Ukraine war news live: Putin arrives in Belarus to stage nuclear drills as Kyiv strikes occupied Crimea

We have some more photos from the scene of a Russian missile strike on a printing press in Kharkiv, northeast Ukraine, yesterday.

You can read our full report on the strike here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that recognises the current battlefield lines, four Russian sources have told Reuters, saying he is prepared to fight on if Kyiv and the West do not respond.

Three of the sources, familiar with discussions in Putin’s entourage, said the veteran Russian leader had expressed frustration to a small group of advisers about what he views as Western-backed attempts to stymie negotiations and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to rule out talks.

“Putin can fight for as long as it takes, but Putin is also ready for a ceasefire to freeze the war,” said a senior Russian source who has worked with Putin and has knowledge of top level conversations in the Kremlin.

Putin has regularly suggested he is willing to negotiate a ceasefire, only to issue demands he knows Kyiv would never accept, and that permit him to steal swathes of Ukrainian territory.

The number of people held in Russian prisons dropped by 58,000 last year, Russian independent media has reported, continuing a steady fall spurred in part by the recruitment of convicts to fight in Ukraine.

In total, some 105,000 prisoners were released between 2022-2023, media reported, citing data published in the official journal of Russia’s prison service.

Russia has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world and a vast network of prisons and labour camps stretching across its 11 time zones.

Russia has recruited prisoners to fight in Ukraine since 2022, when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late head of the Wagner mercenary group, began touring penal colonies, offering prisoners a pardon if they survived six months at the front.

Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash last year two months after leading a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leaders, said he had recruited 50,000 prisoners for Wagner.

Russia’s Defence Ministry has since continued recruiting convicts from prisons for its own Storm-Z formations.

Regional authorities in Siberia have said they plan to close several prisons this year amid a decline in inmate numbers driven by the recruitment of convicts for the war.

Fears that Russia would mount an attack on any Nato member are unfounded, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed, adding that the war in Ukraine that is now in its third year showed the limits of Russia’s capabilities.

Hungary, a member of the European Union and Nato, has been refusing to provide military assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Budapest also seeks to opt out of Nato long-term plan to aid Ukraine, with its foreign minister calling it a “crazy mission”.

Nationalist Orban, in power since 2010, has built his campaign for next month’s European Parliament elections on the agenda of avoiding deeper involvement in the conflict, saying the vote could determine the course of war and peace in Europe.

“The Russian military is fighting a serious and difficult war with the Ukrainians,” Orban told public radio in an interview. “If the Russians were strong enough to wrestle down the Ukrainians in one go, they would have done so already.”

Orban said Nato military capabilities far exceeded those of Ukraine, therefore it was unlikely that Russia or any other country would mount an attack against Nato.

“I do not consider it logical that Russia, which cannot even defeat Ukraine, would all of a sudden come and swallow the Western world whole,” said Mr Orban. “The chances of this are extremely slim.”

He said he considered references to the Russian threat as a prelude to deeper Western involvement in the Ukraine war.

Relations between Budapest and Washington have soured because of Hungary’s foot-dragging over the ratification of Sweden’s Nato accession and also over MrOrban’s warm ties with Moscow despite the war in Ukraine.

The first group of Ukrainian pilots taking part in the F-16 fighter jet training programme in the US have graduated, a spokesperson for the US Air National Guard has confirmed.

Ukraine is set to receive dozens of the US-made fourth generation fighter jets, though it is unclear when. Ukrainian military officials say they are vital to counteracting Russia’s aerial threats, most significantly their use of glide bombs, a deadly explosion nicknamed the “building destroyer” by pro-Kremlin military bloggers.

The pilots will now move to Europe for additional training, according to Politico.

The group began their training at Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, Arizona, last October. The lessons are facilitated by the Air National Guard’s 162nd Wing.

Other pilots are receiving training in Denmark, and Romania also opened an F-16 training facility for Ukrainian aviators.

Earlier this week, the Dutch Defense Ministry announced that the first 10 Ukrainian military personnel completed F-16 maintenance training in the Netherlands.

Below are the latest photos from Ukraine.

The United States is expected to announce an additional $275 million in military aid for Ukraine on Friday as Kyiv struggles to hold off advances by Russian troops in the Kharkiv region, two U.S. officials say.

This will be the fourth installment of military aid for Ukraine since Congress passed a long-delayed foreign aid bill late last month and comes as the Niden administration has pledged to keep weapons flowing regularly and to get them to the front lines as quickly as possible.

The package includes high mobility artillery rocket systems, or HIMARS, as well 155 mm and 105 mm high-demand artillery rounds, according to the two U.S. officials. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details of the aid package before the public announcement.

Two bystanders have been killed in the Crimea peninsula after a Ukrainian missile hit the region near Simferopol, a Russian-appointed official said.

Simferopol’s governor Sergei Aksyonov claimed that a Ukrainian missile had struck an empty building near Alushta on the peninsula’s Black Sea coast.

This comes amid a busy early morning in Crimea as Ukrainian military bloggers and unofficial media reported a number of targets had been hit throughout the peninsula.

Russia’s defence ministry has also claimed to have intercepted three ATACMS missiles over Crimea, without providing any evidence of the projectile. It said the military had destroyed three Ukrainian sea drones headed toward the peninsula.

Videos and photos of the incident have been shared by Krymsky Veter, an online news outlet dealing with Crimea, showing an explosion and fire in Alushta, and said ambulances were heading to the scene.

News outlet RBK-Ukraine reported, without citing a source, that explosions had occurred in three other centres and said targets could have included headquarters for the coast guard or intelligence centres.

Russian bloggers on the peninsula said they believed that not all incoming missiles had been intercepted.

Russian border guards have removed navigation buoys from the Estonian side of a river separating the two countries, the Baltic nation said on Thursday, adding that it would seek an explanation as well as a return of the equipment.

Some 24 out of 50 buoys recently placed on the Narva river to mark sailing routes were removed in the early hours of Thursday the Estonian police and border guard said in a statement.

Natural changes to the riverbed make it necessary to retrace shipping routes annually, the authority said, adding that the location of buoys between Russia and Estonia had been disputed since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Russian defence ministry earlier this week briefly published a proposal to revise Russia’s maritime border in the eastern Baltic Sea, but later deleted it from an official portal after creating concern among NATO members, including Estonia.

It was not immediately clear if the removal of buoys was related to any Russian Baltic Sea border plan.

The Estonian foreign ministry said it treated the removal as a provocative border incident and would demand an explanation as well as the return of the buoys immediately.

“This action by Russia, carried out in the shadow of the night, fits well within the broader pattern of Russia’s provocative behaviour, including on its borders with neighbours,” it said in a statement.

The Narva river runs from a lake between Russia and Estonia and ends up in the Gulf of Finland, part of the Baltic Sea.

South Korea and Japan are sanctioning more individuals, organisations and ships related to Russia’s alleged procurement of weapons from North Korea.

The sanctions from Seoul target seven North Korean individuals and two Russian vessels over alleged arms trading in breach of UN Security Council resolutions.

South Korea said the Russian vessels transported military supplies in a large quantity of containers from North Korea to Russia.

Japan also announced sanctions on 11 organisations and one individual including what it said were Russian groups involved in military cooperation with North Korea that supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Russia’s procurement of arms from North Korea violates the relevant UN resolutions that completely prohibit the transfer of arms and related materials to and from North Korea,” Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a news conference.

North Korea has been accused by the US and South Korea of transferring weapons to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the accusations, but vowed last year to deepen military relations.