News on the war between Russia and Ukraine: Putin’s forces drop 100 deadly glide bombs in one day amid fierce fighting in the east

The Kremlin sees no interest on the part of the British Labour Party in improving relations with Russia and continues to view Britain as a hostile state, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said on Friday.

Peskov made the comments after the Labour Party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections after 14 years of conservative rule.

The party has announced that it will continue to support Ukraine with weapons and money against Russia.

Two Russian Navy ships docked in the Venezuelan port of La Guaira on Tuesday. The ships had previously completed exercises in the Atlantic, which Moscow said were intended to “show the flag” in remote, important regions. They also made an initial stopover in Cuba.

The frigate Admiral Gorshkov and the oil tanker Akademik Pashin are part of the Russian Northern Fleet, which since May 17 has been carrying out tasks such as “ensuring the Russian naval presence” in “remote areas of the oceans”, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The stopover was scheduled to last several days and underscore the close relations between Moscow and the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

On his way to the Kiev railway station to greet his wife and daughter returning to Ukraine from Poland, Oleksander Tryfonov made a stop.

He bought two red roses from one of half a dozen flower shops along a dimly lit underpass – something beautiful for the two most precious people in his life.

“I haven’t seen them for two years,” Tryfonov, a stocky 45-year-old driver, said of his family. “Flowers are important for women.”

A survey of people in 13 NATO countries found that, on average, about six in ten people have a positive opinion of the Western military alliance, the Pew Research Center said on Tuesday.

The poll was released ahead of the NATO summit in Washington from July 9 to 11, which comes at a difficult time for the 75-year-old Western military alliance.

NATO’s 32 member states are adjusting their long-term plans and strategies to counter a more aggressive Russian President Vladimir Putin and respond to Ukraine’s need for sustained support against invading Russian forces.

Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska has become the latest victim of a deepfake after an online video falsely claimed she had purchased a rare Bugatti sports car worth €4.5 million (£3.8 million).

The video, believed to have been obtained from Russian propaganda sources, claims that Ms Zelenska received a private presentation during her visit to Paris for the D-Day commemoration last June, in which she offered the Ukrainian delegation the opportunity to purchase a Bugatti Tourbillon.

Chasiv Yar lies just west of Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia last year after ten months of fierce fighting. For months, Russian forces have been focused on capturing Chasiv Yar, a town on a hill. Capturing it would endanger nearby towns and disrupt key Ukrainian supply routes.

The Ukrainian army has withdrawn from a northeastern district of the city, Nasar Voloshin, spokesman for the Khortytsia ground forces, told the Associated Press in a written message on Thursday.

A French citizen detained in Russia has pleaded guilty to charges of illegally collecting information on the country’s military affairs, state news agency Tass reported on Wednesday.

Laurent Vinatier was arrested in the Russian capital in June as tensions flared between Moscow and Paris after French President Emmanuel Macron commented on the possible deployment of French troops in Ukraine.

Russian authorities accused Vinatier of failing to register as a “foreign agent” while collecting information on Russia’s “military and military-technical activities” that could be used to the detriment of the country’s security.

The German government announced on Friday that it had reached an agreement on the 2025 budget and a stimulus package for Europe’s largest economy, ending a months-long dispute that threatened to endanger Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left coalition.

Social Democrat Scholz and leaders of the Free Democrats and the Greens agreed on plans that include higher defense spending and affordable housing after marathon talks that stretched into the early hours of Friday. Scholz said ministers would formally approve the plan at a cabinet meeting later this month.

By balancing security, social cohesion and economic growth, Scholz said the budget should reassure citizens unsettled by the war in Ukraine, the effects of climate change and irregular migration and offer an alternative to the “divisive” policies of far-right parties that are gaining popularity across Europe.

NATO leaders plan to pledge next week to continue supplying Ukraine with weapons and ammunition at current levels for at least another year, as part of a show of continued support for the war-torn country and to show Russian President Vladimir Putin that they are not going to walk away.

US President Joe Biden and his counterparts will meet in Washington for a three-day summit starting Tuesday to mark the 75th anniversary of the military alliance, as Russian troops extend their lead along the eastern front in Ukraine in the third year of the war.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO’s 32 member states have spent around 40 billion euros ($43 billion) on military equipment for Ukraine every year since the war began in February 2022 and that this should continue to be “a minimum baseline.”

I expect the allies will decide at the summit to maintain this level next year,” Stoltenberg said. He said the amount would be divided among nations based on their economic growth and leaders would review the figure at their next meeting in 2025.

Imprisoned British-Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza has been transferred to a Siberian prison hospital, his wife said.

The 42-year-old – a leading Kremlin critic who survived two poisoning attempts – is serving a 25-year prison sentence after repeatedly condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine and calling for Western sanctions against Moscow.

According to his wife Evgenia, Mr Kara-Murza was admitted to the hospital at the Omsk prison where he is being held on Thursday evening. She said his lawyers had waited for five hours to see him but were denied visitation rights.