Ukraine war briefing: Snag for EU’s support of Kyiv after aid opponent wins Czech election

The prospect loomed of the EU’s support for Ukraine being further hampered by some of its members after the billionaire Andrej Babis won the Czech Republic’s parliamentary elections. Babis’s campaign pledge of halting military aid to Ukraine aligns him with the prime ministers of Hungary and Slovakia, Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico. It marks a stark turnaround, because the outgoing Czech centre-right government of Petr Fiala has backed Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in 2022. The likely incoming prime minister has pledged to review a Czech-led international drive launched by the current Czech government, which has supplied 3.5m artillery shells to Ukraine since 2024.

After meeting the Czech president, Petr Pavel, Babis said labelling him as a potential troublemaker was “not fair”. The 71-year-old, Slovak-born Babis stressed he was pro-European and wanted “Europe to work well”. “Every year, we send €2.5bn in the budget to Brussels. And of course Brussels is helping Ukraine. So I think we are there,” Babis said. He also told Ukrainian media that Ukraine was “not prepared for the EU” and that “we have to end the war first”. Babis said he was ready to discuss this with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

US diplomats are to tell UN member countries that the Cuban government is actively supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with up to 5,000 Cubans fighting alongside Moscow’s forces, according to Reuters. The news agency, citing an internal state department cable, reports that the Trump administration is mobilising diplomats to lobby against a UN resolution calling on Washington to lift its decades-long embargo on Cuba. In recent weeks, Ukrainian officials have warned US lawmakers about the growing scale of recruitment of Cuban mercenaries by Russia.

“After North Korea, Cuba is the largest contributor of foreign troops to Russia’s aggression, with an estimated 1,000-5,000 Cubans fighting in Ukraine,” the cable said. Reuters said officials at the Cuban mission to the UN did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The US state department declined to provide further details on the Cuban fighters but a spokesperson told Reuters: “The Cuban regime has failed to protect its citizens from being used as pawns in the Russia-Ukraine war.”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the west of “zero real reaction” to Russia’s escalating bombing campaign after a massive attack on Sunday killed six people and injured 18. Charlotte Higgins and Luke Harding write that the western city of Lviv, normally considered one of the safest in the country, suffered its most sustained and serious bombardment since the start of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.

Zelenskyy on Sunday reiterated his call for Kyiv’s western partners to send additional air defences to combat Russia’s “aerial terror”. “Today, the Russians again targeted our infrastructure, everything that ensures people can live a normal life. We need more protection, a rapid implementation of all defence agreements, especially on air defence, to make this aerial terror pointless,” he said.

French prosecutors on Sunday said they had opened a war crimes investigation after a drone killed photojournalist Antoni Lallican, 37. He was embedded with Ukraine’s Fourth Armoured Brigade near the frontline in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine when he was killed on Friday, Ukrainian authorities said. The Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Ivanchenko was wounded in the same attack, which Ukraine’s military and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, blamed on Russia.