As the war enters its 867th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Thursday, July 11, 2024:
Fighting
- Russia launched 20 drones and five missiles at Ukraine, killing two people in the Black Sea region of Odesa, damaging port infrastructure and hitting an energy facility in the northwest, Ukrainian officials said.
- Another Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region killed one person and wounded eight more, the regional governor said.
- Ukraine’s military denied Russian claims that its forces had captured the village of Yasnobrodivka in the eastern Donetsk region.
- Ukraine’s top prosecutor accused Russian forces of killing two Ukrainian servicemen who were captured in June in the partially-occupied southeastern Zaporizhia region.
- In Russia, the governor of the Belgorod region said one man was killed and seven wounded in a Ukrainian attack on the area, which lies on the border with Ukraine.
- Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) also said it thwarted a plan for a “terrorist attack” on the country’s only aircraft carrier and detained a Ukrainian special services agent.
Politics and diplomacy
- The 32 members of NATO formally declared Ukraine on an “irreversible” path to membership in the Western military alliance, offering a bare but more binding assurance of protection once its war with Russia ends. “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” alliance members said in a communique following a summit in Washington, DC. “We will continue to support it on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”
- The NATO allies, in their communique, also called China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war effort in Ukraine and said Beijing continues to pose systematic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security.
- The United States said it will start deploying longer-range missiles in Germany in 2026, in a step aimed at countering what the allies call the growing threat Russia poses to Europe. “We cannot discount the possibility of an attack against Allies’ sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the two countries said in a communique.
Military aid
- NATO has pledged to provide Ukraine with at least 40 billion euros ($43.28bn) in military aid within the next year but stopped short of the multi-year commitment sought by the alliance’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit, said the first batch of US-built F-16 fighter jets are being transferred to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands and will be flying over Ukrainian skies this summer.
- The Netherlands also announced additional ammunition for F-16 fighter jets worth a total of 300 million euros ($324.6m) for Ukraine. The new Dutch pledge comes on top of 150 million euros worth ($162.4m) of F-16 ammunition it has already promised to deliver
- NATO is also expected to announce the establishment of a centralised command that will take a greater role from the US in coordinating training and weapons deliveries for Ukraine.
- Separately, Stoltenberg, the NATO chief, said a new US air defence base in northern Poland, designed to detect and intercept ballistic missile attacks as part of a broader NATO missile shield, is now mission-ready.