Ukraine war briefing: Trump bristles at Prince Harry’s passionate plea for Ukraine
Russia was struggling to extinguish a fire raging at a Black Sea oil terminal hit by Ukraine earlier this week, local authorities told AFP on Thursday as they urged residents to stay home to avoid the smoke. Ukraine struck oil facilities in the southern town of Tuapse on Monday as it targets Russian oil exports that fund the war. The attack triggered a huge blaze and sent plumes of thick black smoke into the sky. “The fire at the Tuapse oil refinery is still ongoing – four storage tanks are ablaze,” the regional emergency headquarters told AFP on Thursday, four days after the hit. Contaminated rainfall on Wednesday left “a black coating on surfaces,” authorities said.
EU leaders welcomed the end of diplomatic deadlock over a long-awaited €90bn (£78bn) loan for Ukraine, Jennifer Rankin writes, after the bloc completed the agreement along with a 20th sanctions package against Russia. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said she thought it would be possible to disburse the first tranche of the €45bn funding planned for 2026 in this quarter, meaning by the end of June. The first payment, she indicated, would fund Ukraine’s domestic drone production – “drones from Ukraine for Ukraine”.
Russian attacks on residential areas killed three people and wounded at least 10 including girls aged nine and 14, the head of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region said on Thursday. In Russia’s Samara region, one person was killed in a drone strike; while another attack killed a person in the Russian border region of Belgorod, officials said.
