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US president says Russia is testing nuclear weapons ‘underground’ and threatening to expand to other forms
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The UK government has provided Ukraine with more supplies of Storm Shadow cruise missiles, officials said.
An unspecified number of missiles have been sent to ensure Ukraine can respond to Vladimir Putin‘s attacks with its own long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory, people aware of the matter told Bloomberg.
This comes as Donald Trump accused Russia of carrying out “underground” nuclear weapons tests, defending his announcement last week that the US would restart its own nuclear testing.
Speaking to Norah O’Donnell on 60 Minutes, he said that “Russia‘s testing, and China‘s testing, but they don’t talk about it”, adding they were doing them “underground where people don’t know exactly what’s happening with the test.”
When Ms O’Donnell tried to clarify if he meant that Russia and China were definitely testing their nuclear weapons, he said: “Russia’s testing nuclear weapons.“Russia did make… a little bit of a threat the other day when they said they were gonna do certain forms of a different level of testing.”
Russia struck civilian energy and port infrastructure in a massive overnight drone attack on Ukraine’s southern region of Odesa, its governor said on Tuesday.
“Despite the active work of air defence forces, which destroyed most of the enemy targets, there were hits on civilian port and energy infrastructure facilities,” Oleh Kiper wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
He said that rescuers quickly extinguished the fires and there were no casualties.
The UK government has provided Ukraine with more supplies of Storm Shadow cruise missiles, officials said.
An unspecified number of missiles have been sent to Ukraine to ensure the war-hit nation is amply stocked up to respond to Russian attacks with its own long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory, people aware of the matter told Bloomberg.
The officials said Britain is resupplying Ukraine with the cruise missiles as it is concerned Moscow will step up attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
The UK government has not publicly announced the transfer of Storm Shadow missiles or how many are being sent. The reported transfer comes as Donald Trump continues to delay a decision on sending US-made Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.
Two weeks ago Ukraine successfully attacked an important Russian chemical plant using British-made Storm Shadow missiles. Kyiv described the facility as critical to Moscow’s war efforts.
Russia struck civilian energy and port infrastructure in a massive overnight drone attack on Ukraine’s southern region of Odesa, its governor said this morning.
“Despite the active work of air defence forces, which destroyed most of the enemy targets, there were hits on civilian port and energy infrastructure facilities,” Oleh Kiper said on his Telegram channel.
He said that rescuers quickly extinguished the fires and there were no casualties.
Russia said its troops had advanced in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a transport and logistics hub that they have been trying to capture for over a year, but Ukraine said its forces were holding on.
The Russian defence ministry said its soldiers were destroying what it described as surrounded Ukrainian formations near Pokrovsk’s railway station and industrial zone, and had entered the city’s Prigorodny area and dug in there.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, the Russian forces were appearing to be operating with increasing comfort within Pokrovsk.
Here are some other battlefield updates by Ukrainian military officials:
The UK government has provided Ukraine with more supplies of Storm Shadow cruise missiles, officials said.
An unspecified number of missiles have been sent to Ukraine to ensure the war-hit nation is amply stocked up to respond to Russian attacks with its own long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory, people aware of the matter told Bloomberg.
The officials said Britain is resupplying Ukraine with the cruise missiles as it is concerned Moscow will step up attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
The UK government has not publicly announced the transfer of Storm Shadow missiles or how many are being sent. The reported transfer comes as Donald Trump continues to delay a decision on sending US-made Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.
Two weeks ago Ukraine successfully attacked an important Russian chemical plant using British-made Storm Shadow missiles. Kyiv described the facility as critical to Moscow’s war efforts.
Belgium’s defence minister has expressed concern over a series of unidentified drone flights near a key military base where US nuclear weapons are stored, saying they seem to be part of a spying operation.
Defence minister Theo Francken confirmed that drones had flown into the area near the Kleine Brogel air base in northeast Belgium in two phases on Saturday and Sunday night.
The first phase involved “small drones to test the radio frequencies” of Belgian security services, then later came “big drones to destabilise the area and people,” Francken told public broadcaster RTBF.
“It resembles a spy operation. By whom, I don’t know. I have a few ideas but I’m going to be careful” about speculating, he said. Last month, several drones were spotted above another Belgian military base near the German border. The operators were not identified.
Russia has been blamed for a number of European airspace violations, notably in Estonia and Poland, in recent months. But the perpetrators of a series of mysterious drone flights in Denmark and Germany have been harder to pin down.
A late evening drone sighting at Berlin’s Brandenburg airport on Friday suspended flights for nearly two hours. It was not clear who was responsible.Francken ruled out that the weekend drone flights in Belgium might have been a prank.
A Ukrainian drone attack damaged the Sterlitamak petrochemical plant deep inside Russia, causing a partial collapse of a water-treatment facility but no injuries, regional authorities said on Tuesday.
The plant in the Bashkortostan region, some 1,500km (932 miles) from the Ukrainian border in the Urals Mountains, was operating without interruption, said Radiy Khabirov, the head of the Bashkortostan region.
He added that both of the drones involved in the overnight strike were destroyed. The Russian defence ministry said in its daily report that, in addition to the two drones downed over the Bashkortostan region, its defence systems destroyed 83 drones over seven other Russian regions.
The administration of the city of Sterlitamak, where the plant is located, said that all five workers inside were not injured.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia is massing troops near the eastern Ukrainian town of Dobropillia, where Kyiv’s forces advanced earlier this year in a successful counteroffensive.
Dobropillia is about 30km north of Pokrovsk, where Zelensky said Ukraine’s defences are coming under severe pressure and up to 300 Russian soldiers have infiltrated the city.
Russia is focussing its offensive on this eastern sector of Donetsk, and has been pushing to take the strategic city of Pokrovsk for almost a year.
Taking Pokrovsk would give Moscow its most important single territorial gain in Ukraine since the capture of the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024.
Ukraine is showing “remarkable commitment” to joining the EU, but must reverse recent negative trends in the fight against corruption, the European Commission has said.
The draft text, part of an EU enlargement report expected to be adopted today, says that “despite the very difficult circumstances the country finds itself in on account of Russia’s war of aggression, Ukraine continued to demonstrate remarkable commitment to the EU accession path over the past year”.
Ukraine applied to join the EU days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It has been pushing to make progress on its bid, despite the challenges of Russia’s war and EU member Hungary blocking Kyiv from formally moving to the next phase of negotiations.
While praising Ukraine for launching reform processes, the European Commission also said that Kyiv needs to make more progress on judicial independence, fighting organised crime and respecting civil society.
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