Zelenskiy to press G7 for more help
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy will urge world powers to step up their support for Ukraine when he addresses the G7 summit on Monday, as Kyiv reels from the first Russian strikes on the capital in weeks.
US president Joe Biden and his counterparts from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies, meeting in the Bavarian Alps, have stressed their unity in the face of Russia’s aggression – even as the global fallout worsens.
Zelenskiy is set to join the leaders of the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Canada via video link at 10:00 am (0800 GMT).
In his daily address late Sunday, Zelenskiy renewed his calls for more weapons and air defence systems to be delivered to Ukraine and for fresh sanctions against Russia by G7 nations.
“We need a powerful air defence – modern, fully effective. Which can ensure complete protection against these missiles. We talk about this every day with our partners. There are already some agreements. And partners need to move faster if they are really partners, not observers,” he said.
“Delays in the transfer of weapons to our state, any restrictions are actually an invitation for Russia to strike again and again.”
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s ongoing coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. It’s coming up to 8am in Kyiv and here’s a summary of the latest developments:
- Russia stepped up air strikes on Ukraine over the weekend, including on the capital of Kyiv, while the strategic eastern city of Sievierodonetsk fell to pro-Russian forces. There had been no major strikes on Kyiv since early June.
- The Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said a wounded seven-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble of a nine-storey apartment block in Kyiv. The girl’s father was killed in the strike, he said. “She was not threatened by anything in our country. She was completely safe, until Russia itself decided that everything was equally hostile to them now – women, children, kindergartens, houses, hospitals, railways,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly address.
- The US president, Joe Biden, said that “it’s more of their barbarism”, referring to the missile strikes on Kyiv, as leaders from the G7 countries gathered for a summit in Germany.
- The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, will use Monday’s session at the G7 summit in Germany to call for urgent action to help get vital grain supplies out of Ukraine’s blockaded ports to support the country’s economy and alleviate shortages around the world, PA reports. Johnson will call for an international solution to the crisis, including finding overland routes for grain supplies to beat the Russian blockade, with £10m in materials and equipment to repair damaged rail infrastructure.
- Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said G7 countries should respond to the latest missile strikes by imposing further sanctions on Russia and providing more heavy weapons to Ukraine.
- Zelenskiy urged Belarusians to stand in solidarity with Ukraine. “Russian leadership wants to drag you into the Ukraine-Russian war because it doesn’t care about your lives. But you aren’t slaves and can decide your destiny yourself,” Zelenskiy said in a video address to Belarusians.
- The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will visit two small former Soviet states in central Asia this week, Russian state television reported on Sunday, in what would be the Russian leader’s first known trip abroad since ordering the invasion of Ukraine. Putin will visit Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and then meet the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, for talks in Moscow, the report on Rossiya 1 television station said.
- The UN Human Rights division in Ukraine said on Sunday that since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, it has “received hundreds of allegations of torture and ill-treatment, including conflict-related sexual violence”. “People were kept tied and blindfolded for several days, beaten, subjected to mock executions, put in a closed metal box, forced to sing or shout glorifying slogans, provided with no or scarce food or water, and held in overcrowded rooms with no sanitation,” the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said.
- France has become the latest country to reconsider its energy options because of the war in Ukraine, announcing on Sunday it was looking into reopening a recently closed coal-fired power station. The energy transition ministry said it was considering reopening the station at Saint-Avold in eastern France this winter, “given the situation in Ukraine” and the effect it was having on energy markets.
- Ukrainian forces have attacked a drilling platform in the Black Sea owned by a Crimean oil and gas company, Russia’s Tass news agency cited local officials as saying on Sunday – the second strike in a week. The platform is operated by Chernomorneftegaz, which Russian-backed officials seized from Ukraine’s national gas operator Naftogaz as part of Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula in 2014.
- Canada deployed two warships to the Baltic Sea and north Atlantic on Sunday, joining a pair of frigates already in the region in attempts to reinforce Nato’s eastern flank in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The navy ships Kingston and Summerside would be on a four-month deployment as part of “deterrence measures in central and eastern Europe” launched in 2014 after Moscow annexed Crimea, the Canadian navy said in a statement.