Russia-Ukraine war: EU to open enlargement talks with Ukraine and Moldova next week – as it happened | World news

• European Union countries have formally approved the launch of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova next week, another step in the two nations’ long journey to join the 27-nation bloc. Belgium, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, said member states have agreed on a negotiating framework, AP reported.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called the start of EU accession talks a “historic step”. “Millions of Ukrainians, and indeed generations of our people, are realising their European dream,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.

• South Korea has summoned the Russian ambassador to protest over its pact with North Korea. Two days ago the Russian president signed an agreement vowing mutual defence with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on a state visit to Pyongyang.

• A Russian guided bomb killed two people and wounded three in a residential area of the eastern Ukrainian town of Selydove on Friday, regional prosecutors said. Five five-storey buildings and six private homes were damaged by the UMPB D-30 bomb in Selydove, about 14 km (nine miles) from the front line, the Donetsk region prosecutors said on the Telegram messaging app.

• Ukraine’s military said its drones struck four oil refineries, radar stations and other military objects in Russia in an attack in the early hours of Friday. “Unmanned aerial vehicles attacked the Afipsky, Ilsky, Krasnodar, and Astrakhan oil refineries,” the Ukrainian military said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

• Russian air defences downed 70 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea and Crimea overnight, the RIA news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying on Friday. The ministry also said Russian forces destroyed six Ukrainian sea drones in the Black Sea

• Three men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of trying to collect information on a person from Ukraine for a foreign intelligence agency, prosecutors said Friday. The suspects were arrested in Frankfurt on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said in a statement to AP. They were identified as Robert A., a Ukrainian citizen; Vardges I., an Armenian national; and Arman S., a Russian citizen. Their full names weren’t released in line with German privacy rules.

• A member of Russia’s lower house of parliament said law enforcement authorities need to do more to protect civilians from ex-convicts who have returned home from fighting in Ukraine. Nina Ostanina, a Communist Party deputy who has been sanctioned by Western countries over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, told the gazeta.ru newspaper in an interview that violent crimes involving decommissioned soldiers “will be even more numerous” if authorities do not act.

• Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that Russia could supply weapons to North Korea is “incredibly concerning”, a senior US official has said, days after Putin and the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, signed a defence pact that requires their countries to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked. Matthew Miller, a US state department spokesperson, said the provision of Russian weapons to Pyongyang “would destabilise the Korean peninsula, of course, and potentially … depending on the type of weapons they provide … violate UN security council resolutions that Russia itself has supported”.

• Russian president Vladimir Putin is open to security talks with the United States but they must be “comprehensive” and include the subject of Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. He said such dialogue was needed because of an accumulation of problems relating to global security, Reuters reported.

• President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia would keep developing its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Reuters reports, “to preserve the balance of power in the world”. Putin was speaking in the Kremlin at a ceremony attended by graduates of military, police and intelligence service academies.

• The Kremlin said on Friday that Moldova’s potential accession to the EU was a sovereign matter for the former Soviet republic, but claimed there were many Moldovans who also wanted to see close ties to Russia. Reuters reports that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was commenting after Moldovan President Maia Sandu – who is seeking to extricate her country from Moscow’s orbit – signed a decree on the start of accession talks with the bloc which are formally meant to begin on 25 June.

• The Slovak government has asked police to investigate the former defence minister Jaroslav Nad for donating fighter jets and an air defence system to Ukraine, a government official said on Friday. The new government under the leadership of Robert Fico made a sharp policy turn after it took power in October 2023 and halted any military supplies to Ukraine, although it has allowed commercial supplies to continue.

• Ukraine has said is dispatching reinforcements to Chasiv Yar, the embattled strategic hilltop town in the eastern Donetsk region, a vital flashpoint whose capture could accelerate Russian advances deeper in the industrial territory.

• The US will send the latest Patriot missiles “rolling off the production line” to Ukraine instead of other countries that ordered them, the White House said on Thursday. “We’re going to reprioritise the deliveries of these exports,” said John Kirby, the national security council spokesman. It also applies to Nasams, another type of air defence missile. “Deliveries of these missiles to other countries that are currently in the queue will have to be delayed,” Kirby said, though deliveries to Taiwan and Israel would not be affected.

• Ukrainian drones struck a Russian airbase in a second night of attacks on the Krasnodar region, reports online said. Russian emergency officials, writing on the Telegram messaging app, confirmed three municipalities of Krasnodar came under “massive attack”. The Russian journalist-run Astra social media channel reported that Yeysk, home to a military airfield, was hit by drones and there were fires afterwards, and posted eyewitness videos. Nasa satellite fire monitoring indicated fires or hotspots at the airbase. The Krasnodar region sits across the Kerch strait from Crimea.

• Ukraine can use US-supplied weapons to hit Russian forces that are firing on Ukrainian troops anywhere across the border into Russia and not just in Russian territory near Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the Pentagon said. “It’s self-defence and so it makes sense for them to be able to do that,” Ryder said.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has announced measures to protect Ukraine’s energy system, including protection for power plants under Russian fire and the development of alternative and renewable energy sources. Drone and missile strikes have knocked out half of generating capacity since March, according to official figures. Attacks overnight into Thursday hit four regions and cut power to more than 218,000 consumers, the energy ministry said.

• Zelenskiy outlined plans to develop solar energy and energy storage facilities, “decentralised energy capacities”, and a schedule for critical infrastructure sites to come up with alternative energy sources. The work, he said, must be completed before winter and its increased energy demand.

• Russians on Thursday reported problems with processing payments at major banks after a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyber-attack, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported. The paper said the Telegram messaging app and major mobile phone networks were also affected. The IT Army of Ukraine, a volunteer hacker group, claimed responsibility.

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia would keep developing its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Reuters reports, “to preserve the balance of power in the world”.

Putin was speaking in the Kremlin at a ceremony attended by graduates of military, police and intelligence service academies.

“We plan to further develop the nuclear triad as a guarantee of strategic deterrence and to preserve the balance of power in the world,” said Putin.

Russia’s nuclear triad is a reference to its land, sea and air-launched nuclear missiles. Its nuclear arsenal is the largest in the world.

The Kremlin said on Friday that Moldova’s potential accession to the EU was a sovereign matter for the former Soviet republic, but claimed there were many Moldovans who also wanted to see close ties to Russia.

Reuters reports that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was commenting after Moldovan President Maia Sandu – who is seeking to extricate her country from Moscow’s orbit – signed a decree on the start of accession talks with the bloc which are formally meant to begin on 25 June.

“…This is not a quick process, it is a sovereign matter for each state, including Moldova,” said Peskov, when asked by reporters about the matter.

But he said Moldova had opportunities to develop in other directions at the same time and accused the country’s political leadership of mistakenly excluding such options. “We know that many people in this country believe that the country should develop in all directions, and that the future interests of the country cannot be connected only with the European Union, but with such promising markets as the Russian Federation, as well as with integration processes on the territory of the former Soviet Union,” said Peskov.

Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, has a Romanian-speaking majority and a substantial Russian-speaking minority, and its politics have oscillated between pro-western and pro-Russian parties for decades.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called the start of EU accession talks a “historic step”.

“Millions of Ukrainians, and indeed generations of our people, are realising their European dream,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.

“Ukraine is returning to Europe, where it has belonged for centuries, as a full-fledged member of the European community,” he added.

Ukraine – followed by its neighbour Moldova – lodged its application to join the 27-nation EU in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Starting the negotiations will still only put the two ex-Soviet states at the beginning of what is likely to be a years-long process of reforms before they can finally become members.