Ukraine war briefing: Trump poised to send weapons under Biden-style drawdown, say sources

President can urgently transfer arms from US reserve stocks; Ukraine again turns Moscow into no-fly zone with drone raids. What we know on day 1,234

• Donald Trump may be preparing to send weapons to Ukraine using presidential drawdown authority (PDA) – a discretion that his predecessor, Joe Biden, used to urgently arm Kyiv’s forces. Sources told Reuters that Trump’s team would identify arms from US stockpiles to send to Ukraine under the PDA, with one saying the tranche could be worth about $300m. The president has $3.86bn worth of PDA for Ukraine remaining – the last drawdown was $500m by Biden on 9 January.

• Trump this week said the US would send weapons to help Ukraine defend itself against intensifying Russian advances – a pointed reversal after the Pentagon under Pete Hegseth had tried to put US weapons supply to the Ukrainians on hold. Much of what Biden sent using PDA was surplus equipment in US reserve stockpiles that was due for replacement or to be scrapped – a fact that rebuts the argument that arming Ukraine leaves the US short of weaponry for its own purposes. Ukraine’s top priorities are Patriot missile interceptors and GMLRS mobile rocket artillery, which may be included in the package. The weapons could be on the frontlines within days because stocks are positioned in Europe.

• Ukraine again succeeded in shutting down Moscow airports as it launched drones at the Russian capital. Three airports in the Moscow area – Domodedovo, Vnukovo and Zhukovsky – suspended operations temporarily on Thursday, Russia’s aviation authority Rosaviatsiya said. Some closures were continuing on Friday morning, reports said. The authority also said it had to temporarily halt flights at Kaluga airport, about 200km (125 miles) south-west of Moscow.

• A senior Ukrainian security officer was shot dead in a residential parking lot in Kyiv on Thursday before the killer fled on foot. Police said they were working to identify and detain the shooter. The agent was a colonel in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), an official told Reuters. The SBU, a sprawling domestic spy agency with thousands of staff, said it had opened a criminal investigation into the murder of one of its employees in Kyiv’s southern Holosiivskyi district.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday that he would replace Ukraine’s ambassador to the US and was considering his defence minister, Rustem Umerov, for the post. Ukraine’s president said the main task would be to strengthen Ukraine in its defence efforts in the war against Russia and Umerov was a key figure to do that.

• Zelenskyy urged Ukraine’s allies to speed up imposing new sanctions on Russia, Luke Harding writes, after another huge wave of strikes on his country’s capital killed two people, including a police officer, and left dozens more wounded. Russian strikes on Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region left two dead and five injured, said prosecutors.

• Zelenskyy said he had discussed improved air defences and intensified sanctions against Russia with two US lawmakers who are backing a bill to impose tougher punitive measures against Moscow. “Right now, our priority is strengthening air defences. Russia wants to move on to using 1,000 drones in the space of a single attack.” Ukraine was ready to work together with Europe to buy “large US defence packages to protect lives”.

• Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, meanwhile said there were no signs that the Kremlin was willing to compromise. Speaking after talks with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Kuala Lumpur, Rubio said Donald Trump was disappointed with Moscow’s hardline stance, and sanctions on Russia were a real option, with the Trump administration engaging with the Senate and Congress over the sanctions bill.

• A Russian military drone flew into Lithuania and crashed, Lithuanian authorities confirmed on Thursday. Dovilė Šakalienė, the Baltic country’s defence minister, said it was a Gerbera decoy drone intended to imitate the armed Shahed drones. Russia uses Gerberas to tie up Ukrainian air defences during its Shahed attacks. The Lithuania incident is the latest apparent incursion by Russian aircraft into Nato airspace during the war.

• Russian authorities have confiscated western assets worth about $50bn over the past three years, research showed on Wednesday. While that includes property of companies like beer maker Carlsberg, the west is holding an estimated $355bn in frozen Russian financial assets that several of Kyiv’s allies say could be spent on Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction. In February the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, told parliament that he believed Europe “should move from freezing assets to seizing assets” from Russia for Ukraine’s benefit.

• Countries prepared to provide troops for a post-ceasefire force in Ukraine have agreed to set up a headquarters in Paris. A US delegation was present for the first time at a meeting of the group on Thursday that took place on the sidelines of the fourth annual conference on Ukraine’s recovery held in Rome. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and the British PM, Keir Starmer, joined the meeting via videoconference.

• This article was amended on 11 July 2025. An earlier version incorrectly referred to Lithuania as a “Balkan” state, rather than Baltic state.