Here’s where things stand on Wednesday, June 4 :
Fighting
- Russian shelling on the Ukrainian city of Sumy killed four people and injured 28, including three children, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said in a post on Telegram.
- The Interior Ministry also said that two people were killed when fires broke out after a Russian attack on homes in the Kharkiv region’s village of Chistovodivka.
- Ukraine’s SBU security service said it detonated explosives targeting underwater supports on the Crimea Bridge, which links Russia with Russian-occupied Crimea, causing “severe damage” to the structure.
- The Russian Ministry of Transport said in a statement that “standard operations” had resumed on the bridge after earlier “temporary closures”, without providing a reason for the disruption, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
Military aid
- Secretary of Defence John Healey said the United Kingdom will spend 350 million pounds ($473.5m) to deliver 100,000 drones to Ukraine as part of the UK’s 4.5 billion pound ($6bn) military support for Ukraine this year.
Politics and Diplomacy
- White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that United States President Donald Trump “was not” informed in advance of Ukraine’s unprecedented drone attack on Russian airbases earlier this week. Asked if Trump approved of the attack, Leavitt said that “the president does not want to see this war prolonged”.
- US Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the Senate would begin working on a bill to impose sanctions on Russia as it works with Trump to “get Russia to finally come to the [negotiating] table in a real way”.
- Russia’s mission to the United Nations said it would hold an informal UN Security Council meeting at 10am New York time (14:00 GMT) on Wednesday on “understanding and eliminating the ideological root causes of the Ukrainian crisis”.
- Switzerland said it would impose sanctions on “17 individuals and 58 entities” listed in the European Union’s latest sanctions package, “in response to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine”.
