Russo-Ukrainian war, day 1664: Zelenskyy says Ukraine will only accept energy truce if West guarantees Moscow won’t break it after elections
Anthropic, meanwhile, said it detected and shut down a Russian espionage campaign against Kyiv that had been automated through its Claude chatbot.
Day 1664 of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict sees Zelenskyy insisting Ukraine will only agree to an energy truce with Russia if the West provides guarantees that Moscow will not break the truce after the country's elections. The Ukrainian military continues targeting Russia's war supply lines, striking the Slavyansk-EKO refinery which processes up to 3 million tonnes of fuel annually.
The Ukrainian military also aims to take out systems guarding Sochi, a Russian resort city targeted by Ukrainian drones just ten days earlier. Brigadier General Prokopenko, who survived Mariupol and now leads the Azov grouping in Donetsk, warns that Russia could mobilize up to 600,000 troops for its next offensive, aiming to seize all of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Modern war tactics used by Russia, including cheap drones and missiles built with Chinese parts, slip past defenses Ukraine and the West have spent years developing. Iran has armed Russia with Shahed drones, and now seeks the jet-powered Geran-5 version back to fight Israel and the US. The FLYCAT strike drone, designed to fly without satellite signals, has a larger sibling capable of reaching 200 km behind the frontlines.
Russia has built five additional halls for the drones assembled using Chinese parts to strike Ukrainian cities. International partners expect clear specifications from Ukraine, as Zelenskyy insists on Western guarantees for any potential truce. NATO armies have not participated in modern warfare, with Ukrainian officers setting their battlefield practices against NATO doctrine, exposing where its assumptions no longer apply.
Ukrainian and NATO officers have spent three weeks training together in Poland, while a larger multinational exercise takes place on the Belarusian border involving about 2,500 troops from eight countries. The economic impact of Russian strikes on Ukraine is projected to reach up to $10 billion this year, with Kyiv responding through compensation and cheap credit for companies affected.
A fourth Ukrainian pharmaceutical warehouse has been destroyed in a Russian strike, this time in Odesa where the buildings belong to a wholesaler supplying drugstores across Ukraine. Zelenskyy has suspended the prosecutor general who charged the investigation into his office, an agency whose independence Brussels considers a condition for Ukraine's EU accession.
Belarus is training troops to fight saboteurs as Minsk puts its military on war footing, with warnings that Russia could use Belarusian territory against Ukraine or a NATO state providing a rationale for these drills.
Written by urgent.news from Euromaidan Press's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
