Iran’s new supreme leader has rejected proposals to ease tensions with the US

Ukraine has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in response to the escalation of Russian attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea. Kyiv has proposed that the meeting take place on 27 July.

The new British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has backed the decision to allow the United States to use British military bases for targeted strikes against Iran, which London describes as defensive. This approach continues the policy of the previous government.

Ukraine is considering the possibility of recruiting foreign workers due to an acute labour shortage, but they must not compete with Ukrainians for jobs. A proposal has been put forward in the Verkhovna Rada to allow the employment of foreign nationals only in those sectors where vacancies cannot be filled by domestic workers.

The Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, is prepared to continue peace talks only once the Russian Federation has seized the whole of Donbas. The Russian Ministry of Defence is assuring him that this can be achieved by 2026, but rank-and-file soldiers disagree.

Lithuanian Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas has stated that, as the war against Ukraine has not yielded the expected results, the Kremlin may seek a further escalation. According to him, Russia may regard the Baltic states and Poland as its next potential targets.

Over the past 24 hours, 261 combat engagements were recorded on the front line. Russian troops carried out missile and air strikes, whilst the Defence Forces continued to target areas where the enemy was concentrated and to repel their attacks on the main fronts.

The Russian army has lost a further 1,460 troops over the past 24 hours. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the total losses of Russian personnel have reached around 1,434,690, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian company DEVIRO has unveiled a new ‘Palytsia’ aircraft-type strike drone, which is set to become a more affordable and mass-produced addition to the already well-known ‘Bulava’ strike system.

The Pentagon has announced that the third service member believed to have been killed in the Iranian attack on a US base in Jordan is Sergeant Angel S. Rampersad. The total number of US military personnel killed since the start of the war has risen to 18.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has set a number of tasks for the new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Mykhailo Drapaty.