Boost for Ukraine as US Expected to Send Longer-Range Rockets

Ukrainian soldiers fire a Pion artillery system at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. (AP)
Ukrainian soldiers fire a Pion artillery system at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. (AP)
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Boost for Ukraine as US Expected to Send Longer-Range Rockets

Ukrainian soldiers fire a Pion artillery system at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. (AP)
Ukrainian soldiers fire a Pion artillery system at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. (AP)

News that the United States could soon send rockets nearly doubling the firing range of Ukrainian forces gave Kyiv a big lift on Wednesday, even as its troops were being pushed back by a relentless Russian winter offensive in the east.

Two US officials said a new $2 billion package of military aid to be announced as soon as this week would for the first time include Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB), a new weapon designed by Boeing.

The cheap gliding missiles can strike targets more than 150 km (90 miles) away, a dramatic increase over the 80 km range of the rockets fired by HIMARS systems which changed the face of the war when Washington sent them last summer.

It would mean every inch of Russian-occupied Ukraine, apart from most of the Crimea peninsula, could soon be in range of Ukrainian forces, forcing Moscow to shift some ammunition and fuel storage sites all the way back to Russia itself.

Ukrainian Presidential aide Mykhilo Podolyak said talks on the supply of the longer-range missiles were under way, along with talks on attack aircraft. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the arrival of longer-range US weapons would escalate the conflict.

The expected US announcement comes a week after Western countries pledged scores of advanced main battle tanks for the first time, a breakthrough in support aimed at giving Kyiv the capability to recapture occupied territory this year.

But the arrival of the new weapons is still months away, and in the meantime, Russia has gained momentum on the battlefield for the first time since mid-2022, in brutal winter fighting both sides describe as a meat grinder.

Moscow has announced advances north and south of the city of Bakhmut in recent days, its main target for months. Kyiv disputes many of those claims and Reuters could not independently verify the precise situation, but the locations of the reported fighting indicate incremental Russian advances.

Troops were fighting building to building in Bakhmut for gains of barely 100 meters (yards) a night, and the city was coming under constant Russian shelling, a soldier in a Ukrainian unit of Belarusian volunteers told Reuters from inside the city. Russian forces were maneuvering to try to surround it.

Ukraine's general staff said late on Tuesday its forces had come under fire in Bakhmut and the villages of Klishchiivka and Kurdyumivka on its southern approaches.

South of Bakhmut, Russia has also launched a major new offensive this week on Vuhledar, a longstanding Ukrainian-held bastion at the junction of the southern and eastern front lines. Kyiv says its forces have so far held there.

Ukraine wants jets

Having finally persuaded NATO countries to supply modern battle tanks, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's government has been lobbying hard for fighter jets. The United States and Britain have ruled out sending their own advanced fighters, but other countries have left the door open.

In Paris after meeting Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov on Tuesday, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said "there was no taboo" about supplying Kyiv with fighter planes.

The West has so far refused to send weapons that could be used to attack deep inside Russia for fear of starting a wider conflict. Moscow nonetheless says Western pledges of weapons mean it is effectively at war with NATO.

Ukraine repelled a Russian assault on the capital Kyiv last year and took the offensive in the second half of 2022, recapturing swathes of occupied territory.

But its advances largely stalled since November, while Russia has been reconstituting its forces with hundreds of thousands of reservists mobilized for the first time since World War Two.

Capturing Bakhmut would be a step towards achieving Russia's war aim of securing full control of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk province. But Kyiv says the Russian gains of recent weeks are pyrrhic victories, bought with costly human waves of soldiers and mercenaries recruited from Russian prisons.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2024, describing it as a "special military operation" to disarm its neighbor and reduce a security threat from Ukraine's ties with the West. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked assault to subdue the country and seize its land.



Tropical Storm Adds to Philippines’ Weather Toll with 25 Dead and 278,000 Evacuated This Week 

Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
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Tropical Storm Adds to Philippines’ Weather Toll with 25 Dead and 278,000 Evacuated This Week 

Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)

A tropical storm was blowing across the Philippines' mountainous north Friday, worsening more than a week of bad weather that has caused at least 25 deaths and prompted evacuations in villages hit by flooding and landslides.

The storm was Typhoon Co-may when it blew Thursday night into the town of Agno in Pangasinan province with maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers (74 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 165 kph (102 mph). It was weakening as it advanced northeastward and had sustained winds of 85 kph (53 mph) Friday afternoon.

Co-may was intensifying seasonal monsoon rains that had swamped a large swath of the country for more than a week.

Disaster-response officials have received reports of at least 25 deaths since last weekend, mostly due to flash floods, toppled trees, landslides and electrocution. Eight other people were reported missing, they said.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries directly caused by Co-may, locally called Emong, the fifth weather disturbance to hit the Philippines since the rainy season started in last month. More than a dozen more tropical storms were expected to batter the Southeast Asian country the rest of the year, forecasters said.

The government shut down schools in metropolitan Manila for the third day Friday and suspended classes in 35 provinces in the main northern region of Luzon. More than 80 towns and cities, mostly in Luzon, have declared a state of calamity, a designation that speeds emergency funds and freezes the prices of commodities, including rice.

The days of stormy weather have forced 278,000 people to leave their homes for safety in emergency shelters or relatives’ homes. Nearly 3,000 houses have been damaged, the government’s disaster response agency said.

Travel by sea and air has been restricted in northern provinces being pounded or in the typhoon’s path.

Thousands of army forces, police, coast guard personnel. firefighters and civilian volunteers have been deployed to help rescue people in villages swamped in floodwaters or isolated due to roads blocked by landslides, fallen trees and boulders.

The United States said it will provide $250,000 in funding to the UN World Food Program to help the Philippine government's response. “We are tracking the devastation caused by the storms and floods and are deeply concerned for all those affected,” US Ambassador MaryKay Carlson said.

After returning from his White House meeting with US President Donald Trump, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. visited emergency shelters Thursday in Rizal province to help distribute food packs to displaced residents.

He later convened an emergency meeting with disaster-response officials, where he underscored the need for the government and the people to adapt to and brace for climate change and the larger number of and more unpredictable natural calamities it’s setting off.

“Everything has changed,” Marcos said. “Let’s not say, ‘The storm may come, what will happen?’ because the storm will really come.”

The United States, Manila’s longtime treaty ally, has pledged to provide military aircraft to airlift food and other aid to remote island provinces and the countryside if the calamity worsens, the Philippines military said.

The Philippines, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Seas, is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. It’s often hit by earthquakes and has about two dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.