Romania has summoned the Russian ambassador after accusing Moscow of an “unacceptable and irresponsible” breach of its airspace with a drone.
In the early hours yesterday, the Romanian defence ministry scrambled two F-16s to down a Russian drone in its airspace, just days after Poland confirmed an incursion by at least 19 Russian drones.
The Russian ambassador to Bucharest was summoned to protest the “violation of Romania’s sovereignty”, said Romanian foreign minister Oana Toiu.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said a Russian drone travelled about 10 kilometres into Romanian territory and operated in Nato airspace for around 50 minutes before it left towards Ukraine.
He warned that the incident was “an obvious expansion” of Russia’s war beyond Ukraine’s borders, and once again called for tougher sanctions against Moscow.
It comes after Nato announced plans to beef up the defence of Europe’s eastern flank, and the US vowed to defend “every inch” of the alliance’s territory after Russian drones breached Polish airspace last week.
In pictures: Firefighters work at the site where a critical infrastructure facility was hit by Russian drone strikes
The weapons that could decide the wars of the future
As wars are increasingly fought with the use of unmanned drones piloted from miles away, Taz Ali looks at what other weapons will shape the conflicts to come.
Read more here.
Russia has lost over one million troops in Ukraine since full-scale invasion began
Russia has lost over one million troops in Ukraine since it started its full-scale invasion, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces has reported.
In its latest report, the General Staff claimed that enemy forces had lost 1,095,520 troops since 24 February 2022, including 910 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.
Russia has also lost 11,184 tanks, 23,269 armored fighting vehicles, 61,698 vehicles and fuel tanks, 32,784 artillery systems, 1,488 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,217 air defense systems, 422 airplanes, 341 helicopters, 59,409 drones, 28 ships and boats, and one submarine, according to the report.
Russia ‘an acute threat to Europe, to Nato, to every sane country’ says Estonian prime minister
Estonia’s prime minister Kristen Michal has warned that Russia is an acute threat to the world called for Nato to start jointly procuring weapons and seize almost €200 billion in frozen Russian state assets to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction, according to The Times.
“Russia is an acute threat to Europe, to Nato, to every sane country in the world,” he said. “We have even been seen as a little bit paranoid talking about Russia’s threats [in the past]. But right now, everything we in the Baltics or Poland or the Nordics have been talking about has come to life.”
Watch: Orthodox nun stripped of status for opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Ukraine ramps up drone strikes on Russian oil facilities
A significant Russian oil refinery was reportedly struck by Ukrainian drones overnight, sparking a fire, according to confirmations from both Russian officials and Ukraine’s military.
The attack on the Kirishi refinery, located in Russia’s northwestern Leningrad region, marks the latest in a series of Ukrainian assaults on Russian oil infrastructure.
Kyiv asserts these strikes are aimed at disrupting Moscow’s war efforts. Operated by Russian oil major Surgutneftegas, the facility boasts a substantial annual output of nearly 17.7 million metric tons of crude, equivalent to 355,000 barrels per day.
Read more here:
Ukraine hit by 87 Russian drones and missiles in overnight attack
Russia launched 87 drones and missiles in an overnight strike on Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air force reported three missiles and 84 drones, including Shaheds and Gerbera styles, which came from the Kursk, Bryansk, Orel, Millerovo and Primorsko-Akhtarsk directions in Russia.
The defensive forces shot down and suppressed 59 drones, but 25 hits were recorded in 13 locations
Russia turns to bartering to avoid sanctions
Old-fashioned barter is on the rise in Russia’s foreign trade for the first time since the 1990s, as companies seeking to outfox Western sanctions swap wheat for Chinese cars and flax seeds for building materials.
Even as Russia builds warm ties with China and India, the return of barter shows just how far the war in Ukraine has distorted trading relationships for the world’s biggest producer of natural resources, three decades after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in Russian economic integration with the West.
The United States, Europe and allies have imposed more than 25,000 different sanctions on Russia over the 2022 war in Ukraine and the 2014 annexation of Crimea in a bid to sink Russia’s $2.2 trillion economy and undermine support for President Vladimir Putin.
Washington has also hit India with tariffs in response to New Delhi’s oil trade with Russia. Putin says Russia’s economy has outperformed expectations. It grew faster over the past two years than G7 countries, despite Western predictions of a crash. He has ordered businesses and officials to defy sanctions in every way they can. However, there are growing signs of strain on the economy, which the central bank now shows to be technically in recession and which suffers high inflation.
Some punitive measures – particularly the disconnection of Russian banks from the SWIFT payments system in 2022 and Washington’s warnings to Chinese banks last year against supporting Russia’s war effort – have stoked fears of secondary sanctions.
Zelensky confirms strikes on Russian oil infrastructure: ‘Restrict the war’
Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s oil industry and said they help significantly restrict the war.
“Losses on Russia’s own territory thanks to our long-range strikes. The most effective sanctions – the ones that work the fastest – are the fires at Russia’s oil refineries, its terminals, oil depots. To significantly restrict Russia’s oil industry is to significantly restrict the war,” he said on X.
He added: “Russia’s war is essentially a function of oil, of gas, of all its other energy resources. I thank the special forces of the Security Service of Ukraine, who did a great job in Primorsk recently, hitting Russia’s largest oil terminal on the Baltic Sea.”
The Ukrainian president confirmed “substantial damage”, and said everything has been verified.
If Europe was at war, who would be called up first and how would they be trained to fight?
Across Europe, and here in the UK, the grim question has once again surfaced: how prepared would we be, really, if the unthinkable happened and a major war broke out on our continent?
The events have reminded us that Europe is not immune to war. For Britain, the question is whether its people are ready – and if not, how quickly they could be trained. Guy Walters looks at the MoD scheme that fast-tracks Ukrainian civilians into soldiers, and asks if it could work for the UK, too:
