Zelensky will meet with Biden in France….
Ukraine and Russia keep firing things at each other….
Ukraine has suffered due to the Russian infrastructure bombings….
VP Harris will attend a Ukraine ‘Peace’ conference in Swisserland ….
Ukraine is trying to open cooperation with China?
Hmmmm?
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday arrived in Qatar for talks with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. Zelenskiy said on X that he planned to discuss Qatar’s participation in a process of returning Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, as well as bilateral economic and security issues.
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The Kremlin has described comments by US treasury secretary Janet Yellen that Washington would not tolerate China increasing its exports of “dual-use” goods to Russia, and would respond with sanctions, as “blackmail”. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Washington’s tone was completely unacceptable and that Moscow stood in solidarity with Beijing.
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French president Emmanuel Macron is to host US president Joe Biden, British King Charles and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau on the shores of Normandy, representing the three main countries involved in the landings on 6 June 1944. Zelenskiy and about 200 surviving war veterans are also expected to attend. No Russian official representing Vladimir Putin’s government has been invited by the Élysée Palace due to the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.
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While in Normandy, Biden will sit down for talks with Zelenskiy about the war effort to repel Russian invaders, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard the presidential flight to Paris.
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Russian forces killed one person and injured five more in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which is suffering the most intense assaults from Moscow’s army, regional authorities said on Wednesday. “One person was killed and five were wounded. These are the consequences of bombardments this morning in the Donetsk region,” its governor Vadym Filashkin said on social media. Filashkin said one civilian was killed and four others injured near the town of Toretsk and that another person was injured by a separate aerial attack on the frontline town of Selydove.
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Ukrainian forces downed 22 drones launched by Russia overnight, reported the Kyiv Independent on Wednesday. Citing the Ukrainian air force’s morning update, the publication wrote that the drones were “reportedly launched from Cape Chauda in Russian-occupied Crimea and Russia’s Kursk oblast, located around 95 kilometers (around 60 miles) from the Russia-Ukraine border”. Local governor Filip Pronin also reported that a man was injured in Poltava oblast when a Russian drone hit an industrial facility.
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Ukraine on Wednesday welcomed an announcement from Washington that US vice-president Kamala Harris will attend an upcoming summit on Ukraine, despite earlier urging Biden’s participation. “It is important news that US vice-president Kamala Harris has been confirmed to participate in the peace summit to be held on 15-16 June in Switzerland,” the head of the Zelenskiy’s office, Andriy Yermak, said in a statement on social media.
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A committee tasked with probing Russian and Belarusian influence in Poland started work on Wednesday, prime minister Donald Tusk said, amid growing fears Moscow is trying to destabilise the country. The panel, made up of experts in security, the law and the media, will publish its first findings within two months, he said.
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Any French military instructors in Ukraine would be a “legitimate target” for Russian armed forces, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Tuesday during a tour of Africa. Lavrov made the remarks at joint news conference with the Republic of Congo’s foreign minister, Jean Claude Gakosso.
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Russia will send additional military supplies and instructors to Burkina Faso to help the west African country boost its defence capabilities and fight terrorism, Russian state media quoted Lavrov as saying on Wednesday. During a visit to Burkina Faso, Lavrov spoke of the two countries being “very closely engaged in all areas of cooperation, including the development of military and military-technical ties”.
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The White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday that the US is not planning to send US military trainers to Ukraine. “For our part, we’re not planning for a training mission in Ukraine,” Sullivan said. He added: “They need more air defences and we are working on that and they need a continued flow of weaponry which we will supply to them.”
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The Ukrainian first deputy foreign minister Andriy Sybiha discussed steps to intensify cooperation with the Chinese vice foreign minister Sun Weidong during a visit to Beijing, the Ukrainian ministry said on Wednesday. Sybiha also expressed hope for China’s participation in a Ukraine-led peace summit later in June saying it could be “a good opportunity to make a practical contribution to achieving a just and lasting peace”.
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Russia’s supreme court on Wednesday rejected an appeal by sociologist and activist Boris Kagarlitsky against his five-year prison sentence on charges of “justifying terrorism”, the Russian state news agency Tass reported. Kagarlitsky, 65, is a longtime political dissident and has spoken out repeatedly against the conflict in Ukraine….