Russia war in Ukraine could last for years, says Nato chief

Bloomberg

Russia said it hit military targets in Ukraine with sea-launched cruise missiles, including a strike on a planning meeting of Ukrainian commanders.
The war in Ukraine “could last for years,” Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag, saying the military alliance “must not let up on supporting” Kyiv. The new head of the British Army said his troops must be ready to “fight in Europe once again,” the Sun newspaper reported.
It’s critical to build a military “capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle,” General Patrick Sanders, the new head of the UK Army, wrote in a message to his soldiers.
“We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again,” said Sanders, who took over as Chief of the General Staff on June 13.
Delivery of “modern weapons” from the West will enable Ukraine to drive Russian troops out of the Donbas region, Stoltenberg told the German newspaper.
At the Nato summit in Madrid later this month, the military alliance will declare “that Russia is no longer a partner, but a threat to our security, peace and stability,” he said. “China will also feature in the paper for the first time. Because China’s rise is a challenge to our interests, our values and our security.”
In his daily video address, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine “will do everything possible” to ease a global food crisis as long as it can get security for vessels to enter the country’s ports. Despite international efforts to reach a deal, harvests in the country are getting under way with silos still loaded with last year’s crops.
“We will not give away the south to anyone, we will return everything that’s ours,” Zelenskiy said in his video address. He also pledged that Ukraine will do all it can to ensure grain supplies leave its ports to help ease a global food crisis caused by Russia’s war, once it receives security guarantees through international mediation.
The invasion has triggered what many policymakers warn could be a spiraling food crisis by cutting off shipments of Ukrainian agricultural commodities. United Nations-facilitated negotiations are struggling to make progress, with Ukraine’s Black Sea ports scattered with mines and Russia effectively blocking shipping in the area.
The governor in Ukraine’s Odesa said 39 civilian ships under flags of 14 countries are currently unable to leave the region’s ports.
Sea-launched Kalibr cruise missiles hit a Ukrainian control point near Shyroka Dacha village in the Dnipropetrovsk region during a meeting of military commanders, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. Ukraine hasn’t commented on the claim and Bloomberg can’t verify it independently.
Other strikes destroyed M777 howitzers and armored combat vehicles in the southern city of Mykolaiv, while air-launched missiles struck Ukrainian positions in the Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions, Konashenkov said. Russia also fired Iskander and Tochka-U ballistic missiles at targets in Kharkiv and in Luhansk region.