Write a new simple attractive title based on the title from Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin strikes civilian ship near Black Sea port after threatening ‘powerful’ attacks and dont use quote marks

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin ​said 340 Ukrainian drones had been dispatched to the area surrounding the capital over a 24-hour period on Tuesday and most had ⁠been downed by anti-aircraft units far from the city.

“Most of them were neutralised by air defence forces on the outer approaches,” Sobyanin wrote ⁠on Telegram. “More than ​50 enemy ⁠drones were destroyed on their way to Moscow.”

Ukrainian drones approach the ⁠Russian capital routinely and Sobyanin provides a ​running ⁠account of the numbers ‌taken out by anti-aircraft units.

Ukraine has intensified its attacks on Russian infrastructure sites, mainly linked ‌to the oil industry.

Ukraine’s ‌military said on Tuesday it had carried out drone strikes on the Salavat petrochemical complex in ⁠the Urals and the Afipsky refinery in southern Russia. Attacks on oil infrastructure have contributed to gasoline shortages throughout Russia.

Russian forces have stepped up drone and missile attacks on Kyiv in recent weeks.

Russia launched a barrage of ‌drones and ballistic missiles at Kyiv early ​on Tuesday, the fifth such ‌attack on the ⁠Ukrainian capital this month.

A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a revised Russia sanctions bill that reduces the proposed tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil, including India and China.

The updated legislation caps tariffs at 100 per cent down from the previously proposed 500 per cent and limits them to the five largest purchasers of Russian energy.

It also exempts countries importing less than 15 per cent of Russia’s natural gas exports if they are taking significant steps to cut those imports.

The bill also targets Russia’s shadow fleet, financial institutions and major state-owned energy projects.

It includes a provision allowing president Donald Trump to waive sanctions if he determines it is in the US national interest.

Senate aides said the bipartisan measure had 26 co-sponsors on Tuesday, with more expected to sign on.

Ukrainian fighter pilots and troops took pride of place in France’s national Bastille Day celebrations Tuesday as a massive parade showcased support for Ukraine and symbolically flexed European military muscle.

On president Emmanuel Macron’s last Bastille Day as president, he hosted around 30 other leaders for an event that appeared aimed at showing both Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Donald Trump that Europe is united and stepping up to defend itself.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was given an ovation from the assembled European leaders and his country’s troops got the biggest cheers of the day from crowds on the tree-lined Champs-Elysees avenue.

Zelensky and Macron shared repeated hugs at the end of the parade.

France’s biggest national holiday coincided with raging forest fires and a red-alert heat wave that forced the cancellation of traditional fireworks and firefighters’ balls – and with defeat to Spain in a highly anticipated World Cup semi-final.

Senator Lindsey Graham’s sudden death has removed a “vital diplomatic buffer between Washington and Kyiv”, experts have said, complicating support for Ukraine at a vital juncture of the war with Russia.

Jaroslava Barbieri, a Research Fellow at the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, told the Independent that Graham has been a critical voice in US foreign policy when it comes to support for Ukraine.

The Republican senator for South Carolina was one of few vocally pro-Ukraine voices in the Republican Party. He used his leverage in the Senate to lobby for military aid to Ukraine dating back to Russia’s initial illegal invasion of Crimea in 2014, per CNN.

Since the invasion of Crimea, Graham, a prominent foreign policy hawk, has pushed for legislation that would prevent the U.S. from ever recognising seized Ukrainian land as Russian, maintaining NATO funding, and increasing sanctions on the Russian economy.

He even once called for someone in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle to assassinate the Russian president, saying they would be “doing your country – and the world – a great service,” per the Associated Press.

Ms Barbieri told the Independent: “Senator Lindsey Graham served as a crucial bridge between traditional Republican foreign policy hawks and Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ administration, using his direct personal access to champion robust support for Ukraine and secure recent White House backing for major secondary sanctions against Russia.

“His sudden passing removes a vital diplomatic buffer between Washington and Kyiv.”

Graham, 71, passed away suddenly from what a preliminary medical report has called an aortic dissection on Saturday.

Some 500 soldiers from the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ backing Ukraine marched down Paris’ Champs-Elysees on Tuesday in the annual Bastille Day parade, in what France said would be a symbol of Europe’s strategic awakening.

France’s traditional national day military parade fell one day after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky joined around 25 leaders in Paris for a summit of the coalition of Western allies supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.

The allies announced an air-defence coalition asUkraine grapples with critical ammunition shortages and intensifying Russian strikes on its capital Kyiv and surrounding regions.

Zelensky, British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and German chancellor Friedrich Merz were among about 30 leaders invited by Emmanuel Macron to watch Tuesday’s parade, the French president’s last before he leaves office in 2027.

It featured around 25 Ukrainian soldiers marching along the capital’s most famous avenue.

Vladimir Putin’s growing unpopularity in Russia means he cannot afford to end the war with Ukraine, as he will be lynched by his own people, one of the president’s greatest personal enemy in the West has warned.

Sir Bill Browder told The Independent’s World of Trouble podcast: “If he does a peace deal, he’ll lose power. If he loses power, then he’ll get strung up from a lamp post.”

The anti-corruption campaigner, who once ran the biggest investment fund in Russia, has fought against Putin for nearly two decades.

His latest intervention comes days after Nato leaders met in Turkey and agreed to allow Kyiv to produce its own Patriot air defence missiles, vital in withstanding the onslaught from Moscow.

The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley writes:

The Russia-installed head of parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk Region under Moscow’s control said Ukrainian drone attacks had killed eight people, including a family of four.

Denis ​Pushilin, ⁠writing on the Telegram messaging app, ⁠said the four people died ​in ⁠a strike ‌on a village southwest of the region’s main city, ‌also called Donetsk.

Russian forces control well over 70 per cent of Donetsk Region and Moscow has called on ‌Kyiv to abandon ​the rest of ‌that region ⁠and the three others ⁠it has annexed as part ‌of ​any peace ‌deal.

Ukraine has received ​all such demands.

Four others died in vehicles struck by drones, he said.

Kyrgyzstan’s government has indefinitely banned exports of gasoline, diesel fuel and oil, in response to fuel shortages in Russia, from which the Central Asian country sources the vast majority of its fuel needs.

The decree, dated Monday but published on Tuesday, bans exports “until such time as the domestic market is saturated”.

Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous country of around 7 million, imports more than 90 per cent of its petroleum products from Russia, where Ukrainian strikes against oil refineries have caused acute shortages.

Reuters on Monday reported that jet fuel exports by rail to Central Asia and Afghanistan slumped by more than 92 per cent in June ⁠from May to just 3,800 metric tons, while supplies of ​gasoline dropped by 34 per cent to 99,300 tons.

Kyrgyzstan has appealed to neighbours for help in making up for Russian fuel supplies, and its government has said it has signed contracts for diesel and jet fuel with Belarus and China.

Kyiv and its European backers want to press home Ukraine’s recent successes and compel Putin to negotiate an end to the fighting, although Moscow has shown no willingness to compromise despite peace efforts by the Trump administration.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow will closely follow the Paris meeting but dismissed its aspirations.

“This is a coalition of warmongers,” Peskov said.

“They are driven by the profound delusion that it’s possible to inflict a strategic defeat on our country, so this is a coalition of the deluded, a coalition of those who incite the war.”

Ukraine’s advances in drone technology have given it an edge recently, analysts and Western officials say. Its strikes on supply routes behind the front have robbed the Russian army of momentum and made its progress slow and costly, they say.