Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,205
These are the key events on day 1,205 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here’s where things stand on Friday, June 13:
Fighting
- A two-year-old boy was killed by a Ukrainian drone strike in Russia’s southern Belgorod region and his grandmother and another adult were wounded, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
- The Ukrainian military said it struck the Rezonit electronics factory in Russia’s Moscow region, resulting in explosions.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces had shot down 260 Ukrainian drones over the past day, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for the rapid development and deployment of separate drone forces within Russia’s military. “We are currently creating unmanned systems troops as a separate branch of the military and we need to ensure their rapid and high-quality deployment and development,” Russian news agencies quoted Putin as saying.
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukrainian forces are gradually pushing Russian forces out of the border Sumy region, where Moscow has established a foothold in order to create a buffer zone with Russia’s western Kursk region.
- Ukraine and Russia have exchanged another group of ill and severely wounded prisoners of war. It was not immediately clear how many had been exchanged by each side. All of the Ukrainian soldiers need treatment, President Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.
Sanctions
- A Group of Seven (G7) meeting in Canada from June 15-17 will be about the extent to which the European Union and United States can align on sanctions against Russia, an unnamed German government official told the Reuters news agency.
- President Zelenskyy said he planned to attend the G7 summit and hoped to meet US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the meeting. Zelenskyy said he would discuss continued support for Ukraine, sanctions against Russia and financing for Kyiv’s reconstruction efforts.
- NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said Russia’s approach to peace talks with Ukraine is not helpful. “The Russians are sending this historian now twice to these talks in Istanbul, trying to start with the history of 1,000 years ago and then explaining more or less that Ukraine is at fault here. I think that’s not helpful,” Rutte said.
- At a meeting in Rome, foreign ministers from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Britain said they were ready to step up pressure on Russia, “including through further sanctions” involving the energy and banking sector, to weaken Moscow in its war with Ukraine.
Military aid
- Speaking during his fifth visit to Kyiv since the start of the war, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has said his country’s military support for Ukraine has reached 7 billion euros ($8.12bn) this year. Pistorius said a further 1.9 billion euros are pending parliamentary approval.
- Pistorius said Germany is not considering delivering Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine despite Kyiv’s repeated requests for the weapons.
Diplomacy
- US ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy will soon leave her post, her embassy confirmed, after serving through one of the most tense and difficult periods in relations between Moscow and Washington.