Ukraine war briefing: Thousands of cruise missiles for Kyiv in Europe-funded package | Ukraine

Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands will potentially buy 3,350 ERAM air-launched cruise missiles for Ukraine in an $825m sale approved by the US state department, the Pentagon said on Thursday. The extended range attack munition has a range of “several hundred” miles according to one of the manufacturers. The package includes the missiles’ GPS guidance kits, electronic warfare defences and more, and apart from the European contribution has additional US government funding.

The approval does not mean the sale has been concluded. Longer-range “standoff” missiles like the ERAM can be fired by Ukrainian warplanes from a distance, allowing them to hit Russian targets with less risk of a fighter jet being shot down. Allies of Ukraine have prioritised developing a series of lower cost, more versatile missiles for Kyiv to use on the battlefield.

It is now “obvious” that a hoped-for meeting between Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will not happen, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has said. Speaking beside the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Merz said their cabinets would talk about the Ukraine war in light of this fact.

The UK and European Union called in Russian envoys after missile strikes on Kyiv killed at least 21 people and damaged the city’s British Council and EU offices. Four children were among the dead.

“Our patriotism is more powerful than our fear,” Kyiv resident Yulia Maystruk told the Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh as she stood holding her three-and-a-half-month-old daughter at the scene of the Darnytskyi apartment block bombing. She explained that that she knew “a woman who had taken shelter in the basement with her 14-year-old-son” nearer the impact point. The mother had survived but was injured, needing medical care. As for the son “he died in hospital”, Maystruk said, her eyes welling with tears.

The strikes on Kyiv show Russia is not interested in negotiating an end to the war, said the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. “The intense attacks on Kyiv last night demonstrate who stands on the side of peace and who has no intention of believing in the negotiating path,” Meloni said. “Our thoughts go to the Ukrainian people, to civilians, to the families of defenseless victims, including children, of the senseless Russian attacks.”

Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine is unlikely to end this year, Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday, adding “if Russia continues like this, it is clear there will have to be new sanctions”. The EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said EU countries would soon come up with a 19th package of sanctions against Russia and were advancing work on how to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine.

Hungary and Ukraine traded insults on Thursday, with Budapest banning a Ukrainian military commander for carrying out “extremely severe attacks” on the Druzhba oil pipeline in Russia that feeds Hungary. The Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said the ban was against the Ukrainian “commander of the military unit that carried out the recent extremely severe attacks against the Druzhba oil pipeline”.

The Ukrainian foreign Minister, Andrii Sybiha, responded: “How shameless to post this after a brutal attack [on Kyiv] by terrorist state Russia. Peter, if the Russian pipeline is more important to you than the Ukrainian children killed by Russia this morning, this is moral decay.” Robert Brovdi, the ethnic Hungarian Ukrainian commander who is facing the ban, dismissed Budapest’s “sanctions and restrictions”, posting that “your hands are covered in Ukrainian blood. And we will remember that”.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he expects a framework for security guarantees for Ukraine to be set out as soon as next week. On Thursday, Zelenskyy said he had “extensively” discussed the topic in a call with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The head of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, Rustem Umerov, visited Turkey on Thursday to discuss the topic.