Photo: Aftermath of the attack on Lviv
The war in Ukraine has been raging for 499 days. The number of victims of yesterday’s strike on Lviv went up to 10, at least 42 people were injured. Two people were killed during today’s attack in the Dnipro region of Ukraine. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev declared that the country would not be supplying Ukraine with weapons from its military arsenal, seeing as that move could undermine its defence capability. The US government confirmed that former diplomats had held negotiations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; the ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called that statement fake.
Read the top headlines about the events that occurred in the early hours of 7 July in Novaya-Europe’s round-up.
Death toll of Russian attack on Lviv rises up to 10
Ten people were killed as a result of the Russian troops attacking the city of Lviv in the early hours of 6 July, as per Mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovyi. He said that the body of the tenth victim was found under the rubble. The rescuers were recovering her body at the time of his post.
He added that that would be the end of the search and rescue operation.
Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
According to the latest reports, 42 people were injured, including three children. A multi-storey residential building, a school, and an office building were damaged in the attack.
Two people killed in drone attack on Dnipro region
Ukraine’s General Staff reported an overnight attack by Shahed drones across all of Ukraine, with at least two people being killed.
The head of the Dnipro region administration Serhiy Lysak said that air defence had shot down six drones in his region. The debris from one of the drones fell down on a car that was moving at that moment. As a result, two people died.
Photo: Serhiy Lysak / Telegram
“Another UAV hit a private enterprise in the Kryvyi Rih district. A fire erupted. The fire area spread over 100 square metres and reached a four-metre high,” Lysak wrote. No one was hurt in the fire.
Furthermore, Russian forces carried out an attack on the city of Nikopol using heavy artillery, there were no casualties.
Bulgarian president refuses to supply Ukraine with weapons from country’s reserves due to worries about its defence capability
During Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Sofia, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev declared that he had no plans to send Ukraine weapons from the country’s military arsenal, because doing so could undermine the country’s defence capabilities, as per the website of Ukraine’s president and media outlet BNT 1.
Radev said that Bulgaria supports Ukraine. In particular, the country housed thousands of Ukrainian refugees. At the same time, the president of Bulgaria believes that “there’s no military solution to this conflict”.
“A bigger number of weapons will hardly bring about this solution,” Radev emphasised.
In response, Zelensky thanked Bulgaria for its support and asked that a spade be called a spade.
“I think people in Bulgaria clearly understand that this is not a ‘conflict’ but a war. Because when there is a conflict, millions of people do not leave the country to save the lives of their children. The war is on our territory, on our land, so we clearly know that this is not a conflict, but a war," he said.
Following his meeting with Radev, Zelensky and Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov signed a Joint Declaration on the Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine.
US government confirms former diplomats held negotiations with Lavrov. Maria Zakharova says it’s disinformation
Former senior US officials tried to establish an alternative route of negotiations with Russia, and in particular, met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in New York in April, several sources within the US Presidential Administration confirmed to NBC.
The New York meeting lasted just several hours. The point of discussion was the fate of Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories. Former assistant defence secretary Mary Beth Long, former diplomat and the outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass, Europe expert Charles Kupchan, and Russia expert Thomas Graham took part in the negotiations. Following the negotiations, the officials briefed the White House National Security Council.
The former officials met with other Russian citizens close to the Kremlin, aside from Lavrov. The goal of the negotiations was to lay the foundation for further talks and ending the war. According to NBC, the Biden Administration was aware of these meetings but did not initiate them.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova took to her Telegram channel to say that NBC’s information was “fake”.
