Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia claims US responsible for Ukrainian attack on Crimean peninsula

Ukraine will get the first tranche of military aid from frozen Russian assets next week, EU foreign policy chief says

Jennifer Rankin

Jennifer Rankin is the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent

Ukraine will get the first tranche of military aid from frozen Russian assets next week, after officials devised a workaround to avoid a Hungarian veto, according to the EU’s top diplomat.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign and security policy, said Ukraine would get the first tranche of money from revenues from Russia’s frozen assets next week, following “a legal procedure to avoid any kind of blockage”.

The EU agreed in May to seize an estimated €4.4bn interest on €191 bn Russian assets immobilised by western sanctions that have been frozen inside the union, at Belgium’s Euroclear. The money will fund weapons and aid for Ukraine, spread over several payments.

The legal procedure to avoid a Hungarian veto could help unlock a G7 plan to lend Ukraine $50bn based on the frozen assets.

Speaking to reporters ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers this morning, Borrell said the money would come next week.

He said:

I cannot have this money in my pocket. This money is for military support for Ukraine and the decision has to be taken immediately avoiding any kind of blockage.

We have these revenues coming from the frozen assets and we have to look for a way in order to use them, avoiding any kind of blockage.

We have a process in order to make this work quickly. The first tranche of money will come next week, in July. The second will come some months later. Ukraine needs more help and needs more help now before the summer.

Hungary’s Kremlin-friendly government is blocking six decisions to aid Ukraine and officials want to avoid the plans for the frozen assets being caught in the same veto.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. The time has just gone past 10:35am in Kyiv.

Russia claimed on Sunday that the US was responsible for a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula in which five US-supplied missiles that killed four people, including two children, and injured 151 more. These figures have not been independently verified by the Guardian.

The defence ministry in Moscow said US specialists had set the Atacms missiles’ flight coordinates on the basis of information from US spy satellites, meaning Washington was directly responsible.

The ministry said:

Responsibility for the deliberate missile attack on the civilians of Sevastopol is borne above all by Washington, which supplied these weapons to Ukraine, and by the Kyiv regime, from whose territory this strike was carried out.

The US began supplying Ukraine with longer range Atacms missiles, which have a 300-kilometre (186-mile) range, earlier this year.

Here are some of the other main developments:

• A Russian attack on Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa on Monday struck civilian infrastructure and caused casualties, the region’s governor said. Ukraine’s interior ministry published photographs of a massive cloud of smoke rising from the site where emergency services were working to put out a fire.

• Vladimir Putin thanked North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for his hospitality during the visit to Pyongyang last week which Putin said brought bilateral ties to an unprecedented level, the Kremlin said.

• Senior officials of South Korea, the US and Japan condemned “in the strongest possible terms” deepening military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, saying Putin’s recent visit to Pyongyang triggered grave concern, a joint statement released by Seoul’s foreign ministry said on Monday.

• A top North Korean military official criticised the US over its expanding military assistance to Ukraine, according to state media, KCNA. Pak Jong Chon reportedly said Russia has the “right to opt for any kind of retaliatory strike”, adding if Washington kept pushing Ukraine to a “proxy war” against Russia, it could provoke a stronger response from Moscow, and a “new world war”. He referred to comments by the Pentagon last week that Ukrainian forces can use US supplied weapons to strike Russian forces anywhere across the border into Russia.

• One person was killed and three injured in Russia’s Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, when three Ukrainian drones attacked the city of Grayvoron, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Air defences overnight shot down 33 Ukrainian drones over Russia’s western Bryansk, Smolensk, Lipetsk and Tula regions, the Russian defence ministry said Sunday.

• A new attack on Kharkiv killed at least one person and injured 11 others on Sunday, according to local officials. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the city was attacked by a guided bomb and that around half of Kharkiv was without electricity because of the strike.

• Ukrainians are having to cope with widespread emergency blackouts as Russia continues to pound critical infrastructure.