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Published at 2025-07-04 08:31:20

Kyiv hit by barrage of drone strikes as Putin rejects Trump’s truce bid

A pall of acrid smoke hung over Kyiv on Friday morning following a night of intensive Russian strikes that hit almost every district of the capital, according to Ukrainian authorities.

The hours of darkness were once again punctuated by the staccato of air defence guns, buzz of drones and large explosions. Ukraine said Russia had fired a record 550 drones and 11 missiles during a long night of bombardment.

The strikes came hours after a phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, after which the US president said he was "disappointed" that Putin was not ready to end Russia's war against Ukraine.

A woman was killed in Russia following Ukrainian drone attacks, officials said.

The acting governor of the southern Rostov region said she had been killed in a strike on a village not far from the Ukrainian border.

Russia's overnight air strikes broke another record, Ukraine's air force said, with 72 of the 550 drones penetrating air defences – up from a previous record of 537 launched last Saturday night.

Air raid alerts sounded for more than eight hours as several waves of attacks struck Kyiv, the "main target of the strikes", the air force said on the messaging app Telegram.

Ukraine's foreign minister condemned "one of the worst" nights in the capital and said "Moscow must be slapped with the toughest sanctions without delay".
Friday's attacks were the latest in a string of major Russian air strikes on Ukraine that have intensified in recent weeks as ceasefire talks have largely stalled.

War in Ukraine has been raging for more than three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Following his conversation with Putin on Thursday, Trump said that "no progress" to end the fighting had been made.

"I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he's there, and I'm very disappointed," Trump said.

"I'm just saying I don't think he's looking to stop, and that's too bad."

The Kremlin reiterated that it would continue to seek to remove "the root causes of the war in Ukraine". Putin has sought to return Ukraine to Russia's sphere of influence and said last week that "the whole of Ukraine is ours".

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he hoped to speak to Trump on Thursday about the supply of US weapons after a decision in Washington to halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine.

Kyiv has warned that the move would impede its ability to defend Ukraine against escalating airstrikes and Russian advances on the frontlines.

Speaking to reporters, Trump said "we're giving weapons" and "we haven't" completely paused the flow of weapons. He blamed former President Joe Biden for "emptying out our whole country giving them weapons, and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves".

Elon Musk Has Fired One Of His Top Tesla Lieutenants

Elon Musk fired Tesla’s head of operations in North America and Europe, amid declining sales in both regions and the electric vehicle brand’s falling popularity, according to people familiar with the matter.

Omead Afshar, who started with Tesla as an engineer in 2017, had become one of Musk’s top lieutenants and was elevated to vice president to oversee business in the two key regions last October. He didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor did Musk or Tesla.

Afshar’s removal comes a few days before the end of the second quarter and follows news that Tesla’s EV sales dropped for a fifth consecutive month in Europe. U.S. sales are also down this year and China, the Austin-based company’s top market, saw a 15% drop in May. Equity analysts are anticipating a decline in Tesla’s EV deliveries of at least 10% worldwide in the quarter that ends on June 30, to about 392,800 units compared with 443,956 a year ago.

Musk’s close affiliation with and massive financial support for President Donald Trump have negatively impacted the Tesla brand, particularly during his stint running the federal job-slashing DOGE initiative. The company desperately needs to improve its lineup, following the failure of the much-derided Cybertruck to hit volume goals Musk laid out for it, and figure out how to compete with fast-rising Chinese rivals. But rather than add new electric models to boost sales, the world’s wealthiest person has sought to convince investors that the company’s future lies with a new robotaxi service, humanoid robots and AI. It’s a tricky pivot since electric cars, batteries and charging services account for virtually all of Tesla’s revenue.

The company launched a pilot version of its robotaxi service in Austin on June 22, and while there have been no accidents or injuries so far, it quickly became clear that Tesla is not ready to go head-to-head with Alphabet’s Waymo. The small number of Tesla Model Ys in the Austin pilot gave automated rides with safety technicians in the front seat, the service was only made available to a small group of pre-selected riders and operated in about a 30-square-mile section of the city. Despite this highly controlled environment, there were several reports of erratic behavior by the test vehicles and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Monday it was reviewing those incidents with the company.

In a November 2024 profile of Afshar, the Wall Street Journal called him “Musk’s fixer” and one of the most powerful executives at the company. He shifted to Tesla’s headquarters in Austin last year when Musk restructured his leadership team. Afshar celebrated the robotaxi rollout in a June 23 post on X. “Absolutely historic day for Tesla. This has been *years* of hard work and focus by so many people within the company,” he wrote. “Thank you, Elon, for pushing us all!”

His departure, also reported by Bloomberg, comes after Milan Kovac, head of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot team left the company earlier this month.

Tesla shares were little changed on Thursday, closing at $325.78. The stock is down 19% this year.

An Arms Dealer Joins Silicon Valley’s Military Boom

For years, Will Somerindyke sold weapons of war around the world: artillery shells to Ukraine, grenades to U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. With relationships with dozens of top military buyers, he quickly turned his company Regulus Global into one of America’s major international arms dealers.

Now, as Silicon Valley investors swarm to back multi-billion dollar defense startups with increasing fervor, Somerindyke is looking to make the jump from munitions middleman to manufacturer. He’s been quietly working on Union, a new venture-backed startup he claims will modernize ammunition factories with autonomous robotics and precision machining.

“I’ve been through a lot in 18 years in this space,” Somerindyke told Forbes. “If Union does its job correctly, we will be building millions of square feet of facilities with the ability to make a wide range of defense products.”

Union, which Somerindyke leads as CEO, appears to have made a solid start. In April it secured a massive $50 million seed funding round led by Bravo Victor Venture Capital, or BVVC. Other investors include Silent Ventures, IronGate, and RKKVC, a Poland-based single-family office. It plans to open its first artillery shell factory in Texas next month. And it recently secured a contract to sell those shells, which, if fulfilled, could bring in up to $225 million, according to Somerindyke.

But instead of approaching the problem with old-school manufacturing, Somerindyke and Musselman, who met more than a decade ago through a program for veterans, saw an opportunity to modernize weapons manufacturing, are using Silicon Valley software talent to implement autonomous systems. Since incorporating in October, Union has hired a suite of engineers from Tesla, SpaceX and Anduril.

Musselman has touted recent momentum to “reindustrialize” America and bring manufacturing back to the U.S. as necessary to combatting China’s manufacturing superiority. Other companies have joined the effort, including Hadrian, which does autonomous manufacturing, and Re:Build, a Massachusetts-based company that has been acquiring mom-and-pop factories and modernizing them; both could compete with Union’s entry into the market. Mussleman has also invested in other defense companies; after starting BVVC in 2023, he has written checks into drone company Firestorm and autonomous submarine startup Vatn Systems.

At the Texas facility, set to open this month, Union hopes to produce more than 300,000 shells next year, according to a company pitch deck shared with seed investors in January. By 2030, Union has told its investors, it plans to produce nine million shells a year, which it hopes will generate $3.5 billion in revenue.

Those are lofty figures. But Musselman sees the ongoing turbulence in the world — conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East — as proof of Union’s thesis. “We are running at a deficit of stockpiles or anything that goes boom around the world,” he said. “And that's going to be a leverage point for our adversaries.”