Ukraine hits Russian warplane and glide bombs warehouse in blow for Putin – live

Russian forces have thwarted an attempt from Ukraine to penetrate the border in Russia’s Kursk region, the interim governor of the region claimed.

Ukraine shelling injured five people, including three children, in Russia’s Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov said earlier.

Kursk lies across the border from Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, which lies just over 100 miles east of Kyiv.

Moscow has arrested the director of an exhibition park showcasing Russia’s military might on fraud charges along with a top defence ministry official as part of a sweeping investigation into abuse of office in the top echelons of the military leadership.

Vyacheslav Akhmedov, head of the Patriot Park — sometimes called Russia’s “military Disneyland” — and Major Gen Vladimir Shesterov, deputy of the defence ministry’s innovations department, were detained, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.

The two are suspected of embezzling government funds earmarked for the park, which opened in 2015, said Russia’s top criminal investigation agency.

The detention of Akhmedov and Shesterov follows a series of arrests of senior military officials who were part of the inner circle of former defence minister Sergei Shoigu, dismissed by Vladimir Putin soon after his inauguration in May to a sixth term.

Shipments of Russian liquified natural gas to France more than doubled the first half of this year, according to new analyses of trade data, at a time when Europe has tried to pull back from energy purchases that help finance the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Europe has restricted oil imports from Russia, but natural gas is still allowed. And while companies in France are importing the most, one analysis found EU countries overall imported 7 per cent more Russian LNG, natural gas that has been chilled and liquified for easier ocean transport, in the first half of this year compared to the same period a year ago.

Oleh Savytskyi, a founder of non-profit Razom We Stand, which campaigns for tougher sanctions on Russian fossil fuels, said the EU’s goal of phasing out all Russian fossil fuels by 2027 was “appallingly off track.” He said countries buying Russian LNG are sabotaging the continent’s energy transition and contributing billions to Russia’s war effort.

TotalEnergies, the French energy giant that accounted for the largest share of the imports in a list of cargoes between January and June seen by The Associated Press, said it was bound by contracts signed before Russia’s Ukraine invasion.

At least five people, including three children, were injured in shelling by Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, the interim governor of the region said this morning.

Russia activated its air defence systems and destroyed at least 26 Ukraine launched drones overnight, the governor said.

Several residential buildings were damaged by the shelling in the town of Sudzha in the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine in Russia’s southwest, Alexei Smirnov, the interim governor said on Telegram.

In a separate post, Smirnov said that the night attacks followed a series of drone strikes and shelling incidents from Ukraine during the day on Monday, when 41 drones were destroyed and one person injured.

Both Russia and Kyiv rarely disclose the full extent of damage inflicted by attacks on their territory unless civilians are injured or non-strategic infrastructure is damaged.

A Russian pianist and anti-war activist has died in prison after going on hunger strike, his mother said, in what the European Union called a shocking case of political repression.

The death of Pavel Kushnir was first reported by a Russian news site last Friday and confirmed to independent outlet Mediazona yesterday by his mother, Irina Levina.

A Telegram channel with links to Russia’s security services reported in May that Kushnir had been arrested and accused of inciting terrorist activity after posting anti-war material online.

Levina told Mediazona that an investigator from the FSB security service had told her that Kushnir died on 28 July while in pre-trial detention in Birobidzhan in Russia’s far east.

It was not clear how long he had been on hunger strike. Levina said she had been told that he was hooked up to an intravenous drip “but apparently this was not enough” to save him.

Kushnir was an accomplished concert pianist who had studied at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky conservatory.

EU external affairs spokesperson Peter Stano posted on X that the case was a “shocking reminder of (the) Kremlin’s ongoing repression” and urged Russia to “respect its Constitution, release all prisoners of conscience and stop repression against anti-war protesters”.

An independent Siberian politician, Svetlana Kaverzina, said Kushnir had been left isolated and without support because there was no local network of dissidents, and people had not known about his case.

“We couldn’t chip in and send him a lawyer – we didn’t know. We didn’t write him letters of support – we didn’t know. We didn’t talk him out of sacrificing himself – we didn’t know. He was alone,” she wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine has condemned Mali’s decision to cut diplomatic ties as short-sighted and hasty, saying that no evidence had been provided to show Kyiv had played any role in fighting that killed Malian soldiers and Russian mercenaries last month.

The West African country announced it was immediately severing relations with Kyiv following remarks by Ukraine’s military spy agency about the fighting in northern Mali in late July.

After the fighting, Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military spy agency, said in televised remarks that Malian rebels had received “necessary information – and not only information” to conduct the attack.

During the clashes, Tuareg rebels said they killed at least 84 Russian Wagner mercenaries and 47 Malian soldiers. The incident appeared to be Wagner’s heaviest defeat since it stepped in two years ago to help Mali’s military authorities fight insurgent groups.

In a statement seen by The Independent, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Kyiv rejected the allegation of Ukrainian support for international terrorism and said it viewed the move to cut relations as unfriendly.

Kyiv issued a statement last night and saying that “regrettably, the Transitional Government of the Republic of Mali decided to sever diplomatic relations with Ukraine without conducting a thorough study of the facts and circumstances of the incident in the north of Mali, and without providing any evidence of Ukraine’s involvement in the mentioned event.”

It added: “At the same time, it is ignored that military structures controlled by the Kremlin, including Wagner use terrorist methods and are directly involved in numerous war crimes, killings of civilians and ill-treatment of prisoners of war both in Ukraine and in African countries.”

A Ukrainian strike on Russia’s Morozovsk airfield has likely destroyed an Su-34 fighter-bomber plane, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (GUR) said on Telegram, sharing satellite images of the attack.

The General Staff of the Ukraine’s Armed Forces on Saturday had confirmed an aerial strike on the Russian airfield and said an ammunition depot storing glide bombs was hit. Debris from falling Ukrainian drones also damaged two more aircraft, four “technical buildings,” and two hangars at the airfield, it said.

The airfield in Russia’s Rostov oblast is barely 185km (114 miles) from the Ukrainian border in the east.

Satellite photos by Maxar confirmed large-scale damage to the Sukhoi warplane parked at the airfield as the imagery shows a charred plane and significant damage to the warehouse, which Kyiv claims was storing ammunition.

As a result of the attack, at least two other Su-34 were probably damaged by the attack debris, officials from the military’s intelligence agency said.

It added that the strike completely destroyed a Russian aviation weapons depot.

Several explosions rang out in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv late last night, witnesses said, after an air raid siren was sounded by the authorities.

Officials said air defence units successfully intercepted the incoming missiles into the Ukrainian capital.

New explosions were heard a half hour after the original blasts, the witnesses said. Shortly before midnight, a group of Shahed drones was reported on the border of Kyiv and Chernihiv Oblasts, heading for Kyiv.

No damage or casualties was seen on ground, according to the preliminary reports, said Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military authorities.

Ukrainian air defence units were operating in the city and in the surrounding Kyiv region, authorities in Kyiv said.