David Cameron’s attempt to persuade Donald Trump to permit the US Congress to push through $60bn in military aid for Ukraine appears to have failed, after the British foreign secretary was not even granted a meeting with congressional speaker Mike Johnson, who could in theory put the package to a vote. Johnson instead found himself assailed by the hard-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who renewed her threats of a snap vote to remove him from office for even countenancing a vote.
At a private dinner in Trump’s Florida base, Mar-a-Lago, Cameron had urged the former president to recognise that it was in the US interest that Vladimir Putin not be rewarded for seizing land from Ukraine. He also insisted that by the time of a Nato summit in Washington this July, plans would be in place for every Nato member to reach or pass the target of defence spending. He was hoping Trump would signal a change of course at least by easing the path to him meeting Johnson. But it might not have been enough.
Russia claimed that Ukraine attacked the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant for a third day with a drone but Ukrainian officials denied that Kyiv had anything to do with the attacks. Ukraine has denied it is behind a series of drone attacks on the plant over the past three days, including three on Sunday, which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said had endangered nuclear safety. The recent drone fell on the roof of the training centre, it said. No one was injured.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday in a sign of mutual support and shared opposition to Western democracies amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “We would like to express our highest appreciation and admiration for the successes that you have achieved over the years and, above all, over the last decade under your leadership,” Lavrov told Xi, according to Russian media.
Earlier Lavrov met China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, underlining the ever-friendly relationship between Moscow and Beijing. The two sides agreed to start a dialogue on Eurasian security and continue to cooperate in the fight against terrorism.
A woman and a child have been killed in the Russian village of Klimovov by shelling, the region’s governor has said. Aleksandr Bogomaz, the governor of the Bryansk Region, claimed artillery shelling was carried out by “Ukrainian terrorists”. Writing on Telegram, he said: “The blow was struck in the very centre of the village.”
Three people were killed in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region by Ukrainian shelling on Monday, the Russian-installed regional head Vladimir Saldo said on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s military spy agency GUR struck a main production facility of a Russian aviation factory in Voronezh region, a Ukrainian intelligence source told Reuters. The source did not provide details on scale of damage or weapons used for the attack.
Ukraine’s air defence systems destroyed all 20 attack drones that Russia launched targeting Ukraine, Ukrainian air force commander, Mykola Oleshchuk, said on Tuesday. The drones were destroyed over the Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Vinnytsia and Lviv regions, Oleshchuk said on the Telegram messaging app. He added that Russia also launched four missiles from the S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, but he did not say what happened to those missiles.
A Ukraine-launched, anti-ship Neptune missile was destroyed over the Black Sea, and four drones were downed over the Belgorod and Voronezh regions, the Russian Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday. “Duty air defence systems destroyed four Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the territories of the Belgorod (2 UAVs) and Voronezh (2 UAVs) regions, and (the Neptune) Ukrainian missile was destroyed over the Black Sea off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
An extraordinary meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors called by Russia to discuss attacks on the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine is due to be held on Thursday, three diplomats said. The International Atomic Energy Agency has yet to announce a date for the meeting. The board’s rules state that any country on it, including Russia, can call a meeting. Russia’s ambassador to the IAEA said on Monday that Russia had done so.
