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Donald Trump has said the Duke of Sussex “is not speaking for the UK” after Prince Harry told the US to honour its obligations in the Ukrainian conflict. “I think I am speaking for the UK more than Prince Harry … But I appreciate his advice very much,” said Trump, responding to the duke’s lengthy, impassioned speech at the Kyiv Security Forum on Thursday. Harry, an ex-serviceman, did not claim to be speaking for the UK. He said he was “not here as a politician” but as “a soldier who understands service” and a “humanitarian”.
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Harry said: “The United States has a singular role in this story. Not only because of its power, but because when Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons, America was part of the assurance that Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders would be respected. This is a moment for American leadership, a moment for America, to show that it can honour its international treaty obligations – not out of charity but out of its own enduring role in global security and strategic stability.”
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A Ukrainian MP has told how he flew a drone intercepter from thousands of kilometres away, throwing a spotlight on the effectiveness of Ukraine’s technology. Marian Zablotskiy said that in a “historic experiment … I piloted an FPV interceptor drone first from my office, then from right in front of the state border, and then from somewhere about 2,000km away from the drone itself – from abroad. I consider this breakthrough a decisive factor in finally stopping the Russian offensive.”
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Ukrainian drone manufacturer Wild Hornets confirmed Zablotskiy’s involvement to Agence France-Presse and said it wanted the remote control system to “become the primary method of drone control”. Mykhailo Fedorov, the defence minister in Kyiv, said: “Ukraine is the first in the world to systematically scale up remote control of interceptor drones. Today, we have confirmed results – the downing of targets at distances of hundreds and thousands of kilometres.”
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Russia was struggling to extinguish a fire raging at a Black Sea oil terminal hit by Ukraine earlier this week, local authorities told AFP on Thursday as they urged residents to stay home to avoid the smoke. Ukraine struck oil facilities in the southern town of Tuapse on Monday as it targets Russian oil exports that fund the war. The attack triggered a huge blaze and sent plumes of thick black smoke into the sky. “The fire at the Tuapse oil refinery is still ongoing – four storage tanks are ablaze,” the regional emergency headquarters told AFP on Thursday, four days after the hit. Contaminated rainfall on Wednesday left “a black coating on surfaces,” authorities said.
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EU leaders welcomed the end of diplomatic deadlock over a long-awaited €90bn (£78bn) loan for Ukraine, Jennifer Rankin writes, after the bloc completed the agreement along with a 20th sanctions package against Russia. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said she thought it would be possible to disburse the first tranche of the €45bn funding planned for 2026 in this quarter, meaning by the end of June. The first payment, she indicated, would fund Ukraine’s domestic drone production – “drones from Ukraine for Ukraine”.
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Russian attacks on residential areas killed three people and wounded at least 10 including girls aged nine and 14, the head of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region said on Thursday. In Russia’s Samara region, one person was killed in a drone strike; while another attack killed a person in the Russian border region of Belgorod, officials said.