Vance is one of Trump's most vocal supporters and an outspoken critic of U.S. aid to Ukraine.

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Vance has said that it would be "completely irresponsible" for Ukraine to join NATO. He has also argued for the U.S. to focus solely on preventing Chinese expansion, even if that means sacrificing sovereign Ukrainian lands to Russia.

"Any peace settlement is going to require some significant territorial concessions from Ukraine, and you're gonna have a peace deal, because that's the only way out of the conflict," Vance said in February.

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Ukraine, now armed with American-made precision missiles, is for the first time capable of reaching every corner of Crimea — and the missiles are increasingly flying in both directions.

It is a new strategic push as Kyiv seeks to raise the cost for Russian occupation forces that have long used the peninsula as a base of operations just off Ukraine’s southern coast.

While it is unlikely to have much effect on the front line, Ukraine’s campaign with the long-range version of the Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, appears meant to force the Kremlin to make difficult choices about where to deploy some of its most valuable air defenses to protect critical military infrastructure.

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Ukraine has the right under international law to attack military targets located in Russian territory, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during an interview on the United News telethon July 14.

United States policy prohibits Ukrainian forces from using U.S.-supplied weapons to strike targets deep within Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on Washington to lift restrictions, saying the ability to use long-range U.S. weapons such as ATACMS within Russia and occupied Crimea would produce "an instant result."

In the interview, Stoltenberg affirmed Ukraine's right to self-defense.

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Despite billions of dollars in additional weapons and security assistance that NATO announced this week, allied officials said Ukraine would not be ready to launch a dramatic counteroffensive or retake large swaths of territory from Russia until next year.

Donations of missiles, combat vehicles, ammunition and air defenses from the United States and European countries will take weeks, if not months, to reach the front lines.

Some of the newly committed weapons have not yet been bought or built.

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Outgunned and outmanned, Ukrainian soldiers struggling to hold the front line in a brutal, months-long Russian siege of Chasiv Yar are increasingly worried about their army's ability to protect their rear. If key supply lines from the west are cut off and if troops to their south are overrun, they risk being choked.

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After retreating west from the Donetsk Oblast city of Bakhmut just over one year ago, Ukraine's forces have used the higher ground around Chasiv Yar to inflict massive losses on advancing Russian troops who this spring made incursions into the town's eastern outskirts.

But the predicament for Ukrainian troops struggling to hold Chasiv Yar worsened in past weeks after a poorly organized rotation of Ukrainian soldiers to the south allowed Russian forces to advance towards the Ukraine-held towns of Toretsk and Niu York.

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World leaders flew into Washington DC on Tuesday for a two-day Nato summit where they are expected to agree enhanced military support for Ukraine against a backdrop of questions about Joe Biden’s mental sharpness.

Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, were among those arriving at the US capital amid a warning that Russia could step up missile strikes on Ukraine this week, repeating a barrage that killed at least 38 on Monday.

The summit is expected to agree a fresh package of military aid for Ukraine, including at least four additional Patriot air defence systems and progress on supplying F-16 fighters, to help Kyiv better fend off devastating Russian attacks.

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Search and rescue operations at the site of a Russian missile attack on Okhmatdyt hospital in Kyiv concluded on July 9, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

The attack against the medical facility killed two people, including a doctor, and wounded 32 others. Eight children were hospitalized, according to Klymenko.

In total, at least 33 people, including four children, were killed in Kyiv as a result of the July 8 attack, officials said the following day. Another 10 children are among the 117 injured.

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Russian bots with a Kremlin disinformation network published 120,000 fake anti-Ukraine quotes falsely attributed to celebrities, including Jennifer Aniston and Scarlett Johansson, in one day, the independent Russian media outlet Agentsvo reported June 15.

Quotes appeared over celebrity photos, displaying messages calling to end aid to Ukraine and describing European collapse.

The images were published between June 14-15 by the Kremlin disinformation network Dvoynyk, a representative of the Bot Blocker project told Agentsvo. The fake quotes have since garnered over 500,000 views.

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Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine overnight on June 1, launching drones and cruise missiles, while damaging energy infrastructure across various regions across the country.

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Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko confirmed that energy infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kirovohrad, and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts came under attack by Russian forces. Restoration workers are currently on scene and are determining the extent of the damage.

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Ukraine's Air Force announced an air alert throughout the country, including the far-western oblasts, citing the threat of Russian cruise missiles, drones, and Tu-95MS bombers.

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The fabricated video, which is drawn from actual footage, shows the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, seeming to suggest that the Russian city of Belgorod, just 25 miles north of Ukraine’s border with Russia, was a legitimate target for such strikes.

The 49-second video clip, which has an authentic feel despite telltale clues of manipulation, illustrates the growing threat of disinformation and especially so-called deepfake videos powered by artificial intelligence.

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Belgorod “has essentially no civilians remaining,” the video purports to show Mr. Miller saying at the State Department in response to a reporter’s question, which was also manufactured. “It’s practically full of military targets at this point, and we are seeing the same thing starting in the regions around there.”

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The interview came at perhaps the toughest moment for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Zelenskiy insisted, however, that it was too early to write off the country, and that he remained positive despite all his frustrations. “I’m not in despair at all … I don’t feel like we are on a sinking ship which is going to the bottom. We are not shouting ‘save us’.”

The president is, however, shouting for more urgency. Russia is on the offensive in the Kharkiv region, an advance that came after months of delay in the US Congress over the passing of a major support package, limiting Ukraine’s battlefield capacities. Then, there was the ban on using western weapons to hit Russian military targets across the border, limiting its ability to defend itself.

In the hours after the interview, the US administration finally shifted on that issue, allowing Ukraine to use certain US weapons on targets in the Russian border areas around Kharkiv. It is a permission that may have been more useful three weeks ago, when Ukrainian intelligence could first see Russian troops gathering across the border in preparation for the assault. This sense of decisions being taken long after Ukraine needed them has been a recurring motif of western policy making over the past two years, and one that has caused much frustration.

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The U.S. Ministry of Defense's Intelligence Service reported that Russia has used North Korean ballistic missiles to strike Ukraine.

This conclusion was drawn after comparing missile debris found in Kharkiv on January 2 with images from North Korean state media, noting similarities in specific missile components.

U.N. experts confirmed that the debris originated from a North Korean Hwasong-11 missile, indicating Russia’s violation of the ongoing arms embargo.

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