NATO chief reaffirms commitment to Ukraine as Russia strikes cathedral, maternity hospital
Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” to NATO vowed its chief as Russia continued its relentless drone missions striking a maternity hospital and a cathedral known as “the soul of all Ukraine.”
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NATO Secretary-general Mark Rutte has confirmed the intention to admit Ukraine still exists despite the objections of allies including America.
Mr Rutte spoke at Chatham House in London ahead of the upcoming June 24 NATO Summit at The Hague in the Netherlands.
“The irreversible path of Ukraine into NATO is there, and it is my assumption, it is still there after the Summit,” Mr Rutte said in response to a question from a journalist.
“Whether it is again in the communique or not, I think that’s not relevant, because all the language we previously agreed on is there until we decide it is not any longer there.”
Mr Rutte said a lack of presence on the NATO Summit agenda, which is focused heavily on spending and production, did not signal the alliance had turned its back on Kyiv.
“Of course, there will be Ukraine in the communique, no doubt, but don’t expect endless paragraphs of restating what we already said in the past. That’s all there, and it will stay there,” Mr Rutte said.
The NATO chief did acknowledge the objections, however.
“But not only the US has come out for a long time against Ukraine joining NATO,” he said.
“There have been other Allies too, take Hungary, take Slovakia, and others who have said we are against that.”
The speech came as Russia launched fresh drone and missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and port city of Odessa early on Tuesday local time, killing three people and hitting a maternity hospital, Ukrainian officials said.
Moscow has escalated its bombardments of Ukraine and Kyiv has retaliated with strikes deep inside Russian territory.
The barrage also damaged UNESCO world heritage site Saint Sophia Cathedral.
Ukrainian Culture Minister Mykola Tochytskyi condemned Russia targeting the holy site.
“The enemy struck at the very heart of our identity again,” Mr Tochytskyi wrote on Facebook adding the cathedral was “the soul of all Ukraine”.
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MOSCOW TAKES FIERY RETRIBUTION
Moscow fired a record 479 drones at Ukraine, including on the western region of Rivne that has been largely spared from attacks, Kyiv said also claiming an attack on a Russian factory hundreds of miles east of Moscow.
Russia has escalated its attacks across Ukraine in recent weeks, which Kyiv says demonstrate that the Kremlin has no intention of stopping its more than three-year invasion and is not serious about peace talks.
Moscow said on Monday local time that its strikes are continued retaliation for a bold Ukrainian attack on its bomber planes parked deep inside Russia, including in Siberia, that infuriated the Kremlin.
The overnight Russian attacks caused damage in several Ukrainian regions.
There were no reports of people killed or mass casualties.
“Enemy air strikes were recorded in 10 spots,” the Ukrainian air force said.
The mayor of the western city of Rivne, Oleksandr Tretyak, called it “the largest attack” on the region since the start of the war.
Regional governor Oleksandr Koval said 70 buildings – including private houses and a nursery – were damaged.
Russia said it had targeted an airfield near the village of Dubno in the Rivne region.
“This is one of the retaliatory strikes against terrorist attacks by the Kyiv regime on Russian military airfields,” its defence ministry said.
TEARS AS RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN POWS RETURN HOME
Russia and Ukraine on Monday local time (early Tuesday AEST) swapped a first group of captured soldiers – part of an agreement reached during peace talks that appeared to be in doubt over the weekend.
The deal to exchange prisoners of war and repatriate the bodies of killed fighters was the only concrete agreement reached at the talks, which have failed to lead to a breakthrough towards ending the three-year war.
“Today an exchange began, which will continue in several stages over the coming days,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.
He posted images of soldiers draped in Ukrainian flags, cheering and hugging.
“Among those we are bringing back now are the wounded, the severely wounded, and those under the age of 25,” he added.
Russia’s defence ministry also confirmed the swap was part of “agreements reached on 2 June in Istanbul”.
Neither side said how many prisoners were released.
After the talks in Istanbul, both said it would involve more than 1,000 captured soldiers, making it the largest exchange of the three-year war.
The swap itself had appeared in jeopardy over the weekend, when Moscow and Kyiv traded accusations of delaying and thwarting the planned exchange.
Zelensky accused Russia on Sunday of playing a “dirty, political game” and of not sticking to the agreed parameters – to free all captured soldiers that are sick, wounded or under the age of 25.
Russia said Kyiv was refusing to take back bodies of dead soldiers, 1,200 of which it said were waiting in refrigerated trucks near the border.
RUSSIA’S BOLD TERRITORIAL ESCALATION BEGINS
Russia said it was pushing into Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time in its three-year offensive, a significant territorial escalation.
Moscow claims to have annexed five regions of Ukraine, but has not made a formal claim over Dnipropetrovsk.
The defence ministry said forces from a tank unit had “reached the western border of the Donetsk People’s Republic and are continuing to develop an offensive in the Dnipropetrovsk region”.
The advance of Russian forces into yet another region of Ukraine is both a symbolic and strategic blow to Kyiv’s forces after months of setbacks on the battlefield.
There was no immediate response from Ukraine to Russia’s statement.
In more than a decade of conflict with Kremlin-backed separatists and the Russian army, Ukraine has never had to fight on the territory of the central region until now.
Dnipropetrovsk is an important mining and industrial hub for Ukraine and deeper Russian advances into the region could have a serious knock-on effect for Kyiv’s struggling military and economy.
It was estimated to have a population of around three million people before Russia launched its offensive. Around one million people lived in the regional capital, Dnipro.
Ukrainian military personnel previously said that Russia could advance relatively quickly in the largely flat region, given there are fewer natural obstacles or villages that could be used as defensive positions by Kyiv’s forces.
‘DIRTY, POLITICAL GAME’: ROW OVER POW SWAP
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of playing a “dirty, political” game over a planned prisoner swap supposed to start “next week”, after the two sides accused each other of delaying and thwarting an exchange agreed at peace talks in Istanbul.
“The Russian side, as usual, is trying to play a dirty, political, information game,” Mr Zelensky said in his evening address, adding that if Russia fails to comply with the deal to release more than 1000 captured soldiers, it “will cast great doubt” on diplomatic efforts to end the three-year war.
Mr Zelensky said Russia has not yet provided a list of prisoners to be exchanged despite an agreement reached during the talks in Turkey.
Earlier the same day, Russia’s Lieutenant General Alexander Zorin told Russian state media they had already delivered the first lot of 1212 Ukrainian bodies to the exchange site and the ball was in Ukraine’s court.
Ukraine and Russia on June 2 agreed to a fresh exchange of POWs. They also agreed to take back the bodies of some 6000 killed soldiers.
RUSSIA UNLEASHES MISSILES, DRONES AND BOMBS ON UKRAINE
Russia unleashed a barrage of missiles, drones and bombs across Ukraine early Saturday, killing at least five people as it retaliated for a brazen attack by Kyiv on air bases days earlier.
The Kremlin has accelerated its attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks, as direct negotiations have failed to broker an end to the three-year war or even a temporary truce.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga called for Kyiv’s western allies to punish Russia for refusing to halt its invasion.
“To put an end to Russia’s killing and destruction, more pressure on Moscow is required, as are more steps to strengthen Ukraine,” he said on social media.
The Kremlin said the Ukraine war was “existential” for Russia, after it launched a wave of retaliatory drone and missile strikes that killed three rescue workers in Kyiv and injured 49 others.
The comments are Moscow’s latest to dampen hopes for a breakthrough amid a flurry of meetings between Russian and Ukrainian delegations, as well as telephone calls between President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, aimed at stopping the fighting.
On Friday – days after the second round of Ukrainian-Russian ceasefire negotiations in Turkey ended without meaningful progress – the Kremlin cast its three-year invasion as nothing short of a battle for the “future” of Russia.
“For us it is an existential issue, an issue on our national interest, safety, on our future and the future of our children, of our country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Peskov’s comments came shortly after the Russian defence ministry said its forces had launched the “massive” missile and drone strike in “response” to “terrorist acts by the Kyiv regime.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to take aim at Mr Trump in a post on X.
“If someone is not applying pressure and is giving the war more time to take lives – that is complicity and accountability,” Mr Zelensky wrote.
“We must act decisively.”
UKRAINE STRIKES RUSSIAN ARMY BASE
Ukraine struck a Russian army base and is believed to have destroyed a missile launcher as President Donald Trump is said to have privately praised “Russia’s Pearl Harbour” as “bad a**”.
The June 5 strike was aimed at Russian missile troops near the city of Klintsy in Russia’s Bryansk Oblast, according to a post on Telegram, by the General Staff of the Armed Forces in Ukraine.
Moscow’s troops had attempted to fire on Ukrainian territory — likely aiming at Kyiv — before it was hit, the agency said.
One Iskander missile launcher detonated, and two more were most likely damaged, they reported.
The agency added that there were no civilian casualties, and assessments of Russian losses are ongoing.
The Iskander is a short-range ballistic missile system used by Russia for precision strikes against military and infrastructure targets.
It comes after a surprise Ukraine drone attack on June 1 destroyed $11bn of Vladimir Putin’s war planes in Russia.
TRUMP PRAISED ‘BADA**’ UKRAINE DRONE ATTACK ON RUSSIA
President Donald Trump is said to have privately described Kyiv’s June 1 drone attack on Russia as “bada**”, Axios reported, but he was concerned it would make his truce effort more difficult.
Mr Trump said Thursday he had asked the Russian President to not retaliate after Ukraine’s drone attacks on its air bases.
“I said ‘don’t do it, you shouldn’t do it, you should stop it,’” Mr Trump told reporters, adding that Mr Putin had told him he had “no choice” but to respond.
In a White House meeting on Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged President Trump to put more pressure on Russia to bring an end to its three-year-old war against Ukraine
“You know that we gave support to Ukraine and that we are looking for more pressure on Russia,” Merz told the US leader.
The United States also called for an end to North Korea’s co-operation with Russia after leader Kim Jong-un vowed “unconditional support” to Moscow in the Ukraine war.
“North Korea’s military deployment to Russia, and any support provided by the Russian Federation to the DPRK in return, must end,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told reporters, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
NATO CLOSES IN ON AGREEMENT TO MEET TRUMP SPENDING DEMAND
US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said Thursday that NATO allies were close to a deal on spending ahead of a summit later this month, in a bid to satisfy Mr Trump’s demand that it reach five per cent of GDP.
Mr Trump is pressuring alliance members to announce a massive boost in the target for their military budgets at the June 24-25 summit in the Netherlands.
“Countries in there are well exceeding two per cent and we think very close, almost near consensus, on a five per cent commitment for NATO in The Hague later this month,” Mr Hegseth said after meeting his NATO counterparts in Brussels.
The threat from Russia after more than three years of war in Ukraine and worries about US commitment to Europe’s security under Mr Trump are driving up military budgets in Europe.
It comes as the United States on Thursday named an American general as NATO’s new top commander in Europe, allaying fears Washington could relinquish a key role it has held since the alliance was founded.
Airforce general Alexus Grynkewich was nominated by Mr Trump and approved by NATO’s 32 allies, the US defence department and NATO said in statements.
– with AFP
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