Donald Trump has said Volodymyr Zelenskyy is doing “pretty well” in Ukraine’s war against Russia. The US president – who previously said the Ukrainian president lacked the “cards” to win – told journalists in the Oval Office that Zelenskyy was “holding his own, at least. A lot of people dying on both sides, but I think he’s doing pretty well.” Analysts say Ukraine is increasingly holding up well on the battlefield but its cities are still the target of deadly Russian attacks. Trump and Zelenskyy met most recently during the G7 summit in France, where leaders agreed to intensify pressure on Russia to end more than four years of war.

European allies want to send “a strong signal of support for Ukraine” at the Nato summit in Ankara in July, Germany’s chancellor said as he hosted the leaders of France, Britain, Italy and Poland. “The message to Russia is: Ukraine remains strong,” Friedrich Merz said at a joint press event in Berlin on Wednesday after the European leaders had also spoken by video link with the Nato chief, Mark Rutte. Merz said the German government “proposes that we, as European Nato allies, give Kyiv a strong financing commitment” and stressed that “Europe’s support is not wavering”. Leaders from 32 nations, among them Trump, will attend the 7-8 July Nato summit in the Turkish capital.

Ukraine will attack facilities Russia uses for the war, Zelenskyy has said, as Kyiv expands strikes on energy infrastructure to try to force ⁠Moscow into talks. “I instructed our intelligence services and military to act pre-emptively ⁠against facilities Russia uses to expand its ​war effort,” the Ukrainian president said in his ⁠evening address ⁠on ​Wednesday. Ukrainian ‌drones knocked out power in the biggest city ‌in Russian-held Crimea and targeted facilities in central and southern Russia on Wednesday.

A Russian strike on Ukraine’s southern Kherson region killed two mine disposal experts from the Oslo-based charity Norwegian People’s Aid, the Kherson region’s governor said. The strike occurred on Wednesday in the village of Novopetrivka, Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram. “Four other specialists were wounded.” The staff affected were Ukrainian citizens, the deputy head of the Kherson region’s military administration said.

The deputy leader of Russia’s Yabloko party, which opposes the war in Ukraine, has been convicted of spreading lies about the ⁠Russian army and ​jailed for seven years, in a verdict he said showed public dissent had become illegal. Maxim Kruglov, 39, a former lawmaker in Moscow’s city legislature, was arrested in October and charged ⁠over two posts he made on Telegram in 2022 criticising the war in Ukraine. Kruglov pleaded not guilty and told the court: “In essence, this is a ban on dissent.”