As the war enters its 867th day, here are the main developments.
Here is the situation as of Thursday, July 11, 2024:
Struggle
- Russia launched 20 drones and five missiles toward Ukraine, killing two people in the Black Sea region of Odessa, damaging port infrastructure and hitting an energy facility in the northwest, Ukrainian officials said.
- A new Russian missile strike on the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine killed one person and wounded eight others, the regional governor said.
- The Ukrainian military has denied Russian claims that its forces have captured the village of Yasnobrodivka in the eastern Donetsk region.
- Ukraine’s prosecutor general has accused Russian forces of killing two Ukrainian servicemen captured in June in the partially occupied Zaporizhia region in the southeast of the country.
- In Russia, the governor of the Belgorod region said one man was killed and seven others injured in a Ukrainian attack on the area on the border with Ukraine.
- Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) also said it had foiled a planned “terrorist attack” on the country’s only aircraft carrier and arrested a Ukrainian special services agent.
Politics and diplomacy
- NATO’s 32 members have formally declared that Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to membership in the Western military alliance, offering a simple but more binding assurance of protection once the war with Russia is over. “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” the alliance members said in a statement after a summit in Washington. “We will continue to support Ukraine on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”
- In their statement, the NATO allies also called China a “decisive facilitator” of Russia’s war effort in Ukraine and said Beijing continues to pose systematic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security.
- The United States has announced it will begin deploying long-range missiles in Germany in 2026, in a bid to counter what the allies call a growing threat to Europe from Russia. “We cannot rule out the possibility of an attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of allies,” the two countries said in a statement.
Military aid
- NATO pledged to provide Ukraine with at least 40 billion euros ($43.28 billion) in military aid over the next year, but has fallen short of a multi-year commitment requested by alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit, said the first batch of US-built F-16 fighter jets was in transfer to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands and will fly over Ukrainian skies this summer.
- The Netherlands also announced additional munitions for F-16 fighter jets worth a total of 300 million euros ($324.6 million) for Ukraine. The new Dutch commitment is in addition to the 150 million euros ($162.4 million) worth of F-16 munitions it has already promised to deliver.
- NATO is also expected to announce the creation of a centralized command that will take on a larger role than the United States in coordinating training and arms deliveries to Ukraine.
- Separately, NATO chief Stoltenberg said a new U.S. air defense base in northern Poland, designed to detect and intercept ballistic missile attacks as part of a broader NATO missile shield, is now ready for deployment.
