Russia Ukraine war live: Kyiv’s top commander defends Kursk incursion as Putin launches fresh missile attack

Polish prosecutors have enough evidence to charge three Belarusian citizens over the forced landing in Minsk in 2021 of a civilian airliner carrying an opposition journalist, who was then arrested, Polish authorities said on Friday.

In what some EU leaders at the time called a hijacking, the Ryanair flight from Athens to Lithuania was diverted to the capital of Belarus escorted by a MiG-29 fighter jet.

On landing, dissident Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega were taken into custody.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has arrived in Germany to discuss air defence and weapons delivery.

Zelensky said Ukraine needed strong decisions on long-range strikes to bring a “just peace” closer as Vladimir Putin ramped up his aerial strikes.

He will travel to Italy after visiting Germany, according to the statement posted on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukraine shot down just over half of 44 Russian drones launched at the country overnight, Kyiv’s air force said.

Two missiles were also used in the attack. It comes as Vladimir Putin continued to ramp up Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine following Kyiv’s cross-border incursion into Kursk one month ago.

Defence secretary John Healey, who is said to want to be known as the most pro-Ukrainian minister in the British government, will also send 650 Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) systems to Kyiv this year.

The UK will send 650 missiles to Ukraine in a £162m commitment to the country’s defence against Russia, John Healey is expected to say during a visit to Germany.

The Defence Secretary will announce Britain’s latest commitment to Kyiv’s war effort when he meets fellow ministers from across Europe at a defence summit.

Mr Healey will use his first appearance as Defence Secretary at the latest meeting of the group to reaffirm the new Government’s commitment to president Volodymyr Zelensky’s war-torn nation.

“This new commitment will give an important boost to Ukraine’s air defences and demonstrates our new government’s commitment to stepping up support for Ukraine,” Mr Healey said ahead of the summit.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has two secret sons who live an isolated life of luxury in a heavily guarded mansion, according to a Russian investigative journalism website.

The Dossier Centre reported that Ivan, nine, and Vladimir Jr, five, spend most of the year at their father’s vast mansion near Lake Valdai, northwest of Moscow.

Their mother is Alina Kabaeva, the former Olympic rhythmic gymnast whose relationship with Putin has been an open secret in Russia for more than a decade, the Dossier Centre claims.

Ukraine’s top military commander defended Kyiv’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, claiming it deterred Russia from advancing on a key area of the eastern front in Ukraine.

Col Gen Oleksandr Syrski told CNN that the offensive has been effective and the strategy was working.

“Over the past six days, the enemy hasn’t advanced a single metre in the Pokrovsk direction,” he said. “In other words, our strategy is working.”

“We’ve taken away their ability to maneuver and to deploy their reinforcement forces from other directions … and this weakening has definitely been felt in other areas.”

Syrskyi said his forces control nearly 1,300sq km and about 100 settlements in the Kursk region after Ukraine launched a surprise offensive on 6 August.

The death toll from a Russian missile strike on a military institute in the east central Ukrainian town of Poltava rose to 55, the emergency service said yesterday.

Russian troops struck the educational facility with two extremely hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles, barely giving people time to seek shelter.

The deadliest single attack of this year wounded 328 others, with 27 of them being in intensive care.

The rescue operation continued for three days but had to be stopped due to new air raid alerts, officials added.

Russia must “respond appropriately” to restrictions on its media imposed by the West, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said today.

This week the US justice department filed money-laundering charges against two employees of Russian state broadcaster RT over what it called a scheme to hire a US company to produce online content to influence the November presidential election.

“We criticise the West for pursuing the path of destroying our media abroad, they obstruct the dissemination of information, they obstruct the work of our journalists,” Mr Peskov was quoted by TASS news agency as saying.

“And, of course, in this situation of heated confrontation there needs to be reciprocity. Therefore we must respond appropriately.”