Ukraine war briefing: Calls grow to spend all of Russia’s frozen billions on Ukrainian defence

Calls are growing for hundreds of billions in Russian government wealth frozen in the international banking system to be used in full for Ukraine’s defence. Europe and the G7 have found ways to use interest from the financial assets to help Ukraine in the war, but the capital has remained locked up since the February 2022 invasion. The British foreign secretary, David Lammy, said on Tuesday: “Europe has to act quickly, and I believe we should move from freezing assets to seizing assets. It’s not an issue on which any government can act alone. We must act with European allies.” Petr Fiala, the Czech PM, also said the west should use the money to finance military supplies for Ukraine. European leaders have so far failed to reach agreement on how to seize the money without facing legal challenges or setting a problematic international precedent.

Ukraine received 500,000 artillery shells bought outside Europe in 2024 under an initiative run by the Czech Republic, said its prime minister, Petr Fiala. Overall, the Czechs co-ordinated the supply of about 1.5m shells in total in 2024. Eighteen countries including Canada, Germany and Portugal collected about $1.8bn by June 2024 to buy 155mm shells under the banner of the “Czech ammunition initiative”. The Czechs continue to send tens of thousands of shells a month. It marks an improvement from a European effort to send Ukraine a million shells by March 2024 – that stretched out to December 2024 because of production shortages.

Moscow has dismissed Donald Trump’s claim that Russia would accept European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine, Pjotr Sauer writes. Addressing reporters, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin had nothing to add to the foreign ministry’s position on the unacceptability of Nato peacekeepers in Ukraine.

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, said that after he returns from seeing Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, “I am hosting a number of countries at the weekend for us to continue to discuss how we go forward together as allies in light of the situation that we face”.

The cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine after three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion will be $524bn over the next decade, according to a report released by the Government of Ukraine, the World Bank Group, the European Commission, and the United Nations.

A Russian drone attack injured a 19-year-old woman and set a house on fire in Kyiv oblast, said Mykola Kalashnyk, the regional governor. The city, the region surrounding it and the eastern half of Ukraine came under air raid alerts starting on Tuesday night.

A Russian attack on the town of Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s east on Tuesday killed one person and injured at least 14, including four children, Ukrainian national police said. Russian fire hit a residential district, damaging 17 houses. Kramatorsk, part of the Donetsk region, is about 17km from the active combat line and remains a constant target of Russian military attacks.

A Russian military court sentenced a man to 16 years in jail after he was accused of providing Ukraine with data on a military site near Moscow and preparing attacks, authorities said on Tuesday.