US Senator Lindsey Graham disputed Russian criticism of his support for Ukraine, saying he had simply praised the spirit of Ukrainians in resisting a Russian invasion with assistance provided by Washington.

In a joint statement early Sunday, the US and Saudi Arabia called for an extension of the current truce which expires at 9:45pm local time on Monday.

Ukraine officials said air defence systems downed 52 drones as city prepared to mark Kyiv Day; many residents stood on balconies, some screaming offensives at Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine’s military intelligence has said that Russian forces would strike the Zaporizhzhia plant and then report a radioactive leak, with the aim of disrupting a looming Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The refusal comes soon after a row between Lula and Ukraine’s Zelensky at the G7 summit in Japan, where a planned meeting between the pair fell through.

The injured included two boys aged 3 and 6, who have been hospitalised along with 19 others.

Comments by Russia’s former president and the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff underlined forecasts that the war in Ukraine is set to drag on, with Kyiv nor Moscow positioned to win a clear-cut victory.

The UN’s head of peacekeeping operations said that a divided Security Council was hampering the work of the so-called Blue Helmet forces.

It marks the Kremlin’s first deployment of such bombs outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

Li Hui, who leads China’s peacemaking effort, is told in Brussels that the EU expects China to press Russia to ‘immediately and unconditionally’ withdraw from Ukraine.

Yevgeny Prigozhin has begun pulling out his fighters after claiming to have fully captured the destroyed city at the weekend.

The move came after Seoul’s initial resistance toward arming Kyiv.

Moscow says it routed militants in the Belgorod region, but Russian Volunteer Corps commander Denis Kapustin says his side suffered only light casualties.

The figure was in stark contrast with claims from Moscow that it lost just over 6,000 troops in the war.

The donation, which also includes 30,000 food rations, comes as Japan’s government is seeking to ease its military equipment transfer policy.

Assad’s return to Arab League and Zelensky’s appearance mark efforts by Arab states to remain diplomatically neutral in the West’s tensions with Russia and China.

A two-day incursion from Ukraine into Russia’s western borderlands could force the Kremlin to divert troops from front lines as Kyiv prepares a major counteroffensive, and deal Moscow a psychological blow, according to military analysts.

Foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that ‘at the beginning everybody is reluctant, at the end the decision is to provide military support because it is absolutely needed’.

Russia had pressed on with ‘counterterrorism operation’ after cross-border incursion from Ukraine. The attack was by anti-Kremlin Russians, according to Kyiv military sources.

The meeting will be the first significant international event in Kashmir since New Delhi stripped the Muslim-majority region of semi-autonomy in 2019.

Whether Bakhmut has fallen or not, Moscow is being pulled deeper into an ever more costly fight for the frontline city as Kyiv readies a major offensive, experts said.

Brazil’s president said a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Japan fell through because the Ukrainian leader was late.

‘I’ll tell you openly: Photographs of ruined Hiroshima absolutely remind me of Bakhmut and other similar settlements. Nothing left alive, all the buildings ruined,’ Zelensky said as he attended the G7 summit in Japan on Sunday.

Moscow lashed out after the leaders of the world’s richest democracies said they would not back down from supporting Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s surprise trip to Japan has been a major diplomatic coup, putting his country and Russia’s invasion at the top of the agenda.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visit to Temple Mount comes days after Israelis marked Jerusalem Day, which celebrates Israel’s capturing of east Jerusalem in 1967.

The new agreement calls for a seven-day ceasefire to begin 48 hours after signing. Numerous previous ceasefire agreements were violated. The fighting has displaced more than a million people.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s comments were misunderstood, his spokesman Serhiy Nykyforov said after a statement had been widely interpreted as confirmation that the city had fallen to the Kremlin’s forces.

Prosecutor Karim Khan, a Briton, issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in March on the war crime accusation of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children.