Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, has released a statement after Joe Biden stood down from the US presidential election campaign. “Ukraine is grateful to President Biden for his unwavering support for Ukraine’s fight for freedom, which, along with strong bipartisan support in the United States, has been and continues to be critical,” Zelenskiy said. “Many strong decisions have been made in recent years and they will be remembered as bold steps taken by President Biden in response to challenging times. And we respect today’s tough but strong decision.
“We will always be thankful for President Biden’s leadership,” Zelenskiy continued. “He supported our country during the most dramatic moment in history, assisted us in preventing Putin from occupying our country, and has continued to support us throughout this terrible war. The current situation in Ukraine and all of Europe is no less challenging, and we sincerely hope that America’s continued strong leadership will prevent Russian evil from succeeding or making its aggression pay off.”
Russia said on Sunday its forces had captured two frontline villages in Ukraine, Andriivka in the eastern Luhansk region and Pishchane in the north-east Kharkiv region. There was no independent confirmation. Separately, Russia said it had scrambled fighter jets to meet two US strategic bombers over the Barents Sea in the Arctic. The US routinely carries out flights over international waters.
Strikes on Sunday killed at least five civilians in Ukraine on both sides of the frontline, Russian and Ukrainian authorities said. In the Russian-controlled part of the southern Kherson region, Ukrainian strikes killed a woman, the Moscow-appointed governor said; while in the partially occupied Donetsk region, a married couple were killed when their car was hit, the Russian-installed governor said, adding that a Ukrainian drone strike killed a woman in the village of Verkhnotoretske. In the northern Sumy region, a 37-year-old man was killed by a Russian strike on a combine harvester, the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said.
Three people were wounded by Russian drone strikes in southern Ukraine’s partly occupied Kherson region, local officials said on Sunday morning. In the north-east, officials in the Kharkiv region said two people were wounded when a village was hit by Russian shells. Nine people were wounded over the previous day in shelling in the town of Shebekino in Russia’s Belgorod region, said the Russian local governor.
A US plan to boost Japanese production of Patriot air defence missiles – used by Ukraine to defend against Russian attacks – is being delayed by a shortage of seekers units made by Boeing that guide them in the final stages of flight, sources have told the Reuters news agency. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries already makes about 30 PAC-3 missiles each year under licence from Lockheed Martin and can increase that to about 60. The US hopes to increase annual production from about 500 to more than 750 globally as soon as possible, a person familiar with the programme said.
Semiconductors and other restricted goods shipped through China and Hong Kong to fuel Russia’s war effort fell by a fifth this year, previously undisclosed US commerce department data shows, but Hong Kong remains a global sanctions evasion hotspot. Smuggling through Hong Kong of common high-priority list items (CHPL) – advanced components including microelectronics deemed by the US and EU as likely to be used for Russia’s war in Ukraine – fell 28% between January and May, an official told Reuters, while through mainland China excluding Hong Kong it fell 19%. “I think there’s some cause for being at least optimistic that we have been able to slow down some of this trade,” the official said, but added: “China is still our number one concern.”
