As the war enters its 867th day, here are the top developments.
This is the situation on Thursday, July 11, 2024:
Struggle
- Russia launched 20 drones and five missiles at Ukraine, killing two people in the Black Sea region of Odesa, damaging port infrastructure and hitting an energy facility in the northwest, Ukrainian officials said.
- Another Russian missile attack in the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine has killed one person and wounded eight others, the regional governor said.
- Ukraine's military has denied Russian claims that its forces had captured the village of Yasnobrodivka in the eastern Donetsk region.
- Ukraine's prosecutor general has accused Russian forces of killing two Ukrainian servicemen who were captured in June in the partially occupied southeastern region of Zaporizhia.
- In Russia, the governor of the Belgorod region said one man was killed and seven wounded in a Ukrainian attack in the area, which lies on the border with Ukraine.
- Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) also said it had foiled a plot for a “terrorist attack” on the country's only aircraft carrier and detained a Ukrainian special services agent.
Politics and diplomacy
- NATO’s 32 members formally declared that Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path toward membership in the Western military alliance, offering a simple but more binding guarantee of protection once its war with Russia ends. “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” the alliance members said in a statement after a summit in Washington, D.C. “We will continue to support it on its irreversible path toward full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”
- The NATO allies, in their statement, also called China a “decisive enabler” of Russia's war effort in Ukraine and said Beijing continues to pose systematic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security.
- The United States announced it will begin deploying longer-range missiles in Germany in 2026, in a step aimed at countering what allies call the growing threat Russia poses to Europe. “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 has pledged to provide Ukraine with at least 40 billion euros ($43.28 billion) in military aid over the next year, but fell short of the multi-year commitment requested by the alliance's Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg.
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit, said the first batch of American-built F-16 fighter jets are being transferred to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands and will fly over Ukrainian skies this summer.
- The Netherlands also announced additional ammunition 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) of ammunition for the F-16s it had already promised to deliver.
- NATO is also expected to announce the establishment of a centralized command that will take on a greater U.S. role in coordinating training and weapons 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, was now mission-ready.
