation when it comes to funding Ukraine’s military resistance, but it does not go as far as shielding aid to Kyiv from the “winds of political change”, as he had previously promised.

The package of support will, however, offer to take control of the majority of coordination of military donations and training of Ukrainian troops from the US and UK, in what is considered a major step in furthering Kyiv’s Nato membership bid. 

The Kremlin said it would closely follow this week’s Nato summit because the alliance had declared Moscow its enemy and sought to defeat Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Russia considered Nato, which is holding a summit in Washington, to be fully involved in the conflict in Ukraine.

Rescue workers have now reached the basement of the destroyed building of the Okhmatdyt National Children’s Specialised Hospital, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said.

The ministry told Ukrainska Pravda that around five or six tonnes of building materials remain to be sifted and removed.

Russia’s deepening military cooperation with North Korea has underlined the need for Japan to forge closer ties with Nato as regional security threats become increasingly intertwined, prime minister Fumio Kishida told Reuters.

In written remarks ahead of his attendance at a Nato summit in Washington DC this week, Mr Kishida also signalled concern over Beijing’s alleged role in aiding Moscow’s two-year-old war in Ukraine, although he did not name China.

“The securities of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific are inseparable, and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its deepened military cooperation with North Korea are strong reminders of that,” hesaid.

“Japan is determined to strengthen its cooperation with Nato and its partners,” he added.

A North Korean elite military training delegation has left for a visit to Russia, the North’s state media said on Tuesday, the first military exchange between the two countries since their leaders signed a pact pledging closer military cooperation.

The president of the Kim Il Sung Military University, Kim Geum Chol, is leading the delegation of military training officials and departed by plane on Monday, KCNA state news agency reported.

It gave no other details including the purpose of the visit and where in Russia they were visiting.

Liz Cookman reports

When a missile hit Kyiv’s Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital on Monday, Olena Magarevska threw herself over her son, Andriy, to protect him.

The boy, who is nine and disabled because of a neurological condition, was recovering from surgery on the fifth-floor intensive care unit when air raid sirens sounded just before 10am.

Hospital staff were unable to evacuate him to the shelter because of his medical needs, so he was moved to a dining area with sturdy walls for safety.

“I heard a loud explosion and me and my husband both jumped to cover Andriy with our bodies. The windows were completely destroyed so then we covered him with pillows in case there was another attack or falling debris,” Mrs Magarevska told The Telegraph through tears.

“The lights also went out and it was so dark in the room. Andriy doesn’t like the dark, he’s scared of it, so I turned the torch on on my phone to try to calm him.”

China and Belarus started joint military exercises on Monday, the Belarusian and Chinese defence ministries said, holding the drills just a few miles from the border of Nato-member Poland.

“Events taking place in the world are alarming, the situation is uneasy, therefore we are going to practise new forms and methods of performing tactical tasks,” Major General Vadim Denisenko, chief of Belarusian special operations command, was cited as saying.

The exercises, named Falcon Assault, will continue until July 19 and are taking place at a training ground near the city of Brest.

Belarus allowed Russia to use its territory as one of the launchpads for Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

As part of the “anti-terrorist exercises”, military personnel of both countries will work out issues of night landing, overcoming water barriers, and conducting operations in a populated area, the Belarusian defence ministry said.

The ministry also posted a series of photos on Telegram, showing over the weekend Chinese troops disembarking from a plane and offloading equipment. In Monday posts it showed the troops marching at a training ground. It was not clear how many troops were involved in the drills.

Russia’s Astrakhan and Volgograd airports restricted flights on Tuesday after a Ukrainian drone attack, Russian news agencies reported.

Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 38 drones that Ukraine launched overnight on several Russian regions, Russia’s defence ministry said earlier.

One person was killed, while two power substations and an oil depot caught fire, after Ukraine launched tens of drones in attacks on several regions, Russian officials said on Tuesday.

The attacks came after Russia blasted the main children’s hospital in Kyiv with a missile in broad daylight on Monday and rained missiles down across Ukraine.

Russian air defence systems destroyed 38 drones, including 21 over the southern region of Rostov and seven over Kursk, both of which border Ukraine, the Russian defence ministry said.

US president Joe Biden has promised “new measures” to boost Ukraine’s air defenses after a barrage of Russian missiles against Kyiv and other cities on Monday.

Mr Biden said in a statement the United States and its allies would announce this new assistance at a Nato summit this week in Washington, and called the missile strikes “a horrific reminder of Russia’s brutality”.