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Here’s where things stand on Wednesday 9 July 2025:

Fighting

• Ukraine’s air force says Russia launched a record 728 drones and 13 missiles overnight. Air defence systems destroyed 718 of the drones and seven missiles, the air force said.
• A Ukrainian attack on a beach in the Russian city of Kursk killed three people and injured seven, including a five-year-old boy, acting regional Governor Alexander Khinshtein said. The dead included a Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard) officer, Russia’s TASS news agency reported.
• TASS reported that a Ukrainian drone attack on Rylsk, also in the Kursk region, hit the Central District Hospital, an ambulance building and an administrative building, injuring two people.
• The acting mayor of Kursk, Sergey Kotlyarov, said that debris from a downed Ukrainian drone damaged several houses in the Zheleznodorozhny district.
• The governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Vadym Filashkin, said Russia’s attacks killed three people and injured 10 more in the region.
• Four people were killed and four others injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Sumy region, the regional administration said.
• In Ukraine’s Kherson region, one person was killed and four others injured, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
• The governor of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region said that Russian attacks injured 20 people and damaged at least 64 homes.
• The Kyiv Independent reported that explosions were heard in Kyiv at about midnight on Wednesday after Ukraine’s Air Force issued a missile alert for the entire country.
• A jury in the United Kingdom convicted three men of arson in an attack on an east London warehouse that was storing equipment destined for Ukraine. Prosecutors said agents from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, acting on behalf of Russian military intelligence, planned the attack.
• Russia detained media activist Pavel Andreev, accusing him of being “in touch with agents of NATO countries and organisations that foreign secret services use to cover up their intelligence and subversive activities in Russia”, TASS reported, citing Russia’s FSB security service.
• Ukraine asked the organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague to investigate Russian forces’ alleged use of banned toxic munitions following a report from Dutch and German intelligence agencies.

Politics and diplomacy

• US President Donald Trump said he is tired of the meaningless “b*******” from Russian President Vladimir Putin during negotiations.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine will “intensify” talks with the United States on air defence.
• Europe will never abandon Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an address to the UK parliament, adding: “We will fight till the very last minute in order to get the ceasefire… because this is our security and our principles together which are at stake in Ukraine.”

France’s Macron begins UK state visit, calls for support on Gaza, Ukraine

Emmanuel Macron’s three-day trip is the first state visit to the UK by a European Union head of state since Brexit

French President Emmanuel Macron has called for British support to recognise the state of Palestine and help defend Ukraine as he arrived in the United Kingdom for the first state visit by a European leader since Brexit.

Macron, in a rare address to both houses of the British parliament on Tuesday, celebrated the return of closer ties between France and the UK, and said the two countries must work together to end “excessive dependencies” on the United States and China.

The French president’s three-day trip came at the invitation of King Charles III. Macron was earlier greeted by the royal family, including heir-to-the-throne Prince William and his wife, Princess Catherine, before they travelled in horse-drawn carriages to Windsor Castle.

Macron then set out to parliament where he said the two countries needed to come together to strengthen Europe, including on defence, immigration, climate and trade.

“The United Kingdom and France must once again show the world that our alliance can make all the difference,” the French president said in English. “The only way to overcome the challenges we have, the challenges of our times, will be to go together hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder.”

Macron also promised that European countries would “never abandon Ukraine” in its war against invading Russian forces, while demanding an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.

He then urged the UK to work together with France on recognising a Palestinian state, calling it “the only path to peace”.

“With Gaza in ruin and West Bank being on a daily basis attacked, the perspective of a Palestinian state has never been put at risk as it is,” Macron said. “And this is why this solution of the two states and the recognition of the State of Palestine is… the only way to build peace and stability for all in the whole region.”

He  listed the geopolitical threats France and the UK face, and argued they should also be wary of the “excessive dependencies of both the US and China”, saying they needed to “de-risk our economies and our societies from this dual dependency”.

Macron went on to set out the opportunities of a closer union, saying they should make it easier for students, researchers and artists to live in each other’s countries, and seek to work together on artificial intelligence and to protect children online.

The speech symbolised the improvement in relations sought by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s centre-left Labour Party, as part of a broader reset of ties with European allies following the rancour over London’s departure from the European Union.

‘Entente Amicale’

Later on Tuesday evening, King Charles hosted a banquet for the Macrons at Windsor Castle, with 160 guests, including politicians, diplomats and celebrities such as Mick Jagger and Elton John.

Charles used his speech at the opulent state banquet to christen a new era of friendly relations, upgrading the “entente cordiale” – an alliance dating from 1904 that ended centuries of military rivalries – to an “entente amicale”.

“As we dine here in this ancient place, redolent with our shared history, allow me to propose a toast to France and to our new entente. An entente not only past and present, but for the future – and no longer just cordiale, but now amicale,” the king said.

The UK and France marked the three-day visit with an announcement that French nuclear energy utility EDF would invest 1.1 billion pounds ($1.5bn) in a nuclear power project in eastern England.

The two also said France would lend the UK the Bayeux Tapestry, allowing the 11th-century masterpiece to return for the first time in more than 900 years, in exchange for London loaning Paris Anglo-Saxon and Viking treasures.

Politics will take centre stage on Wednesday, when Macron sits down for talks with Starmer on migration, defence and investment.

Despite  tensions over post-Brexit ties and how to stop asylum seekers from crossing the English Channel in small boats, the UK and France have been working closely to create a planned military force to support Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire with Russia.

The two leaders will dial in to a meeting of the coalition on Thursday “to discuss stepping up support for Ukraine and further increasing pressure on Russia”, Starmer’s office confirmed on Monday.

They  will speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, according to the French presidency.

Starmer is hoping the UK’s support for Ukraine will help persuade Macron to take a different approach to stopping people smuggling, with London wanting to try out an asylum seekers’ returns deal.

This would involve the UK deporting one asylum seeker to France in exchange for another with a legitimate case to be in the country. A record number of asylum seekers have arrived in the UK on small boats in the first six months of this year. Starmer, whose party is trailing Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK party in the polls, is under pressure to find a solution.

France has previously refused to sign such an agreement, saying the UK should negotiate an arrangement with all EU countries.

Trump’s latest Ukraine-Russia U-turn: Why is the US resuming arms supplies?

In typically brash tones, the US leader announced the move while decrying the ‘bullsh-t thrown at us by Putin’.

Former Ukrainian serviceman Andriy Hetman says he has stopped paying attention to United States President Donald Trump’s decisions to halt and resume military aid to Ukraine.

“This time, [Trump] realised he’ll look bad, weak, he’ll look like he’s on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s side,” the 29-year-old, who was demobilised after being wounded in the eastern Donbas region in March, told Al Jazeera.

Trump said on Monday that he reversed the White House’s decision days earlier on July 1 to “pause” arms supplies to Kyiv, including crucially important air defence interceptors and precision-guided bombs and missiles.

In February, he froze aid after a falling out with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – but resumed the supplies weeks later.

Monday’s resumption followed Russia’s intensified attacks. In recent weeks, Ukrainians have endured hours-long overnight drone and missile assaults on key cities that have killed and wounded civilians – and kept millions awake.

“We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to [so that Ukrainians] have to be able to defend themselves,” Trump told a news conference in Washington, DC.

On Tuesday, Trump went further. He hinted that the Russian leader has flattered him for months but kept coming up with lists of impossible demands and ignoring calls for a ceasefire.

“We get a lot of bullsh-t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told a news conference on Tuesday. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

Putin’s  demands include the “demilitarisation” and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine that is allegedly ruled, according to the Kremlin, by a “neo-Nazi junta”.

Moscow also wants the West to lift multi-layered sanctions that are beginning to hobble Russia’s economy, and the return of assets frozen in Western banks. On Tuesday, Trump said he is considering additional sanctions on Russia.

Boosting air defence

The US weapons Kyiv needs the most are air defence missiles.

In June, Russia launched a record 5,438 drones, a quarter more than in March, according to the Ukrainian air force.

More than half of the drones are laden with explosives, while the rest are decoys Ukrainians waste their missiles on, or reconnaissance drones that track down locations of air defence teams and Western-supplied Patriot systems.

The Russian drones – and the cruise or ballistic missiles that follow them – hit civilian areas, causing more casualties every month.

After multiple tactical adjustments, Russian drones can now fly several kilometres above ground, making them unreachable to air defence teams with machineguns – and making Kyiv even more dependent on US-made air defence weaponry.

“The dependence rose dramatically in comparison with 2022, because at the time Ukrainian forces had many Soviet-era [air defence] systems and missiles that were depleted by the end of 2023,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.

“Yes, US supplies are of paramount importance so that Russia doesn’t blow all of Ukraine’s rear areas with its drones,” he said.

Another backbone of Ukrainian forces is US-made HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) multiple rocket launchers that have been lethally effective in destroying Russian command posts and arms depots.

“There have been no analogues to HIMARS,” Mitrokhin said.

‘Trumpian hills’

Trump’s U-turns regarding the aid resumptions are both personal and administrative.

They stem from his own “mood swings” and the lack of systemic, coordinated efforts of his administration, according to Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Kyiv-based Penta think tank.

“I’d call them ‘Trumpian hills’,” he said.

The decision on Monday to resume aid is a response to Putin’s apparent reluctance to resume peace talks while adding pressure on Moscow’s forces at the front line.

The main reason for the war’s escalation is that the Kremlin has concluded that the US will no longer help Ukraine, giving Russia a clear chance to win the war, Fesenko said.

The Republican Party had also urged Trump to end the aid freeze that made Washington look “morally dissonant”, he added.

However, arms supplies may become “systemic” and long-term if Western nations led by the United Kingdom and France agree to foot the bill, he said.

Later this week, a 31-nation-strong “Coalition of the Willing” that includes most of Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, will convene in Rome for a conference on peace settlement and recovery in Ukraine.

‘Not a serious politician’

Meanwhile, Trump’s U-turn did not catch Moscow by surprise.

The Kremlin is used to Trump’s mood swings and “don’t think anything new” about him, a former Russian diplomat said.

“Trump is not a serious politician, he contradicts himself,” Boris Bondarev, who quit his Foreign Ministry job in protest against Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.

“That’s why [the Kremlin] needs to follow his actions and try not to anger him too much, meanwhile continuing its own course – to advance on the front line and to force Ukraine and the West to accept [Moscow’s] conditions,” he said.

Meanwhile, Russian forces keep pushing in the northern Ukrainian region of Sumy, where their earlier advance stalled in June.

They have also occupied several hundred square kilometres in the southeast and south, but failed to regain a Ukrainian toehold in the western Russian region of Kursk.

Top Russian officials have refrained from commenting on the aid resumption, while minor figures offered a tried-and-tested explanation – the West’s alleged centuries-old enmity towards Russia.

“The trick is old and ineffective, but the West hasn’t come up with other ways of influencing Russia in the past 1,000 years – or maybe they didn’t want to,” Dmitry Belik, a Russian politician in the Russia-annexed Crimean city of Sevastopol, told the RIA Novosti news agency on Tuesday.

Vladimir Rogov, a top official on the “integration” of Russia-occupied Ukrainian regions, told Russian media, “Trump wants Russia to do the impossible – give up its national interests and stop pursuing the [war] without any clear guarantees of [Moscow’s] security.”

Top European rights court says Russia broke international law in Ukraine

Judges also rule that Russia was behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014 which killed 298 people.

Europe’s top human rights court has ruled that Russia violated international law in Ukraine, marking the first time an international court has found Moscow responsible for human rights abuses since the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Judges at the European Court of Human Rights also ruled on Wednesday that Russia was behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), the first time Moscow was named by an international court as being responsible for the 2014 tragedy that killed 298 people.

Judges  at the Strasbourg court are ruling on four cases brought by Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia, encompassing a wide range of alleged human rights violations relating to the conflict, including the downing of MH17 and the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

Any decision will be largely symbolic. The complaints were brought before the court’s governing body expelled Russia in 2022, following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

But families of the victims of the MH17 disaster see the decision as an important milestone in their 11-year quest for justice.

The Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down on July 17, 2014, using a Russian-made Buk missile fired from territory in eastern Ukraine controlled by separatist Moscow-aligned rebels. All 298 passengers and crew were killed, including 196 Dutch citizens.

In May, the United Nations’ aviation agency found Russia responsible for the disaster.

Wednesday’s rulings won’t be the last from the EHCR dealing with the war. Kyiv has other cases pending against Russia, and there are nearly 10,000 cases brought by individuals against the Kremlin.

Record barrage

The court’s ruling comes after Russia targeted Ukraine with a record 728 drones overnight.

On Wednesday, Ukraine said eight civilians were killed in Russian drone and bombing attacks in the war-scarred Donetsk region in the east of the country – five in the town of Rodynske and three in the town of Kostiantynivka.

An  overnight Ukrainian drone attack on a beach in the Russian city of Kursk reportedly killed three people, including a Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard) officer, leaving seven wounded.

The latest exchanges of fire came after United States President Donald Trump pledged to send more defensive weapons to Kyiv, U-turning on a previous announcement.

Trump, demonstrating growing impatience with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Tuesday that he was considering steep sanctions on Moscow. He also accused the Russian leader of talking “bullsh*t” on Ukraine.

Asked about Trump’s comment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Trump had a “harsh rhetorical style”, insisting that Moscow was “fairly calm about it”.

Peskov also questioned the veracity of a CNN report published Tuesday, which cited audio recordings of Trump telling a private gathering of donors in 2024 that he had sought to deter Putin from attacking Ukraine by threatening to “bomb the sh*t out of Moscow” in retaliation.

“Whether it is fake or not, we do not know either. There is a lot of fake news these days,” said Peskov.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in the meantime, said on Wednesday that the diplomatic means to resolve the war in Ukraine have been exhausted and promised to continue supporting Kyiv’s fight against “Russian aggression”.

Pope Leo met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, marking the second in-person encounter between the two leaders since Leo was elected as head of the global Catholic Church in May.

According to a Vatican statement, the pair “discussed the ongoing conflict and the urgent need for a just and lasting peace”.

Both sides raised again the possibility of the Vatican hosting peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv – an idea dismissed by Russia in May.

Zelenskyy is in Italy to attend a July 10-11 international aid conference on Ukraine.

Trump says he is considering Russia sanctions, not happy with Putin

US president voices frustration over the continuing war in Ukraine, says Vladimir Putin is ‘killing a lot of people’.

United States President Donald Trump says he is not happy with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, over the continuation of the war in Ukraine and suggests he is considering additional sanctions against Moscow.

“We get a lot of b******t thrown at us by Putin,” Trump said during a meeting with his cabinet at the White House on Tuesday. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

Putin is “killing a lot of people” and a lot of them are his soldiers and Ukraine’s forces, Trump added.

When asked about his interest in a bill proposed by the Senate for further sanctions on Russia, Trump said: “I’m looking at it very strongly.”

But he refused to preview his plans further when asked whether he will act on his frustration with Putin.

“I wouldn’t be telling you. Don’t we want to have a little surprise?” Trump told reporters. He then pivoted to discussing the lengthy planning for last month’s US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Trump made the comments as French President Emmanuel Macron said in an address to the British Parliament that Europe will “never abandon Ukraine”.

Macron stressed that the United Kingdom and France will work with a “coalition of the willing” to support Ukraine.

“We will fight till the very last minute in order to get the ceasefire, in order to start the negotiations to build this robust and sustainable peace, because this is our security and our principles together which are at stake in Ukraine,” Macron said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump said his administration will send more weapons to Ukraine, adding that the new shipments would be primarily comprised of “defensive weapons”.

According  to US media reports, Washington had paused the transfer of certain missiles and munitions to Ukraine due to its dwindling weapons stockpiles. The Pentagon said it was conducting a “capability review” of US weapons.

As a candidate, Trump promised to swiftly end the war in Ukraine. But so far, his diplomatic efforts – including several phone calls with Putin – have failed to stem the violence.

Ukrainian and Russian officials met for direct talks in Turkiye in May and agreed to a prisoner swap, but the two sides have not been able to reach a temporary truce, let alone a lasting ceasefire.

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow is waiting for Ukraine to propose possible dates for further negotiations. “As soon as dates are agreed – and we hope that it will be done – we will make an announcement,” he said.

Russia has been stepping up its long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks and has been slowly grinding its way forward along several parts of the Ukrainian front line in recent months.

On Monday, it announced that it had captured the Ukrainian village of Dachne in the Dnipropetrovsk region.