• Ukrainian troops defending the city of Kharkiv have reached the state border with Russia, the regional governor said on Monday. It was not immediately clear how many troops had reached the Russian border and where.
• Ukrainian border guards fought off an incursion by a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group in the northeastern region of Sumy on Monday, said Dmytro Zhyvytsky, the governor of the Sumy region.
• Ukraine was preparing on Monday for a new Russian push in the eastern Donbas region, as Kyiv said its army’s counterattack around Kharkiv had gained momentum.
• Russia said its forces had shot down three Ukrainian fighter jets, one near Snake Island in the Black Sea and the others in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions, while its missiles continued to pound targets in the east of the country.
• The parliaments in Finland and Sweden on Monday began debating their respective NATO bids, as the two neighbors prepare to submit applications this week as a deterrent against Russian aggression.
• Sweden will send diplomats to Turkey to try to overcome Ankara’s objections to its plan to join NATO, Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist said, with a formal decision to hand in an application expected on Monday.
• Russia warned that decisions by Finland and Sweden to join the NATO military alliance were serious mistakes and Moscow would take measures. “This is another grave mistake with far-reaching consequences,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters.
• The U.S. Congress will seek to ratify Finland’s application to join the Western military alliance NATO before going on holiday in August, U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in Helsinki after meeting with Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto.
• EU foreign ministers sought to publicly pressure Hungary on Monday to lift its veto on a proposed oil embargo on Russia, with Lithuania saying the bloc was being “held hostage by one member state”.
• The EU will impose a sixth sanctions package on Russia, but the bloc will need more time to find agreement, Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Monday.
• French automaker Renault has handed over its Russian assets to the Russian government, both parties announced on Monday, marking the first major nationalization since the onset of sanctions over Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine.
• The European Commission sharply cut its eurozone growth forecast for 2022 to 2.7 percent as skyrocketing energy prices due to the conflict in Ukraine challenged the economy.
• The United States and the European Union plan to announce a joint effort aimed at identifying semiconductor supply disruptions as well as countering Russian disinformation, officials said.
• Ukraine’s gas transit system operator said over the weekend that it had resumed operations at two distribution stations in the Kharkiv region and restarted gas supply to more than 3,000 consumers.
• Russian exports of power to Finland were down to zero early on Monday, flow data showed, after Russian utility firm Inter RAO said last week it would halt them because it had not been paid.
• Daily nominations for Russian gas deliveries to Slovakia via Ukraine rose on Monday despite a drop in Russian gas flows into Ukraine, pipeline operator data showed.
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