Rescuers killed in Kharkiv strikes as Nato allies urged to bring back conscription

A proposal by Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to create a €100 billion (£86bn) fund for Ukraine is worth considering, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Thursday, but he added that it was important to prevent the doubling up of structures.

Such a fund would also have to take into consideration the national contributions already made by Nato countries, Mr Pistorius told a press conference in Berlin.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said that he has no doubt Russia will malevolently target the Paris Olympics this summer.

“I have no doubt whatsoever, including in terms of information,” Mr Macron said in response to a reporter’s question about whether he thought that Russia would try to target the Olympics.

The French leader’s comments, delivered at an event in Paris for the inauguration of the new Olympics aquatic centre, represent his most explicit acknowledgment to date of foreign threats to the security or smooth running of the games.

The Games will take places amid a complex global backdrop, with Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza complicating efforts to safeguard the Olympics.

Mr Macron has in past months adopted a tougher stance against Russia, vowing that Moscow must be defeated, and has not ruled out that European troops may one day go to Ukraine, although he has made clear that France has no intention of instigating hostilities against Russia.

His government has also adopted a tougher line against alleged Russian disinformation efforts across Europe.

Earlier this week, Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said France will propose EU-wide level sanctions on those behind spreading disinformation amid what Paris sees as growing efforts by Russia to destabilise the bloc.

Russian troops launched waves of Shahed drones against the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv overnight, killing four people and wounding 12, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Thursday.

Russia attacked Ukraine’s second-biggest city with at least 15 drones, some of which were shot down by air defense.

Three rescuers were killed when Russia struck a multistory building damaged in an earlier strike. Six people were wounded at that location. Another 14-story building was hit by a drone, killing a 69-year-old woman.

A backup power line supplying the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine has gone down, the Russian-controlled management of the plant said on Thursday.

Ukraine‘s state-run nuclear power company, Energoatom, said the main 750 kilovolt (kV) power line, recently restored by Ukrainian engineers, was still running.

The six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia plant, held by Russia and located close to the front line of the war in Ukraine, are not in operation but it relies on external power to keep its nuclear material cool and prevent a catastrophic accident.

The Russian management said on Telegram that the reasons for the outage, which had not caused any change in the radiation level, were being investigated.

It said the problem was with the 330 kV “Ferosplavnaya” power line. This is a backup which, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was restored in the middle of last month after an outage of more than three weeks.

The main 750 kV “Dniprovska” power line went down for almost five hours on 22 March, highlighting what the IAEA said were “ever present dangers to nuclear safety and security” from the Russia-Ukraine war.

On the alliance’s landmark anniversary, historian Sten Rynning says the future of European security may depend on whether it can convince three steadfastly neutral countries to sign up

The Czech Republic will donate tens of millions of euros to an initiative it is leading to buy hundreds of thousands of artillery ammunition rounds for Ukraine, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said.

Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the most pressing need for Ukraine is artillery ammunition as the sides use heavy cannon fire to hold largely static, entrenched positions along the 1,000-km (620-mile) front line.

The Czech-led donation effort has won over about 18 countries, with Germany pledging the highest contribution so far, 576 million euros for 180,000 artillery rounds.

Fiala said on CNN Prima News television on Wednesday night that the Czech contribution would be in the higher hundreds of millions of crowns, which equals low tens of millions of euros.

“This roughly corresponds to the share that a country of our size and prosperity should put in,” Fiala said.

The Czechs, through a team of government officials and private companies, have sought at least 800,000 large-calibre ammunition rounds from countries around the world, with first deliveries to Ukraine expected by June.

But Czech officials have said the number is not final, and there was more ammunition available globally if more funding is secured.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of committing a “despicable and cynical” attack on Kharkiv overnight, which killed at least four people and injured a dozen more.

Relations between Russia and Nato have slid to the level of direct confrontation as the US-led military bloc is already involved in the conflict in Ukraine and continues to expand towards Russia’s borders, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

The new mobilization law, from 27 to 25 , came into force a day after Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed it. Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed it last year.

It was not immediately clear why Zelenskyy took so long to sign the measure into law. He didn’t make any public comment about it, and officials did not say how many new soldiers the country expected to gain or for which units.

Below are some of the latest photos from the overnight Russian attack on Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine