News on the war in Russia and Ukraine: Drone attack on Putin’s forces after boats expelled from Crimean harbor

Former NATO chief George Robertson will lead a review of Britain’s military strategy to counter what he calls the “deadly quartet” of China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the strategic defence review on Tuesday as one of his first major acts after taking office on July 5. Starmer, who leads a centre-left Labour government, has promised to end the downsizing of the British military seen during 14 years of Conservative Party rule.

Starmer also pledged to increase defence spending from around 2.3 per cent of GDP currently to 2.5 per cent, but did not give a date. He said spending would be “increased responsibly” to bolster Britain’s “hollowed-out armed forces”.

Some evenings, Ukrainian mother Margaryta Zakharchuk walks through her neighborhood in the scorching heat, waiting for the power to come back on so she can take the elevator to her 12th-floor apartment.

“We walk around outside until 10 o’clock, so we don’t have to climb up with two children,” she says.

Zakharchuk, 43, is among millions of Ukrainians suffering from a record heatwave, made worse by regular power outages that render household appliances such as air conditioners and refrigerators unusable.

An International Monetary Fund team began talks with Ukrainian politicians on Tuesday as Kyiv seeks ways to boost revenues for the war-ravaged economy and plug the 2024 budget deficit, officials said.

The meetings in Kyiv will “focus on the authorities’ fiscal policy plans for the remainder of 2024 and the medium-term future,” the IMF said in a statement.

The IMF has already disbursed $3.078 billion to Ukraine this year under its $15.6 billion Extended Fund Facility program.

More than 28 months after Russia’s large-scale invasion, the government faces a budget deficit of between 400 and 500 billion hryvnia ($9.8 billion) this year, said Roksolana Pidlasa, chair of parliament’s budget committee.

According to officials and analysts, the government plans to balance the budget deficit this year through tax increases and an increase in domestic debt.

“The IMF mission starts this week,” Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a lawmaker from the Holos party, said on the messaging app Telegram. “I think after that there will be news from the government about budget changes and tax increases.”

The Chief of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, thanked the Russian armed forces on Tuesday for the capture of the village of Urozhaine in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, the RIA news agency quoted the Russian Defense Ministry as saying.

Gerasimov, who visited the war zone, then set new targets for the troops in the region, it was said, without giving details.

Roberta Metsola, a Maltese member of the centre-right European People’s Party, easily won her second term as president of the European Parliament on Tuesday, calling for more inclusive policies to counter polarisation.

Metsola, who became the first woman in 20 years to chair the EU Assembly in 2022, has proven to be a strong supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia and its bid to join the EU. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent his congratulations.

Some 562 of the 623 MEPs who took part in Tuesday’s vote voted in favour of her being reappointed to the mainly ceremonial post for another two and a half years, the largest margin ever achieved by a President of the European Parliament.

“The polarization of our societies has led to more confrontational politics and even political violence,” 45-year-old Metsola told the assembly.

“We need to move beyond this zero-sum mentality that excludes and rejects people,” she said.

Metsola called on the European Parliament to continue to vigorously support Ukraine and to advocate for the rule of law and women’s rights while preparing for the accession of new countries to the EU.

In his congratulatory message, Zelensky wrote on X: “I greatly appreciate President Metsola’s personal commitment to supporting Ukraine, as well as her tireless commitment to protecting people and preserving our European way of life.”

Metsola was the first head of an EU institution to visit Kyiv after the Russian invasion in February 2022.

The electricity grid operators of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have signed an agreement to disconnect from the Soviet-era BRELL power grid with Russia and Belarus in February 2025, Lithuania’s energy minister said on Tuesday.

“It was always clear to us that just as we became part of the European Union and NATO, we would also become part of the European energy system,” Energy Minister Dainius Kreivys wrote in a post on Facebook.

As part of the BRELL network, the three Baltic countries rely on Russian operators to control the frequencies and balance the network.

In his letter to EU heads of state and government, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban proposed “restoring direct diplomatic lines of communication with Russia”.

He also proposed maintaining high-level contacts with Kyiv at the same time and holding talks with China “on the modalities of the next peace conference”.

On the subject of the US, Orban said that Joe Biden was making “enormous efforts” to stay in the election campaign and suggested that he was “unable to change the current US pro-war policy”.

The Hungarian Prime Minister said a Trump victory would change the burden-sharing between the US and the EU regarding financial support for Ukraine to the detriment of the Europeans.

Unlike most allies who support Kyiv’s war effort, Orban has long criticized European military support for Ukraine.

“Our European strategy in the name of transatlantic unity has copied the US’s pro-war policy. We have so far neither a sovereign and independent European strategy nor a political action plan,” he said.

“I propose to discuss whether it makes sense to continue this policy in the future.”

A senior EU official said Donald Trump’s choice of vice president was a “disaster” for Ukraine.

Speaking to Politico on condition of anonymity, the official’s comments reflected the bleak future of U.S.-Ukrainian cooperation with JP Vance as the new vice presidential candidate.

The 39-year-old senator from Ohio has supported the US Republican Party’s attempts to end its support for Ukraine in the war against Russia since the invasion began.

In a speech at the National Conservatism Conference, he criticized the decision to supply Ukraine with “hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons with no end in sight and no result or even a goal that we are close to achieving.”

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump is ready to act as a peace mediator in the war between Russia and Ukraine “immediately” if he is elected in November, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in a letter to EU heads of state and government.

The letter, addressed to European Council President Charles Michel and circulated to all EU leaders, was written after Orban held talks with Trump and the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and China.

“I can say (…) with certainty that he will not wait until his inauguration shortly after his election victory, but that he will be ready to act as a peace mediator immediately. He has detailed and well-thought-out plans for this,” Orban wrote.