Ukraine claims overnight to have shot down 16 out of 17 drones that were launched by the Russian Federation. Suspilne writes that air defence was in operation in Odesa, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions. It reports a person was injured and nearby buildings were damaged when a drone hit a utility company in Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russia is stonewalling in talks about the renewal of a deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea, the UK envoy to the UN has warned. Barbara Woodward accused Moscow of “cynical brinkmanship” that makes it increasingly unlikely that the deal will be renewed before Tuesday’s deadline.
Wagner mercenaries are no longer participating in “any significant capacity” in combat operations in Ukraine, the Pentagon said Thursday, more than two weeks after the group’s aborted mutiny in Russia. “At this stage, we do not see Wagner forces participating in any significant capacity in support of combat operations in Ukraine,” Pentagon press secretary Pat Ryder told a news briefing
Three Ukrainain drones were intercepted in the Voronezh region. Governor Alexander Gusev posting to Telegram that “Yesterday, a few kilometres from Voronezh, air defence systems detected and destroyed three UAVs. There were no victims, no injuries, no damage.”
Roman Starovoit, head of the Kursk region in Russia, has reported that a Ukrainian drone fell on the city of Kurchatov. He stated there were no injuries.
A car explosion has injured three people in a residential sector of Russia’s city of Belgorod.
A public poll is to be held to decide what to do with the metal Soviet Union insignia that is due to be removed from Kyiv’s monument to the motherland.
France has posthumously awarded AFP video journalist Arman Soldin, who was killed while working in Ukraine, the Legion d’Honneur (Legion of Honour).
Poland will respond in kind if Russia closes down its diplomatic missions, the Polish prime minister said on Friday, in response to reports that Moscow had decided to close the Polish consulate in Smolensk.
Finland’s foreign minister Elina Valtonen has said in an interview with the FT that “we in the west need to understand that obviously, this is not charity because Ukraine is fighting for us. They are fighting for our liberty and the European security architecture”. She said that the west remains committed to supporting Ukraine, adding “I wouldn’t say there’s any fatigue and I hope there never will be.”
US president Joe Biden also said he was “serious about prisoner exchange” when asked about the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in a Moscow prison for more than 100 days.
Ukraine’s armed forces have received cluster munitions promised by the US to help boost Kyiv’s slow-moving counteroffensive, senior military officials from the two countries say. “We just got them, we haven’t used them yet, but they can radically change [the battlefield],” Ukrainian army commander Oleksandr Tarnavskyi told CNN on Thursday.
A Russian general said he had been fired as a commander after telling the military leadership “the truth” about the dire situation at the front in Ukraine, as tensions in the Russian army grow in the aftermath of Wagner’s short-lived mutiny. Maj Gen Ivan Popov, who commanded the 58th Combined Arms Army, which is fighting on the front in Ukraine near Zaporizhzhia, said in a voice message that he had been fired after he brought up problems on the battlefield.
