“Poland is getting more troops, the whole eastern flank is getting strengthened, and I think that the money being pledged to Ukraine sends a strong signal that this will go on for some time,” she said. No one wants to see a NATO-Russia conflict, so I think Russia is trying to ramp it up as much as possible.”įallon said that President Putin will have to explain to his public that pushing back at NATO has only resulted in the addition of two new member states, Sweden and Finland. “We’re seeing an awful war of attrition in Ukraine. “There is concern that Russia will escalate the war on Ukraine even further,” Fallon told Al Jazeera, speaking from Brussels. Theresa Fallon, the director at the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies, said that Russia might escalate its offensive on Ukraine, as it contends with the expansion of NATO. 19:01 GMT ‘No one wants to see a NATO-Russia conflict’: analyst “In short, the picture remains pretty grim and Russia’s attitude toward the West is hardening,” Haines added. “We think he has effectively the same political goals that we had previously, which is to say that he wants to take most of Ukraine.” “We perceive a disconnect between Putin’s near-term military objectives in this area and his military’s capacity, a kind of mismatch between his ambitions and what the military is able to accomplish,” she told a Commerce Department conference. Russian President Putin still wants to seize most of Ukraine, but his forces are so degraded by combat that they likely can only achieve incremental gains in the near term, Avril Haines, the top US intelligence officer said. 19:26 GMT Putin still wants most of Ukraine, war outlook grim: US intelligence chief The Russian army is trying to attack constantly,” Serhiy Haidai said on his Telegram channel. The fighting is continuing at the outskirts of the city. Lysychansk “is constantly being shelled with large calibres. The frequency of shelling on Lysychansk, a city in eastern Ukraine under Russian attack, is “enormous”, the regional governor of Luhansk said. 20:01 GMT Frequency of shelling in Lysychansk is ‘enormous’: regional governor Putin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying he could not rule out that tensions would emerge in Moscow’s relations with Helsinki and Stockholm over their joining NATO. President Putin said Russia would respond in kind if NATO set up infrastructure in Finland and Sweden after they join the US-led military alliance. 20:31 GMT Putin: Russia will respond if NATO sets up infrastructure in Finland, Sweden “There will no longer be relations between Ukraine and Syria,” Zelenskyy said in a video posted on Telegram, adding that the sanctions pressure against Syria “will be even greater”. President Zelenskyy has announced the end of diplomatic ties between Kyiv and Damascus after Moscow ally Syria recognised the independence of eastern Ukraine’s two separatist republics. 20:46 GMT Zelenskyy says ties cut with Syria after it recognised separatist republics These were the updates on Wednesday, June 29: This live blog is now closed, thank you for joining us. Russia’s deputy UN ambassador tells the United Nations Security Council that Moscow’s precision weapons hit hangars in the Kremenchuk road machinery plant, causing a fire that spread to the mall.It also says there is a real possibility the Russian missile that hit the shopping centre in Kremenchuk was intended for a nearby target.The UK’s defence ministry claims Russian forces were making “incremental advances” in their offensive to capture the city of Lysychansk.

A Russian missile attack has killed three people and injured five in the port city of Mykolaiv on Wednesday, local authorities say, following Tuesday’s raids that killed three people, including a six-year-old girl.NATO has labelled Russia a menace to its security as the bloc plans to revise its defences in response to the war on Ukraine.

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