The Netherlands and Denmark pledged to deliver F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, a move that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called “powerful” and “historic” as he wrapped up a diplomatic tour to several European countries this weekend.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Ukraine will receive 42 F-16 fighter jets from the Netherlands and 19 from Denmark, Zelensky said Sunday on Telegram. Both countries agreed to deliver the aircraft “in close cooperation with the U.S. and other partners” when conditions such as successful testing and training are met, the Danish Defense Ministry said.
Rescue operations for the deadly Saturday attack on Chernihiv have ended, with seven dead and 156 injured, Ukraine’s operational armed forces said Sunday, adding that 66 residential buildings were damaged. In his nightly address, Zelensky called the incident a “terrorist attack” and said the military would “respond tangibly.”
E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemned Russia’s strike on Chernihiv as “cowardly and deliberate” in a social media post. Earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the incident a “horrific missile attack on innocent civilians.”
Four civilians were injured during attacks on Avdiivka, Krasnohorivka and Toretsk in the Donetsk region, the local prosecutor’s office said Sunday.
Shelling in the eastern town of Kupyansk injured 11 civilians on Sunday, Kharkiv’s regional governor, Oleh Synyehubov, said on Telegram. He added that seven of the injured were in critical condition and shared photos of heavily damaged cars on fire or with their windows blown out.
Russian attacks in the Kherson region killed at least two people and injured three others, its governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said Monday on Telegram.
Ukraine is exploiting President Biden’s cluster bomb gamble: A few feet away from a pile of U.S.-made cluster bombs, a group of Ukrainian military men listen to an earsplitting boom go off some 50 times a day — their way of trying to hold back advancing Russian forces, John Hudson and Anastacia Galouchka report.
President Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine is the most controversial arms transfer of his presidency. Human Rights Watch called the move “profoundly troubling,” and Germany, France, Canada, the Netherlands and other NATO allies publicly opposed it.
But the deployment of the weapon has been met with little hesitation inside Ukraine’s government and military, which provided The Washington Post rare access to the equipment and soldiers using the notoriously imprecise munitions.