WAR IN UKRAINE: July 7, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 499
Ukraine halted rescue operations in the western city of Lviv on Friday and said the death toll had risen to 10 from a Russian missile strike on a residential building. Regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said rescuers had worked through the night to clear debris despite heavy rain after a missile hit the building on Thursday in what he called the biggest attack of the war on civilian infrastructure in Lviv. National police said that 45 people, including three children, had been injured. The attack damaged 35 residential houses, an office complex, a student campus, a school, and several dozens of cars, officials said. Lviv was home to about 700,000 people before Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. The population has grown since then because many people have fled to Lviv from fighting and air strikes in other parts of Ukraine - Reuters
A group of former senior U.S. national security officials has held secret talks with prominent Russians believed to be close to the Kremlin — and, in at least one case, with the country’s top diplomat — with the aim of laying the groundwork for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, half a dozen people briefed on the discussions said. In a high-level example of the back-channel diplomacy taking place behind the scenes, Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov met with members of the group for several hours in April in New York, four former officials and two current officials said. On the agenda were some of the thorniest issues in the war in Ukraine, like the fate of Russian-held territory that Ukraine may never be able to liberate and the search for an elusive diplomatic off-ramp that could be tolerable to both sides. Meeting with Lavrov were Richard Haass, a former diplomat and the outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations, current and former officials said. The group was joined by Europe expert Charles Kupchan and Russia expert Thomas Graham, both former White House and State Department officials who are Council on Foreign Relations fellows - MSNBC
The Biden administration did not sanction secret meetings that former officials held with prominent Russians on potential talks to end the Ukraine war, State Dept says. “And as we’ve said repeatedly, nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine." The U.S. will continue to provide weaponry to Kyiv so that Ukrainian officials can negotiate from a position of strength when they think the time is right, a spokesperson said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to Sofia, Bulgaria, to discuss military support and the NATO summit, among other key topics. He and Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov signed a joint declaration on Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration. During the visit, Zelensky reportedly argued with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev over his negative stance on arming Ukraine in a televised meeting cited by Politico. Unlike Radev, Bulgaria's new pro-European government under Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov openly supports arms supplies to Ukraine - Kyiv Independent
Zelensky left Bulgaria to hold talks with Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala early on July 7 before he flies to Istanbul to meet Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan later in the day. The fate of the troubled Black Sea Grain Initiative will be high on the agenda.
The United States has decided to send cluster munitions to Ukraine to help its military push back Russian forces entrenched along the front lines. The Biden administration is expected to announce on Friday that it will send thousands of them as part of a new military aid package worth $800 million, according to people familiar with the decision who were not authorized to discuss it publicly before the official announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity. The move will likely trigger outrage from some allies and humanitarian groups that have long opposed the use of cluster bombs - AP
Raiffeisen Bank International is delaying plans to leave Russia, three people familiar with its position said, as Austria steps up its defence of long-standing ties with Moscow. Raiffeisen (RBI), the largest of the Western banks in Russia, had intended to spin off its Russian business, which provides a payments lifeline to hundreds of companies there, by September after coming under pressure from European regulators - Reuters
Russian fighter jets harassed an American drone operating over Syria for the second time in two days, according to the US Air Force, a sign of increasing friction between the two countries in Middle East airspace. On Thursday, a US MQ-9 Reaper drone was conducting a mission against ISIS targets in Syria when Russian fighter jets approached, Air Force Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich said in a statement about the incident. One of the Russian jets then began dropping flares in front of the US drone in an apparent attempt to hit the drone, forcing it to take evasive maneuvers - CNN