Rising Kyiv death toll heightens Europe's concerns over Russia

Euronews

7 hours ago

Emergency workers recovered more bodies on Wednesday from the rubble of a nine-story Kyiv apartment building destroyed by a Russian missile, bringing the death toll from the latest attack on the Ukrainian capital to 28.
The building in Kyiv's Solomianskyi district took a direct hit and collapsed in what was the deadliest Russian attack on the city this year. Authorities said that 23 of those killed were inside.
While sniffer dogs searched for buried victims, rescuers used cranes, excavators and even their hands to clear debris from the site.
The attack overnight on Monday into Tuesday was part of a sweeping barrage as Russia once again sought to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences. More than 440 drones and 32 missiles were launched - one of the biggest bombardments on the capital since the war began in 2022.
Russia has launched a summer offensive along parts of the roughly 1,000-kilometre frontline and has intensified long-range attacks that have struck urban residential areas.
At the same time, US-led peace efforts have failed to gain traction, while Middle East tensions and US trade tariffs are diverting global focus away from Ukraine's calls for greater diplomatic and economic pressure on Russia.
Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) says that Russia poses a direct threat to the bloc through acts of sabotage and cyberattacks, while its massive military spending suggests Moscow also plans to use the armed forces elsewhere in the future.
'Russia is already a direct threat to the European Union....This is a long-term plan for a long-term aggression. You don't spend that much on military if you do not plan to use it,' Kallas told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, as she listed a series of Russian airspace violations, provocative military exercises, and attacks on energy grids, pipelines and undersea cables.
Kallas noted that Russia is already spending more on defence than the EU's 27 nations combined, and this year will invest more 'on defence than its own health care, education and social policy combined.'
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said that Russia is producing as many weapons and ammunition in three months as the 32 allies together make in a year. He believes that Russia could be in a position to launch an attack on a NATO ally by the end of the decade.
Concern is mounting in Europe that Russia could try to test NATO's Article 5 security guarantee, the pledge that an attack on any one of the allies would be met with a collective response from all 32.
In 2021, NATO allies acknowledged that significant and cumulative cyberattacks might, in certain circumstances, also be considered an armed attack that could lead them to invoke Article 5, but so far no action has been taken.
The conflict in the Middle East will further worsen the global economic outlook, already strained by ongoing trade disputes, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (FMI) has told Euronews in an interview.
'Being hit by a trade war has consequences. We have projected a decline in global growth by half a percentage point,' Kristalina Georgieva said, adding: 'What we witness now is more turbulence in the Middle East, which adds to uncertainty and therefore is bad for business.'
Since Donald Trump's return to power as leader of the world's largest economy, international trade has been disrupted by a wave of tariffs imposed by the US administration on its global partners.
Mexico and Canada were the initial targets, followed by a prolonged standoff between the US and China, which saw reciprocal tariffs between the pair soar to more than 100%.
On 2 April— a day he dubbed "Liberation Day"—Trump imposed tariffs on a wide range of countries, including the EU. He then declared a 90-day truce, set to expire on 9 July.
Negotiations are currently underway with the EU, which currently faces tariffs of 50% on steel and aluminum, 25% on cars, and 10% on all its exports to the US.
However, the director of the IMF, which is responsible for financial stability across the world and facilitate global trade, admitted that 'the global economy has proven to be remarkably resilient to shocks, and that resilience continues.'
In her view, economic uncertainty is becoming the new normal.
'We live in a more shock-prone world, a world of higher uncertainty,' Georgieva said, adding: 'For this world, countries need to work hard to be more resilient. Do reforms at home that would make your economies stronger.'
Georgieva, a former vice-president of the European Commission, also expressed optimism with the economic outlook despite the bleak growth figures.
She considered that the recent trade agreement between China and the US and the deal Trump has brokered with the UK to be good signs, saying: 'We are in a better place.'
In an uncertain context, she also sees opportunities to be seized—an outlook shared by the European Commission, which is pursuing a strategy of diversifying its trading partners by expanding the number of trade agreements worldwide.
'In Europe, we see an increase in bilateral and plurilateral agreements, which I expect to be a big feature of the future of trade globally,' she told Euronews, adding that it is a great moment for Europe, 'a defender of rules-based' global trade exchanges.