Ukraine-Russia war live: US passes £76bn aid package as former army officer warns Kyiv has ‘six months left’

On Wednesday, the US Senate approved a £76bn foreign aid packaged that included military support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

It included £49bn in military aid for Ukraine, which the Pentagon says can start being delivered to the war-torn nation within days. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the legislation into law on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the UK also pledged £500m in new military supplies for Ukraine, including long-range missiles and four million rounds of ammunition.

Russian missiles damaged residential buildings and injured six people in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, early on Wednesday, Governor Oleh Synehubov said on Telegram.

The attack damaged three residential buildings, two offices, three non-residential buildings and a gas pipeline in the central district of the city, according to the governor’s statement.

The city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, told Ukranian TV that two S-300 missiles were used in the attack but did not cause significant damage to the residential areas of the city.

Western aid will not allow Ukraine to seize the initiative and go back onto the offensive against Russia, a former British army officer warned.

Richard Kemp, who served from 1977 to 2006, said US and UK munitions would let Kyiv stabilise the front line but would not allow them to take back land seized by Moscow.

He warned if Moscow was able to achieve “significant success” by summer, there would be no more appetite for Western spending on Ukraine by the winter.

“While the new aid packages might allow that to be blunted, they will not enable Ukraine to seize the initiative and go back onto the offensive,” Mr Kemp wrote in the Daily Telegraph.