Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin’s forces hit apartments in Kyiv with overnight drone attack, officials say
A five-year-old among three killed in Russian drone strikes on Kyiv
Russia launched an overnight drone attack on Kyiv, killing at least three people, including a five-year-old, said the Ukrainian interior ministry.
The drone hit apartment buildings and sparked several fires throughout Ukraine’s capital despite agreeing to a limited ceasefire, officials said.
Emergency services were dispatched to Kyiv’s historic Podil district after drones hit two high-rise apartment buildings, said Timur Tkachenko, the head of the capital’s military administration.
A woman died after drone debris sparked a fire in a high-rise residential building in Dniprovskyi district, the emergency service said on Telegram. Another person died in the Holosiivskyi district.
Kyiv, its surrounding region and the eastern half of Ukraine were under air raid alerts on Saturday night.
It came a day after Vladimir Putin’s forces launched a drone attack on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing three members of the same family and wounding 14 others, according to officials, who said residential buildings, cars and communal buildings were set on fire.
Kyiv and Moscow agreed in principle on Wednesday to a limited ceasefire after US president Donald Trump spoke with the countries’ leaders.
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Three killed in Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia despite truce talks
Russia launched a drone attack on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing three people and wounded 14, Ukrainian officials said yesterday, despite agreeing to a limited ceasefire.
Zaporizhzhia was hit by 12 drones, police said. Regional head Ivan Fedorov said that residential buildings, cars and communal buildings were set on fire in the Friday night attack. Photos showed emergency services scouring the rubble for survivors.
Ukraine and Russia agreed in principle on Wednesday to a limited ceasefire after US president Donald Trump spoke with the countries' leaders, though it remains to be seen what possible targets would be off-limits to attack.
The three sides appeared to hold starkly different views about what the deal covered. While the White House said "energy and infrastructure" would be part of the agreement, the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to "energy infrastructure".
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would also like railways and ports to be protected.
The dead in Zaporizhzhia were three members of one family. The bodies of the daughter and father were pulled out from under the rubble while doctors unsuccessfully fought for the mother's life for more than 10 hours, Mr Fedorov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Trump envoy unable to name occupied Ukrainian territories
Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been a leading figure in negotiations with Russia, was unable to name the Ukrainian regions currently occupied to varying degrees by Moscow – despite calling them “the largest issue in the conflict”.
Speaking to far-right commentator Tucker Carlson, Witkoff said: “I think the largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea ... and there’s two others”, in an apparent reference to the partly occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Echoing Russian propaganda relating to referenda – widely viewed as a sham – held by Vladimir Putin following his full-scale invasion in 2022, Mr Witkoff claimed: “They are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.”
Questioning whether Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky could “survive politically if he acknowledges” that the occupied Ukrainian territories are Russian, Mr Witkoff claimed: “This is the central issue in the conflict.”
Russian authorities bring in trains to fight oil depot fire
Authorities in southern Russia's Krasnodar region brought in firefighting trains loaded with water yesterday to help battle a blaze still raging at an oil depot following a Ukrainian drone attack.
Regional officials, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said four trains were drafted into the site at Kavkazskaya, where the fire first broke out last Tuesday.
Firefighters were tackling a fire still burning at one of the tanks at the site covering 1,250 square metres (13,500 square feet) while also trying to cool other equipment at the site.
The statement said 473 firefighters and 189 pieces of equipment were engaged in the operation. On Friday, depressurisation of the burning tank triggered an explosion and the release of burning oil.
Reports on Friday said the fire covered some 10,000 square metres.
Russia's foreign ministry said this week the attack amounted to a violation of a proposed ceasefire on energy sites in the more than three-year-old war, agreed between Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin and US president Donald Trump.
The accord fell short of a wider agreement that the US had sought, and which was accepted by Ukraine, for a blanket 30-day truce.
Putin decree impacting civilians in occupied Ukraine part of ‘Russification policy’, warns Britain
A decree signed by Vladimir Putin this week which orders Ukrainians living in territory illegally occupied by Russia to “settle their legal status” by 10 September represents a new wave of the Kremlin’s “Russification policy”, British officials have warned.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence said: “Putin’s decree is almost certainly intended to force the departure from Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Ukrainian nationals who refuse to accept Russian passport and citizenship,.
“Putin and the Russian senior leadership continue to prosecute a Russification policy in illegally occupied Ukrainian territory, as part of longstanding efforts to extirpate Ukrainian culture, identity and statehood.
“Russia erroneously and illegally defines both occupied and unoccupied Ukrainian territory in the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, as well as Crimea, as being part of the Russian Federation. This is in direct contradiction with Russia’s own stated recognition of Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as broader international recognition of Ukraine.”
Zelensky meets military commanders to discuss upcoming talks with US in Saudi Arabia
President Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday that he had met top military commanders in the country's northeast to discuss the frontline in Ukraine's war with Russia, as well as meetings with US officials set to take place in Saudi Arabia today.
Mr Zelensky was shown on the media platform X with commanders in Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, a frequent target of Russian attacks.
He said he had discussed frontline sectors in eastern Ukraine, as well as in Russia's western Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops remain seven months after a cross-border incursion.
"We also prepared for the meeting between the Ukrainian and American delegations, that will take place tomorrow in Saudi Arabia," the president wrote.
In Washington, a source familiar with the planning of the meetings in Saudi Arabia with Ukrainian and Russian officials said the US delegation would be led by Andrew Peek from the National Security Council and Michael Anton from the State Department.
The group will meet the Ukrainians on Sunday night and the Russians on Monday.
France restores gunpowder production due to Ukraine war
France has restored its gunpowder production, which it scrapped in 2007.
Explosives manufacturer Eurenco is set to produce some 1,200 tonnes of gunpowder pellets a year, rising to 1,800 tonnes, which would feed into about 100,000 artillery shells,
Most of these French-made artillery shells will head to Ukraine.
Backed by the government and with an investment of 100 million euros of which half came from an EU programme to support the bloc's defence industry, the firm put together new infrastructure in less than a year.
France has a tradition of producing gunpowder dating back to the 14th Century, and a long history of pride in being self sufficient in arms production.
Eurenco produced gunpowder as far back as the First World War. But after the end of the Cold War, weapons production and supply chains were no longer a priority and governments scaled back.
Trump’s envoy dismisses Starmer’s Ukraine plan as ‘a posture and a pose’
Donald Trump’s special envoy has dismissed Sir Keir Starmer’s proposal for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine, calling it “a posture and a pose".
Steve Witkoff criticised the idea, arguing it stemmed from a “simplistic” belief among the UK prime minister and other European leaders that “we have all got to be like Winston Churchill".
In an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson, Mr Witkoff praised Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying he "liked" him and did not consider him a “bad guy".
He described Mr Putin as “super smart” and recounted a meeting with him ten days ago, during which he found the Russian leader to be “gracious” and “straight up".
According to Mr Witkoff, Mr Putin claimed he had prayed for Mr Trump following an assassination attempt against the former US president last year.
He also revealed that the Russian leader had commissioned a portrait of Mr Trump as a gift, which, he said, had “clearly touched” him.
Russian drone attack on Kyiv kills two, Ukraine’s emergency service says
A Russian drone attack on Kyiv killed two people, sparked fires in apartment buildings and forced the evacuation of tens of people, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said early on Sunday.
A woman died after falling debris from a destroyed drone sparked a fire in a high-rise residential building the capital's Dniprosvkyi district, the emergency service posted on the Telegram messaging channel.
At least 27 were evacuated from the building. Another person died in the overnight attack on Kyiv's Holosiivskyi district, the service said.
ICYMI: Full ceasefire will come 'pretty soon', says Trump
Donald Trump has said he expects a “full ceasefire” in Ukraine to be agreed “pretty soon”.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, the US president said the full ceasefire will be followed up by a “contract” to divide Ukrainian land between Moscow and Kyiv.
“The contract is being negotiated, the contract in terms of dividing up the lands, it’s being negotiated as we speak,” added Mr Trump, who has spoken with both Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the last week.
Drone attack on Russia’s Rostov region kills one person in car, regional governor says
A drone attack killed one person in a car in Russia's Rostov region, the acting governor of the southern Russian region said this morning.
"A car caught fire due to a drone attack," acting governor Yuri Slyusar said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
"A person in the car was killed."
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