Ukraine: Kharkiv hit by massive Russian aerial attack

Euronews

16 hours ago

The US administration has appointed Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich as both the next top US general in Europe as well as the SACEUR.
The appointment by Trump will be especially welcomed following media reports in recent months that the US was considering relinquishing the role of SACUER which has always been appointed by a US president to NATO.
"It's a very important decision and there is relief from NATO's point of view as it's a positive sign of American engagement and staffing," a US-based source familiar with the issue told Euronews.
US Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower was NATO's first SACEUR in 1951, and the role has remained with the US ever since.
'Upon completion of national confirmation processes, Grynkewich will take up his appointment as the successor to General Christopher G. Cavoli, United States Army, at a change of command ceremony at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium, expected in the summer of 2025,' a statement from NATO read.
Meanwhile, NATO defence ministers agreed to a significant surge in defence capability targets for each country, as well as moving to spending 5% of GDP on defence.
They've agreed that 3.5% of GDP would be used for 'core defence spending' - such as heavy weapons, tanks, air defence. Meanwhile 1.5% of GDP per year will be spent on defence- and security-related areas such as infrastructure, surveillance, and cyber. However, the full list of flexibility has not yet been negotiated.
'These targets describe exactly what capabilities Allies need to invest in over the coming years,' NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told journalists.
The US has been pushing NATO allies to dramatically increase spending, and expects to see 'credible progress' immediately, according to US Ambassador to NATO Mathew Whitaker.
'The threats facing NATO are growing and our adversaries are certainly not waiting for us to re-arm or be ready for them to make the first move,"
'We would prefer our Allies move out urgently on reaching the 5%,' he told journalists in a briefing on the margins of the meetings.
Ambassador Whitaker also said the US is 'counting on Europe' to the lead in providing Ukraine with the 'resources necessary to reach a durable peace' on the continent.
Mark Rutte reiterated NATO's recent warnings that Russia could strike NATO territory within the next couple of years. 'If we don't act now, the next three years, we are fine, but we have to start now, because otherwise, from three, four or five years from now, we are really under threat," he said, adding: "I really mean this. Then you have to get your Russian language course out, or go to New Zealand.'
'It's good to have continuity about the US in NATO, but with Ukraine it's a different story. I just don't think Trump really cares about Ukraine," the US-based source told Euronews.
'Trump just doesn't care about Europe – it doesn't make him richer or help him politically,' the source said.
Referring to the forthcoming NATO summit taking place next month in The Hague, the source said the presence of Ukraine at the summit "will likely be scaled back", since the US will say, "they're not members' so they don't need to be there".
A large Russian attack with drones and missiles has hit Ukraine's eastern city of Kharkiv on Saturday, killing at least three people and injuring 21, local officials said. The barrage — the latest in near daily widescale attacks — included aerial glide bombs that have become part of a fierce Russian onslaught in the three-year-war .
The intensity of the Russian attacks on Ukraine over the past weeks has further dampened hopes that the warring sides could reach a peace deal anytime soon — especially after Kyiv recently embarrassed the Kremlin with a surprise drone attack on military air bases deep inside Russia.
According to Ukraine's Air Force, Russia struck with 215 missiles and drones overnight, and Ukrainian air defenses shot down and neutralised 87 drones and seven missiles.
Several other areas in Ukraine were also hit, including the regions of Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, and the city of Ternopil, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.
'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.
Kharkiv's mayor Ihor Terekhov said the attack also damaged 18 apartment buildings and 13 private homes. Terekhov said it was 'the most powerful attack' on the city since the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Kharkiv's regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said two districts in the city were struck with three missiles, five aerial glide bombs and 48 drones. Among the injured were two children, a month and a half year old baby boy and a 14-year old girl, he added.
The attack on Kharkiv comes one day after Russia launched one of the fiercest missile and drone barrages on Ukraine, striking six Ukrainian territories and killing at least killing at least six people and injuring about 80. Among the dead were three emergency responders in Kyiv, one person in Lutsk and two people in Chernihiv.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Air Force said it shot down a Russian Su-35 fighter jet on the Kursk front inside Russia, the Ukrainian daily Ukrainskaia Pravda reported. No more details were given immediately.
U.S. President Donald Trump said this week that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, told him Moscow would respond to Ukraine's attack on Russian military airfields last Sunday with "Operation Spiderweb"
In a new statement bound to cause offense in Kyiv and amongst its allies, Trump told journalists on board Air Force One on Friday evening local time when asked about "Operation Spiderweb":
"They gave Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of them last night. That's the thing I didn't like about it. When I saw it I said 'Here we go, now it's going to be a strike'."
The European Union is readying a new round of sanctions against Russia to pile extra pressure on the Kremlin and pressure it to agree to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, a step that Western allies consider indispensable for serious peace negotiations.
Ursula von der Leyen has already provided an outline of what that package, the 18th since February 2022, is supposed to target: Russia's financial sector, the "shadow fleet" and the Nord Stream pipelines, which are currently non-operational.
On top of that, the president of the European Commission has pitched a downward revision of the price cap on Russian oil to further squeeze profits from worldwide sales, a crucial cash flow to sustain the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"We need a real ceasefire, we need Russia at the negotiating table, and we need to end this war. Pressure works, as the Kremlin understands nothing else," von der Leyen said earlier this week after meeting with US Senator Lindsey Graham.
But there's a catch: unlike other sanctions the bloc has imposed on Russia, such as the multiple export and import bans, the price cap has a political and practical dimension that exceeds the institutional sphere of Brussels and stretches across the ocean.
More specifically, to Washington, DC.
The price cap on Russian oil was introduced in December 2022 by the Group of Seven (G7) under the initiative of the Joe Biden administration. It was hailed as an ingenious, ground-breaking mechanism to mobilise the collective power of Western allies and cripple Russia's high-intensity war machine.
As part of the plan, the G7, together with Australia, passed laws prohibiting their domestic companies from providing services, such as insurance, financing and flagging, to Russian tankers that sold seaborne crude oil above a predetermined price.
The secret lay in market power: for decades, Western firms, particularly British ones, have dominated the sector of Protection and Indemnity (P&I), a type of insurance that gives shipowners broad protection and allows them to cover potentially huge costs from any accidental harm caused to the crew, their property or the environment.
Due to the inherent risks of moving oil in high waters, P&I is today considered the norm in maritime trade and a must-have to be accepted in a foreign port. By leveraging their leading firms, the G7 intended to create an extraterritorial effect that would cap the price of Russian oil not only within their jurisdictions but all around the world.
Following intense behind-the-scenes talks, the cap was set at $60 per barrel, a compromise between hard-line and cautious member states.
The strategy only worked up to a point however.
Although the price of Russian Urals oil gradually decreased, it consistently remained above the $60 mark, often exceeding the $70 threshold.
The blatant circumvention was attributed to the "shadow fleet" that Russia deployed at high sea. These tankers are so old and poorly kept that they fall outside P&I standards and rely on alternative, obscure insurance systems that escape G7 surveillance.
By the time the cap entered into force, Moscow "had spent months building a 'shadow fleet' of tankers, finding new buyers like India and China, and creating new payment systems, to the point that its oil does not need to be greatly discounted to sell," Luis Caricano, a professor at the London School of Economics, wrote in a recent analysis.
"What should have been a blow became a manageable problem," Caricano said.
With few sectors in the Russian economy left to sanction, Brussels has turned its sight to the cap as a means to tighten the screws on the Kremlin and secure a ceasefire in Ukraine. The Commission has reportedly pitched a revision between $50 and $45 per barrel, which the UK and Canada are believed to support.
However, the US has so far refrained from endorsing a lower price cap, raising the stakes ahead of crunch talks at the G7 summit in Alberta, scheduled for mid-June.
Now, a tough question emerges: Can the EU dare, and afford, to go it alone?
In the strictest legalistic sense, the EU could, indeed, establish a lower price cap on its own. After all, the G7, as an organisation, lacks regulatory powers: each ally amends its laws individually to fulfil a collective mission.
In this case, the EU introduced new legislation to prohibit EU companies – rather than, say, American or British companies – from servicing Russian tankers that bypassed the $60-per-barrel cap. Similarly, the bloc could now change the text to adjust that prohibition to a tighter price without waiting for other allies to reciprocate.
Here appears the first roadblock: any change to sanctions must be approved by a unanimous vote among member states. It is highly unlikely that all 27 countries would choose to move forward with a lower cap without having an explicit guarantee that Washington will follow suit. Hungary, in particular, has fully aligned itself with the Trump administration and could veto any proposal opposed by the White House.
Even if the bloc managed to overcome internal differences and agreed to a lower cap on its own, more formidable obstacles could impede its success.
The bloc's revised cap would have to co-exist with America's existing cap. This means that one side of the Atlantic Ocean would apply a $50-per-barrel limit while the other side would apply a $60-per-barrel limit, creating a cacophony for all actors involved.
"Different price caps across G7 countries could confuse maritime service providers and weaken overall enforcement," Petras Katinas, an energy analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), told Euronews.
"A solo move by the EU could cause friction within the Price Cap Coalition, damaging trust and coordination, both of which are crucial for keeping pressure on Russian oil revenues," Katinas added, warning the project could be rendered "largely symbolic".
The legislative chaos would immediately benefit the Kremlin, which has long sought to exploit loopholes to evade and undermine international sanctions.
Moscow, though, would also face hurdles: the continued crackdown on "shadow fleet" vessels has forced the country to increase its reliance on G7 insurance, which, in theory, could make it easier for the EU to apply the revised measure.
"If the EU alone decides to tighten the screws on the cap, it's an additional constraint on Russia's oil exports but not as tight as with a whole of G7 approach," said Elisabetta Cornago, a senior researcher at the Centre for European Reform (CER).
Besides practical snags and legal matters, there is geopolitics to consider.
One of the reasons why the G7 initiative has fallen short of expectations is that, as the name suggests, it has remained a G7-exclusive plan. Countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa have refused to play along and join the coalition. China and India openly buy Russian crude oil, sometimes to refine it and resell it under a different label.
Having the EU and the US go separate ways would further destabilise the Western alliance and create the impression of a transatlantic break-up. But for many, that is already a reality: the "Coalition of the Willing", born after Donald Trump unilaterally launched negotiations with Vladimir Putin, bears testament to the political divide.
"The price cap was a G7 + EU initiative, and so in its current form, I do not see any pathway in which the EU could adjust the cap without the support of the broader coalition, including the US," said Ben McWilliams, an affiliate fellow with Bruegel.
"That said, the EU is free to implement whatever measures it wants on its own domestic ships and insurance companies, which it could likely encourage the UK to join," McWilliams added. "So the EU can still move ahead – it would just need to be under a different institutional format than currently exists."