Ukrainian forces shot down three Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber aircraft on the southern front on Friday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and military officials said, hailing it as a success in the 22-month-old war. The Russian military made no mention of the incident. But Russian bloggers acknowledged the loss, and analysts suggested US-supplied Patriot missiles had probably been used. The reports could not be independently confirmed.
Ukraine shot down 24 of 28 Shahed drones Russia launched in an overnight attack that damaged residential buildings in Kyiv and an infrastructure facility and grain warehouse in southern regions, officials said on Friday. Drones hit three storeys of an apartment block in the Ukrainian capital, injuring two people and causing lesser damage to several other residential buildings.
Russia said its air defences intercepted five Ukrainian drones south of Moscow in the space of less than an hour. The defence ministry said four were intercepted over Kaluga region and a fifth was destroyed in the Moscow region.
Russia may sever diplomatic ties with the US if Washington confiscates Russian assets frozen over the Ukrainian conflict, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, as saying on Friday. The Kremlin said Russia would never leave in peace any country that seized its assets, adding that it would look at what western assets it could seize in retaliation if that occurred. The comments came amid suggestions from some western politicians that frozen Russian assets worth $300bn be handed to Ukraine.
Russia is ready to swiftly respond in kind to Washington deploying short- and medium-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, Ryabkov said. Separately, the deputy foreign minister said Moscow and Washington were still engaged in sensitive negotiations over a prisoner exchange, but accused the US side of leaking details to the media.
The Dutch government will send 18 F-16 jets to Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Friday after a conversation with the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte.
Police have arrested a senior Ukrainian defence ministry official suspected of embezzling €36m (£31m/$40m) for the purchase of much-needed artillery shells in the war against Russia, according to officials. Prosecutors said on Friday that the official, whose identity they did not reveal, had developed a system under which he bought artillery shells at inflated prices. Ukraine has had a series of corruption scandals in recent months, including several in the defence ministry.
The US said it would place sanctions on foreign banks that supported Russia’s war in Ukraine, in a new bid to exert economic pressure on Moscow as it diversifies from the west to China.
The Kremlin accused the Wall Street Journal of publishing “pulp fiction” after it reported that the death of the mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash had been orchestrated by a Russian security official, Nikolai Patrushev.
Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, visited Kyiv on Friday to present an aid package for Ukraine on his first official foreign visit, a ministry spokesperson said.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, held a phone call with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Friday to discuss ways to de-escalate the conflict in Gaza as well as humanitarian relief efforts, the Kremlin said.
The renowned Russian writer Boris Akunin, who was declared a terrorist by Moscow and became the target of a criminal inquiry this week, says he fears the move signals a new milestone in the country’s history under the Russian president. The writer, who lives in exile, told Agence France-Presse: “Putin’s regime has clearly decided to take a very important new step on its way from a police, autocratic state to a totalitarian state.”
