Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump administration downplays concerns on weapons halt as Kyiv summons US envoy

At least five people were injured, including a seven-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl, in a Russian attack on the southern Ukraine port of Odesa overnight, Ukrainian authorities said this morning.

A multi-storey residential building and other civilian infrastructure were damaged, regional governor Oleh Kiper said. The attack completely destroyed six apartments and another 36 were partially damaged, he said.

“The children, who were poisoned by combustion products, were hospitalised,” Mr Kiper said. The other three injured people, all adults, received medical aid on the site.

The full scale of the attack was not immediately known.

The State Emergency Service of Ukraine posted on its Facebook page photos showing rescuers carrying children in the dark out of a multi-storey apartment building on fire and firefighters fighting the blaze.

The Service said that 50 people were evacuated from the building. The fire has been extinguished since, Mr Kiper said.

Ukrainian blog DeepState, which uses open-source data to map the frontline, said the Russian military in June had seized 556 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory, which it said was the largest monthly loss of ground since November.

Russian forces, which have numerical superiority, cut the main road linking Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka in May, complicating Ukrainian movements and resupply efforts.

“The Russian advance is being contained, but their crossing of the Pokrovsk-Kostyantynivka highway is a strategic and logistical setback,” said Viktor Trehubov, a spokesperson for the Khortytsia group of forces.

Heavy Russian losses have prevented Russian advances toward Kostiantynivka via Chasiv Yar, or along the western Pokrovsk front. “Now they are attempting (to advance) further away from populated areas,” Trehubov said.

DeepState also reported that Russian advances in June near Pokrovsk and nearby Novopavlivka accounted for more than half of all Russian gains along the entire frontline in all of Ukraine.

Trehubov said Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka remain Ukrainian logistical hubs, despite setbacks and drone activity which make some defensive fortifications less effective.

“(Drones) hinder logistics for both sides but don’t make it impossible. Drones after all are not invulnerable,” he said.

In a blow to Ukraine’s war efforts, the Pentagon is pausing shipments of weapons to the country again after more than three years of deliveries meant to bolster the country’s defences against invading Russian forces.

The Trump administration’s decision comes as Ukraine is facing intensified attacks by Russia against its civilians, and withholding that assistance could reduce Kyiv’s ability to counter deadly incoming ballistic missile attacks.

The US is Ukraine’s largest military aid supplier, providing 64.5 per cent of the support it has received so far.

With a handful of weapons transfers being halted by Washington, which countries are Ukraine’s next largest supporters?

Following the US is the UK at 14.5 per cent, then Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and a host of further European countries.

The UK has committed to spending £18 billion on Ukraine, including £13bn on military support and £5bn on non-military.

The EU, meanwhile, has provided huge tranches of humanitarian and financial support, but as an economic bloc it does not provide direct military support.

Ukraine has been supplied with British Storm Shadow missiles, F-16 fighter jets built in the US, Leopard 2 tanks from Germany – despite years of hesitation from Berlin – British challenger tanks, and Polish drones.

Russia has made incursions near two towns key to army supply routes in eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian military official said yesterday.

The advances of Russian forces on the frontline are matched by an intensification of drone and missile strikes on Kyiv and other cities, following signs that Washington’s support for Ukraine’s war effort is faltering.

“There are constant attacks with the intent of breaking through” to the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region at any cost, said Viktor Trehubov, a spokesperson for the Khortytsia group of forces.

Russia now has 111,000 soldiers in Ukraine’s Pokrovsk area, which it has been trying to seize since early last year, Ukraine’s top armed forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said last week, describing dozens of battles in the area every day.

A decision by Washington to halt some deliveries of various weapons including precision rocket artillery to Kyiv will worsen the situation on the ground for Ukraine’s forces, said Jack Watling, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank.

“The loss of these supplies will significantly degrade Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian forces beyond 30km (19 miles) from the front line and therefore allow Russia to improve its logistics,” Mr Watling said.

North Korea is set to send up to 30,000 additional troops to support Russia’s war effort against Ukraine, an intelligence assessment by Kyiv has claimed.

The troops could arrive in the coming months, CNN reported after seeing the assessment. It would be an addition to the roughly 12,000 sent in November who helped Russia push Ukrainian forces out of its Kursk region.

“There is a great possibility” the troops would fight in parts of Russian-occupied Ukraine, the report states. This would be an escalation after Pyongyang’s troops were previously restricted to fighting on Russian territory.

North Korean troops will be used “to strengthen the Russian contingent, including during the large-scale offensive operations”, the document adds. Moscow, it says, is capable of providing the necessary equipment and weaponry for the extra troops.

Only in late April 2025 did Vladimir Putin publicly admit North Korean troops had been deployed to fight alongside Russian forces.

The Ukrainian foreign and defence ministries have responded to the news that the US is set to halt some military aid to Kyiv.

Shipments of air defence missiles and other munitions have been halted due to concerns over the US’ own stockpiles at home.

Here is how the Ukrainian government has responded:

Ukrainian forces face a constant barrage of aerial glide bombs, drones and relentless assaults by small groups of Russian infantrymen in the Sumy region.

They endure the attacks to prevent Russian forces from being moved to other battlegrounds in the eastern Donetsk region.

Ukrainian forces intensified their own attacks in Sumy in April and even conducted a small offensive into Russia’s neighboring Kursk region to prevent up to 60,000 battle-hardened Russian forces from being moved to reinforce positions in the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Ukraine’s top army commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said last week.

If those troops had been moved, they could have increased the tempo of Russian attacks across the front line and stretched Ukrainian forces thin.

The strategy did not come without criticism. Commanders who were ordered to execute it complained that it resulted in unnecessary loss of life.

Russian forces have penetrated up to 7 kilometers (4 miles) into the northern Sumy region from different directions along the border.

Ukrainian forces are determined to keep them there to avoid freeing up Russian forces to fight in the east. So far they have succeeded, locking up to 10,000 Russian troops in the Glushkovsky district of the Kursk region alone, where Ukraine maintains a small presence after being mostly forced out by Russian and North Korean troops earlier in the year.

Vladimir Putin held a “substantial” phone call with French president Emmanuel Macron on the Iran-Israel conflict and Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, the first discussion between the two leaders since September 2022.

Mr Macron’s office said the call lasted two hours and that the French leader had called for a ceasefire in Ukraine and the start of negotiations on ending the conflict.

The Russian president reiterated his position that any possible peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine should have a “comprehensive and long-term character” and be based on “new territorial realities,” the Kremlin quoted Putin as saying.

Mr Putin has previously said Ukraine must accept Russia’s annexation of swaths of its territory as part of any peace deal. Mr Macron has said Ukraine alone should decide on whether or not to accept territorial concessions.

During Tuesday’s call, Mr Macron’s office said, “the president emphasised France’s unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

The pair aim to continue their discussions, the French president’s office said. He also spoke with Volodymyr Zelensky before and after the exchange.

The Kremlin has welcomed the news of a halt on US weapons shipments to Ukraine, saying the conflict would end sooner if fewer arms reached Ukraine.

“The fewer the number of weapons that are delivered to Ukraine, the closer the end of the Special Military Operation,” stated Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov yesterday, using the Moscow’s offiical terminology to describe its military invasion of Ukraine.

While Patriot missile stocks have long been a concern, holding up some of the other weaponry was puzzling, said retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, an analyst at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies in Washington.

“This is going to hurt Ukrainian civilians,” Admiral Montgomery said. “There is still an opportunity here for the president to rein in the Pentagon before real damage is done” he said.

The halt of some weapons shipments from the US is a blow to Ukraine at a time when Russia has ramped up its attacks, launching its biggest aerial raids of the war so far in recent weeks.

Talks to try and agree a ceasefire between the two sides, efforts championed by US president Donald Trump, have ground to a halt.

To date, the US has provided Ukraine more than $66bn worth of weapons and military assistance since Russia invaded its neighbour in February 2022.

Over the course of the war, the US has routinely pressed for allies to provide air defence systems to Ukraine. But many are reluctant to give up the high-tech systems, particularly countries in Eastern Europe that also feel threatened by Russia.

The US Defence Department did not provide details on what specific weapons were being held back.

“America’s military has never been more ready and more capable,” spokesperson Sean Parnell said, adding that the major tax cut and spending package moving through Congress “ensures that our weapons and defence systems are modernised to protect against 21st century threats for generations to come”.