Russia launches a major aerial attack on Kyiv hours before high-level talks on support for Ukraine
The attack killed two people and wounded 15, including a 12-year-old, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
A drone struck the entrance to a subway station in Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi district where people had taken cover. Videos posted on social media showed the station platform engulfed by smoke, with dozens of people inside. Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said the station had to be ventilated in what he called an 'enhanced mode.'
The heaviest strikes hit the city's Darnytskyi district, where a kindergarten, supermarket and warehouse facilities caught fire.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, who arrived in Kyiv on Monday for talks with Zelenskyy, visited some of the damaged area.
Zelenskyy and Barrot spoke about expanding defense cooperation, including a decision by French companies to start manufacturing drones in Ukraine, and advancing Ukraine's path toward European Union membership, the Ukrainian leader said on social media.
The overnight drone and missile assault on Kyiv underscored the urgency of Ukraine's need for further Western military aid, especially in air defense, a week after Trump said deliveries would arrive in Ukraine within days.
Western defense chiefs hold Ukraine meeting
The virtual meeting of high-level military officials Monday was led by British Defense Secretary John Healey and his German counterpart Boris Pistorius. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and NATO leader Mark Rutte, as well as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, attended the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.
Moscow has intensified its long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities, and analysts say the barrages are likely to escalate as Russian drone production expands.
Ukraine's new Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal urged allies to speed up deliveries of American air defense systems under the plan put forward by Trump.
'I request the U.S. to make these weapons available for purchase, and our European partners to extend all the needed financing for their procurement,' Shmyhal, who until recently served as prime minister, said as the meeting began.
Trump's arms plan, announced a week ago, involves European nations sending American weapons, including Patriot air defense missile systems, to Ukraine via NATO — either from existing stockpiles or buying and donating new ones.
In an shift of tone toward Russia, Trump last week gave Moscow a 50-day deadline to agree to a ceasefire or face tougher sanctions.
At Monday's meeting, Healey was expected to urge Ukraine's Western partners to launch a '50-day drive' to get Kyiv the weapons it needs to fight Russia's bigger army and force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, the U.K. government said in a statement.
NATO's Grynkewich told The Associated Press on Thursday that 'preparations are underway' for weapons transfers to Ukraine while U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said he couldn't give a time frame.
Kyiv wants American-made Patriot missile systems
Germany has said it offered to finance two new Patriot systems for Ukraine and raised the possibility of supplying systems it already owns and having them replaced by the U.S.
But delivery could take time, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested, because 'they have to be transported, they have to be set up; that is not a question of hours, it is a question of days, perhaps weeks."
Other Patriot systems could come thanks to Switzerland, whose defense ministry said Thursday it was informed by the U.S. Defense Department that it will 'reprioritize the delivery" of five previously ordered systems to support Ukraine.
While Ukraine waits for Patriots, a senior NATO official said the alliance is still coordinating the delivery of other military aid — such as ammunition and artillery rounds — which includes aid from the U.S. that was briefly paused. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Zelenskyy said Saturday that his officials have proposed a new round of peace talks this week. Russian state media on Sunday reported that no date has yet been set for the negotiations, but said that Istanbul would likely remain the host city. The Kremlin spokesman said Sunday that Russia is open to peace with Ukraine, but achieving its goals remains a priority.
Ukraine fires drones at Moscow
The overnight Russian barrage of Kyiv began shortly after midnight and continued until around 6 a.m. Residents of the capital were kept awake by machine-gun fire, buzzing drone engines and multiple loud explosions.
It was the first major attack on Kyiv since Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, arrived in the city last Monday. Russia halted strikes on Kyiv during his visit.
Russia's Ministry of Defense said its attack used drones and Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. It said that the barrage successfully targeted airfield infrastructure and Ukraine's military-industrial complex.
Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 426 Shahed and decoy drones overnight Monday, as well as 24 missiles of various types. It said 200 drones were intercepted with 203 more jammed or lost from radars.
Ukraine, meanwhile, continued to deploy its domestically produced long-range drones. Russia's Ministry of Defense said that its forces shot down 74 Ukrainian drones overnight, with almost a third of them destroyed close to the Russian capital. Twenty-three drones were shot down in the Moscow region, the ministry said, 15 of which were intercepted over the city itself.
___
Novikov reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Stephen McGrath in Bucharest, Romania contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP's coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'Anxious Generation' Author Jonathan Haidt Shares New Worries About Kids — and Why You Should Be Concerned (Exclusive)
His book has been a bestseller for more than a year and has prompted smartphone bans in schools across the country, but in a conversation with PEOPLE, Haidt says kids are still in danger When Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation debuted last year, it immediately became a bestseller — and a must-read for many parents navigating an era of pervasive smartphones and social media. Now, more than half of all states have passed laws banning or limiting phone use in schools — 17 states passed legislation just this year — and a new research poll finds that 74% of adults in the U.S. support classroom phone bans. Australia plans to restrict social media to those aged 16 and up starting in December, and several other European countries are also considering age restrictions. In a conversation with PEOPLE, Haidt, 61, a social psychologist and professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, says he's been encouraged by the rapid changes but warns that some changes are better than others. Haidt, who offers resources for parents at and on his Substack, weighs in on criticism of his book, the fears he has for kids, and the looming danger of Artificial Intelligence. PEOPLE: Are you surprised by the success of your book? HAIDT: I knew the book would be successful because whenever I mentioned I was writing it, parents said, "We need this tomorrow, can I see a draft?" But the the speed with which parents are organizing, the speed with which schools are going phone-free. I can't even keep track of it. PEOPLE: As you note, many schools and districts have opted to go phone-free, or ban phones in classrooms in the past year. What's working – and what isn't? HAIDT: The simplest fix, and it costs no money, is phone-free schools. That means when kids come in, they put their phone in a locked pouch, or a locker, and get it back at the end of the day. But many states and schools are doing something that's not very good: They banned phones only during instructional time. They do that because they're afraid of parents who say, 'I have to reach my student all the time.' But when class ends, kids lunge for their phones. And for the first 15 minutes of the next class, they're thinking about the drama going on. Phone bans during class time do nothing to help kids make friends. They do nothing to reduce the mental illness issue. It has to be bell-to-bell. I've never heard of a school that did it all day and regretted it or went back. PEOPLE: Critics of your book say you ignore the possible benefits of screen I recently found a horrifying statistic, which is that 40% of American 2-year-olds have their own iPad. A touchscreen device is not like television. Humans have always raised their children with stories. This is how culture is passed on. A TV screen is a reasonably good way of presenting stories. If your five-year-old watches a 90-minute movie on TV with an older sibling or with you, there's nothing wrong with that. The opposite is iPad time. The kid learns, "Might there be something more interesting if I swipe?" If this starts at age two, your kids lose the ability to pay attention to anything if it's boring for even a moment. By the time kids get to middle school, if they've been swiping and seeing micro stories that aren't really stories, a lot of damage has been done to their ability to pay attention. Us college professors all say the same thing: Kids can't read books anymore. Some of our students say they can't even watch a movie. It's too long. Our attention is being shattered. Let children's frontal cortex develop before you expose them to this. It's damaging an entire generation. And you should never give a child an iPhone as their first phone. You should work your way up. I stand by my rule, no smartphone before high school. PEOPLE: I'd like to talk age bans. Australia recently banned social media for those under Don't call it a ban. We don't say there's an age ban on driving. Just minimum age. There should be a minimum age. PEOPLE: But isn't there validity to the argument that if you keep kids away from social media completely, they're won't develop tools to learn to use it effectively? HAIDT: I hear this argument a lot, but I don't think it's valid psychologically. Our kids are going to be having sex and drinking alcohol, so it is valuable to have classes on that. We should be telling them about dangers. But have you ever heard anyone say, "We need to start them early because they need to know how to do this.' That's ridiculous. These devices, and especially these apps, were designed to hook your child. They were designed with full knowledge of brain development, dopamine circuits, motivation, insecurity. These are predatory programs that prey on children. PEOPLE: One of the biggest criticisms levied against your book is that it doesn't adequately acknowledge the way in which technology has allowed people, and particularly kids who might be isolated or marginalized, to connect and organize. HAIDT: That argument confuses the internet with social media. The internet solved that problem in the '90s. If you're a gay kid in rural Nebraska, life was really hard until the internet came along and suddenly you could get information everywhere. You could find organizations to help. I love the internet. Almost everybody loves the internet. Then in the 2000s, we get one application on the internet, which is a way of linking people together, giving them a newsfeed curated by an algorithm — and the algorithm is giving them whatever it can to keep them hooked. So who do you suppose is most harmed by this? Who do you suppose is most likely to be sextorted ? It's LGBTQ kids. Who do you think is most likely to say "This is harming my mental health?" It's LGBTQ kids. I often hear about the benefits [of social media]. I say, what benefits? Creativity? Have you worked with Gen Z? They can't pay attention. They're making little videos, but not much beyond that. Social media has very few benefits for children. For adults, yes, it's useful for business. I don't have anything to say to people over 18, but children have no need to connect with strangers. Children would be more connected if they put the phone down and got together with their friends. PEOPLE: Speaking of , we're in this moment where it was banned, the ban was rescinded and now we're waiting to hear about a . What are your thoughts about TikTok and what should happen? HAIDT: TikTok is the worst of them all. No one should be on TikTok. It damages your attention and exposes our children to garbage. We did a survey of Gen Z, these were in their late teens, early 20s, 50% of them said they wish TikTok had never been invented. They use it because they have to, but they see their life would be better if it didn't exist. I have very little hope Congress will do anything to protect children. So far, they have a perfect record of never protecting children ever on the Internet. But Australia and the UK are acting, and if their plans move ahead, and if the EU joins them and other countries, platforms are going to have to make it global because they don't want a different Instagram in each country. I'm hoping the rest of the world will fix this problem that America created. PEOPLE: What are your thoughts about how education cuts could affect kids and exacerbate what you're already seeing? HAIDT: Educational ability is declining since 2012, and cuts to funding are not going to help. But the biggest driver of the decline of education is the phones in the pockets and the Chromebooks on the desks. We spent billions of dollars putting a Chromebook or iPad on every desk. We thought this was an equity issue. But it turns out anyone with a computer on their desk can't focus. I teach college students, and MBA students at NYU. Three years ago, I had to go to a no-screens policy because even my graduate students cannot pay attention if they have a computer open. They're all multitasking. Adults can't pay attention, so how the hell do we expect 9-year-olds to pay attention when they have an iPad or a Chromebook on their desk? The best thing we can do for education is first, lock the phones away. Second, get devices off the desks. PEOPLE: At our school, kids have laptops with educational games. As a parent, there's a struggle between thinking more screen time isn't great, but games can be good for As soon as we introduce the technology, scores begin to drop. So we should start with the assumption that these things are not healthy, not helping unless they're proven to help. If you gamify math, the kid will be more engaged. So we think, this is good — but it's not. Suppose you gamify a third of your child's school day. What happens? Gamification is specifically targeted at giving kids a pulse of dopamine, which creates motivation to keep going. Okay, you think, that's good, they're motivated. But the brain adjusts, the dopamine circuits adjust and it now takes more dopamine to get up to normal. So the more you give them gamified educational technology, the harder it's going to be to have their attention to anything that's not on a screen. It's the same dilemma of parents who give their kid an iPad to shut them up. Yes, it will work in the short run, but now you always have to do it because they're not capable of sitting at a restaurant while you're eating. To be clear, there may be a role for some educational technology such as Khan Academy, but the one-to-one devices was the colossal mistake. You should try to avoid schools that will put an iPad or Chromebook on your child's desk. PEOPLE: That's most public schools!HAIDT: That's right. We have to change it. PEOPLE: How do you think AI will change the landscape for social media? HAIDT: In a sense, we've already had the first contact with AI, which was the algorithms. The algorithms made social media much more powerful. Early Facebook was not very addictive. It was just, you check out your friends' pages, they check out yours. But the algorithms, driven by AI, were super intelligent at hooking children with content, especially extreme content. We've already encountered AI and we lost. And our kids have been severely damaged by it. Our technology is becoming our master. This is all before the second wave of AI began with ChatGPT in late 2022, and what AI is already doing is showing that technology is going to become 100 times more powerful as our master. Those of us who feel like we're struggling with our phone addictions, it's going to get 10 times worse. Every app is going to get better and better at giving you what keeps you. Every app is going to get better and better at replacing real life. PEOPLE: What's your big fear with AI for kids? HAIDT: The most frightening thing to me is the AI companions. Our children already are socially deprived. They have poor social skills and they're lonely. This makes them even more likely as targets, as marketing targets for AI friends. But the more AI companions enter their lives, the less room and ability there will be for real friendships. PEOPLE: You talk about the value of giving kids independence. But for letting their kids walk to the store. How can parents foster independence in a world that's wary of it? HAIDT: The first thing is to look at the real world versus the virtual world. In the '90s we thought if our kids were on computers, they were safe, but if they went outside, they'd be abducted. It turns out both of those were not true. Crime rates have dropped tremendously since the '90s. Kidnapping is almost unheard of in the U.S. by strangers. The outside world is much safer than we realized. At the same time, if you let your kids on the Internet and social media, they're going to encounter pornography and strangers who want sex or money from them. We have to change our priorities. Our children have to learn to handle risk. They don't learn that online. Talking with a sex predator online doesn't toughen or benefit them. Going outside and getting lost and finding your way back is a powerful way to strengthen kids. We have to stop fearing the real world and be more afraid of the virtual world. You might be scared to send your eight-year-old six blocks to a grocery store, but what if he does it with his best friend? It's going to be a lot more fun. Everyone's going to be more secure. The more you do this with multiple families working together, the easier it is. Our goal isn't to snatch phones and iPads and screens. Our goal is to restore the fun, healthy, human childhood that most of us had. That's been taken from our kids. It is urgent that we restore it. Our kids are coming up broken. PEOPLE: The book emphasizes the importance of play, especially outdoor free play for kids mental health and development. What options do parents have if their kids are in public schools where the structure of the day, including play time, is limited? HAIDT: Two things that are easy and cost no money. Go to and download the kit for the Let Grow Experience. It gives kids more independence and fun and growth and it's free. So suppose your school has all the third graders do it. They go home, they decide something they can do by themselves. The best ones are where they go out of the house, to a neighbor's house to borrow a cup of sugar or go to a store. Imagine a town in which all third graders do that. Suddenly no one's afraid because, well, this is homework and the school told us to do it, and everyone else is doing it. Then what happens? Everyone sees eight year olds walking on the sidewalk. Nobody has seen that since 1997. The second program is called Play Club. Many parents are afraid to let their kids out, but they do trust the school playground. So a powerful thing to do is open the playground 30 minutes before class. You need an adult nearby, so that would be a small expense. But kids are desperate for free play and they get so little recess, so if you open the playground at 7:30, a lot of the kids are going to want to come and play soccer, play games, run around. It adds more free play to their day for very little money and it doesn't take away anything else from the school day. And it reduces truancy and lateness —since COVID, a lot of kids just aren't coming to school or they're coming late. PEOPLE: That's one of the things our school does, morning runs for the Wait, what do they do? They go on runs? PEOPLE: It's a track thing. On Monday mornings they can run around the track before Wait, they literally run around? That's it? That's what they do? That's an adult thing. We're so afraid to let go and let them play. They have to have free play. They're desperate for it. It's like if we raised our kids with no vitamin C whatsoever, and they all develop rickets, and then we say, "Well, we'll give you some lotion to put on the scars." No, just give them vitamin C. PEOPLE: Finally, one of your suggestions is connect with other parents with similar mindsets on phones/social media before your kids get to middle school. But you can't always choose who your kid hangs out with. Your phone-free kid may want to hang out with a kid who has a phone. What do you say to parents who feel like they're fighting a losing battle?HAIDT: Encourage your child to bring friends to the house, but there should be a rule that they put phones in a basket by the door. My children experience this. They go to a friend's house and the friend is on the phone all day long. What's the point? But your kid's not going to be damaged by occasionally seeing a smartphone or watching some TikTok videos. Half of American kids are online almost all the basically take themselves out of the game of life. When you give your child a phone, there's a 50% risk that your kid will be in that half. It's not so bad if he spends 10 minutes here and there on his friend's phone, that's not going to destroy his brain. But if he becomes one of the half that is addicted, it will probably cause permanent brain changes. The main thing is to shift from a mindset of threat to a mindset of discovery. Childhood should be about discovery, not fear. When kids are online, it becomes much more about fear. They're anxious. There's constant drama. But if we put them out in the world with other kids, they have fun. And we need to keep our eye on giving our kids fun. Read the original article on People Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Another round of US-China talks will start next week in Sweden: Bessent
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Tuesday that a third round of trade talks with China are now scheduled and will commence next week in Sweden, with the goal of delaying a deadline next month that has threatened to see tariffs rise between the world's two largest economies. 'I'm going to be in Stockholm on Monday and Tuesday with my Chinese counterparts and we'll be working out what is likely an extension then,' Bessent said Tuesday morning during an appearance with Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo. The confirmation of a meeting — following talks in Geneva and then London earlier this year — comes ahead of an Aug. 12 deadline when a pause on tariffs between China and the US is scheduled to expire. Lessening tensions between the two nations appear to have boosted markets. Bessent used the appearance Tuesday morning to reiterate his message that markets should be confident that a new round of tensions with China are not in the offing, suggesting that his focus during the coming talks will be on increasing Chinese demand for US products. He said that China can become a bigger importer as American output increases, saying 'if we could do that together: we do more manufacturing, they do more consumption that would be a home run for the global economy.' Other issues that will be on the table, Bessent added, could be topics like China's consumption of Russian and Iranian oil (which Trump has promised to sanction) as well as the war in Ukraine. Next week's meeting could also set the stage for a meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping later this year. Bessent added Tuesday that trade talks are proceeding on other fronts around the globe, promising 'a rash of trade deals in the coming days' before an August 1 deadline for other nations. The promise there comes as other trading partners — from the European Union to Brazil to India — have said in recent days that they continued to negotiate while offering signals they are preparing for a possibility of Aug. 1 arriving without a deal. The European Union has even been making plans for retaliation — which could include new tariffs on an array of US goods. Yet much of the market focus in recent weeks has been on China and the lessening tensions there helping investors to pushing prices upwards. A recent reversal from the White House where Trump's team acceded to Chinese requests to allow Nvidia (NVDA) to resume sales of its H20 artificial intelligence chip has only increased confidence that a thaw is in the offing for now. Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Greenpeace hails Italy court ruling allowing climate lawsuit against energy company ENI to go ahead
ROME (AP) — Italy's highest court has ruled that a lawsuit brought by climate activists against Italian energy company ENI and its government shareholders can go ahead, in what Greenpeace said on Tuesday was a victory for efforts to pursue climate justice in Italy. In an ordinance released on Monday, the Court of Cassation rejected ENI's motions to dismiss the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds and ordered the case to be heard on its merits by a Rome tribunal. ENI, for its part, said that it was greatly satisfied with the decision, and it expected that the Rome court would ultimately 'dismantle' the climate activists' claims of responsibility. Greenpeace, environmental group ReCommon and a dozen Italian citizens had sued ENI and its two main government shareholders, the Italian finance ministry and development bank, in 2023 seeking damages for what they said were the effects of climate change. The plaintiffs cited their fundamental rights enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights, as well as Italy's ratification of various international climate accords and ENI's stated commitment to reaching climate reduction targets. ENI and the government sought to dismiss the suit on jurisdictional and other grounds, but the Cassation court ruled that the case could go ahead. For more than a century, scientists have known that large quantities of greenhouse gases, released from the burning of fossil fuels, go up into the atmosphere and heat the planet, leading to higher temperatures, rising sea levels and extreme weather events that are both more frequent and more intense. Around the world in recent years, individuals, climate activist groups and local governments have sued energy companies and governments to try to force them to take concrete action to curb greenhouse gas emissions and compensate for losses associated with climate change. Greenpeace and ReCommon called the ruling historic, saying it would impact current and future climate-related litigation in Italy. They say it brings Italian courts in line with other European countries that have recognized the rights of people to try to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for global warming through lawsuits, and called the ruling itself one of the most significant in climate change litigation internationally. 'No one, not even a colossus like ENI, can escape its responsibilities anymore,' the two groups said in a statement. 'Judges will finally be able to examine the merits of our case: those who pollute and contribute to the climate crisis must answer for their actions.' ENI said that it welcomed the ruling. 'The proceedings can finally resume before the Court of Rome, where the unfounded theories put forward by Greenpeace and ReCommon regarding the alleged responsibility of Eni for climate change-related damages will be dismantled, in a context that is rigorous and respectful of the law, rather than driven by the instrumental, unfounded, and often misleading slogans of the two associations,' ENI said in a statement. While the ruling doesn't enter into the merits of the case, Greenpeace and Recommon highlighted the judges' determination that Italian courts can have jurisdiction over claims about emissions by ENI subsidiaries in foreign countries, since in this case, harm allegedly occurred in Italy and decisions were made by the Italy-based parent company. Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
