Closing summary
The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired missiles and drones at 11 of the country’s regions. It was the 33rd consecutive night of aerial attacks behind the frontline and set a new monthly record of drone barrages. Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, was targeted by several waves of Russian attack drones overnight. No casualties were reported.
Russia plans to boost its defence budget by almost 30 percent next year as it diverts resources to its war on Ukraine, spending more on the military than welfare and education combined, a draft budget indicated.
Russian troops are trying to use a heavy flamethrower system and drop guided bombs near the Vovchansk aggregate plant in the Kharkiv oblast, according to reports.
Russia is planning to draft 133,000 Russians between October and January, according to a decree – signed by Russian president Vladimir Putin – which affects those not in the reserve and who are eligible for military service.
Putin vowed that Moscow would accomplish all goals it has set for itself in Ukraine. “The truth is on our side. All goals set will be achieved,” the Russian president said in a video message released to mark the second anniversary of what Russia calls “Reunification Day”, when Moscow annexed four Ukrainian regions.
A Russian court sentenced Alexander Permyakov, a man convicted over a car bombing that seriously injured the nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, to life in prison.
Thank you for following today’s latest news. This blog is closing now but you can read all our Ukraine coverage here.
Updated
Moscow aims to draft 133,000 Russians during new round of conscription in autumn
Russia is planning to draft 133,000 Russians between October and January, according to a decree signed by Vladimir Putin earlier today. It affects those not in the reserve and who are eligible for military service.
It means men aged 18-30 will be drafted as part of the regularly occurring autumn conscription campaign, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Russian forces are pushing forward in eastern Ukraine on parts of a vast 1,000 km (627-mile) frontline and are trying to eject Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk region.
In April, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, signed a bill to lower the minimum conscription age from 27 to 25 to increase the numbers joining the military. Kyiv was desperate to replenish its drained and depleted forces. Russia has a huge advantage in numbers and weapons on the battlefield.
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Combined spending on defence and security will account for about 40% of Russia’s total government spending, seen at 41.5tn rubles ($447bn; £334bn) in 2025.
The “top priority” of the budget is “social support for citizens”, finance minister Anton Siluanov told a televised government meeting last Tuesday.
“The second is the provision of expenditures on defence and security, providing the resources for the special military operation and support for families of those participating in the special military operation,” he added.
Kyiv will allocate more than 60% of the country’s entire budget to defence and security next year.
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Russia plans 30% defence spending hike in 2025
Russia is planning a 30% defence spending hike next year, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has said in a snap.
The latest planned increase in spending will take Russia’s defence budget to 13.5tn rubles ($145bn; £108bn) in 2025, newly published draft budget plans show.
This figure does not include some other resources being directed to the war, such as spending that Russia labels as “domestic security”.
The Kremlin has been increasing spending as its forces slowly advance in eastern Ukraine. The Russian government has raised personal and corporate taxes to plug holes in the budget.
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Russian troops trying to use a heavy flamethrower system near Vovchansk aggregate plant - report
Russian troops are trying to use a heavy flamethrower system and drop guided bombs near the Vovchansk aggregate plant in the Kharkiv oblast, Ukrinform has cited Vitaliy Sarantsev, a spokesperson for the Kharkiv regional military unit, as having said.
“He (the enemy) is currently trying to use the maximum range of weapons in that location (the aggregate plant in Vovchansk). They are using a heavy flamethrower system and dropping guided bombs,” Sarantsev said.
These claims have not been independently verified by the Guardian.
Sarantsev said the plant does not have a specific military purpose for the Russians, but its loss would represent “a very powerful image blow” for the Ukrainian forces.
Russian troops had been in control of the Vovchansk plant, a sprawling complex of 30 concrete buildings, for several months before the facility was recaptured on 24 September 2024, Ukraine’s military intelligence has previously reported. Vovchansk is a town about 4 km from the border and 45 km from Kharkiv city.
Russians use heavy flamethrower system, guided bombs near aggregate plant in Vovchansk - military https://t.co/R8SSYpHf8p
— Ukrinform-EN (@Ukrinform_News) September 30, 2024
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Man jailed for life in Russia after car bomb injured nationalist writer
A Russian court has sentenced a man convicted over a car bombing that seriously injured the nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin to life in prison, the Associated Press reports.
Prosecutors claim the May 2023 bombing in the Nizhny Novogorod region was conducted at the direction of Ukraine’s security services. Prilepin was seriously injured and his driver died in the bombing.
The convicted defendant Alexander Permyakov is from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and once fought with the Russian-backed separatists there, news reports say.
Prilepin was known for his vehement defense of both the Russia-backed eastern Ukraine rebels who rose up in 2014, and of Russia’s fighting in Ukraine that began in February 2022.
Since Russia sent troops into Ukraine, two prominent nationalist figures have been killed. Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian TV channels and the daughter of the Kremlin-linked ideologue Alexander Dugin, died in an August 2022 car bombing that investigators suspected was aimed at her father.
Vladlen Tatarsky, a well-known military blogger, died in April 2023, when a statue given to him at a party in St Petersburg exploded. The Russian political activist Darya Trepova was convicted in the case and sentenced to 27 years. She said she was following orders from a contact in Ukraine.
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There have been reports of power outages in Kherson, southern Ukraine, because of Russian attacks. In the central district, emergency works are being carried out, meaning some households have been left without power.
“A part of the coastal zone of the Dnipro district has also been without electricity since yesterday,” the Kherson city council added in a post on Telegram.
“The difficult security situation, caused primarily by the extremely high activity of Russian drones, does not allow us to quickly begin to eliminate the damage.”
Over the course of its full-scale invasion, Russia has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Ukrainian electricity generation, transmission and distribution facilities.
The first big wave of strikes hit in the autumn and winter of 2022. The strikes have continued throughout the war, though Moscow has markedly stepped up its campaign since March.
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Mark Rutte, the blunt-speaking liberal who led four Dutch coalition governments over 13 years, takes the reins at a perilous moment for Ukraine, a defining test for the transatlantic alliance. Nato allies recently pledged to bolster long-term support to Ukraine “so it can prevail in its fight for freedom”.
Far from prevailing, Ukraine is facing its third winter fighting Russia’s brutal invasion, while Vladimir Putin’s forces continue to advance in the east of the country.
Nato has changed considerably since Jens Stoltenberg, the outgoing and second-longest serving secretary general, took over a decade ago. When Stoltenberg arrived at Nato HQ, Russia had already annexed Crimea and, aided by local separatists, was seizing territory into eastern Ukraine. Yet in 2014 Nato allies were more focused on Afghanistan, and as Stoltenberg said earlier this month, support for Ukraine was “marginal”.
Full story below
Eleven Ukrainian regions targeted in five-hour Russian missile and drone attack
The Ukrainian air force says Russia fired missiles and drones at 11 of the country’s regions. It was the 33rd consecutive night of aerial attacks behind the frontline and set a new monthly record of drone barrages, the Associated Press news agency reports.
In Kyiv, multiple explosions and machine gun fire could be heard throughout the night as the Ukrainian capital’s air defences fought off a drone attack for five hours. No casualties were reported in Kyiv or elsewhere.
Russia has increasingly deployed Shahed drones in its aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities since the war began in February 2022 and launched more than 1,300 in September alone – the highest number in a single month.
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Zelenskyy describes impact of strikes on key regions in Ukraine
More now on the update we brought you earlier in our round-up at 8.50am BST on those Russian strikes inside Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, in a post on X, 14 people were injured and two rescued after the attacks, which saw bombs hit residential buildings.
Today in Zaporizhzhia, fourteen people were injured following a Russian strike. The rubble clearing continued throughout the day, and two people were rescued. Aerial bombs were dropped on ordinary residential buildings and city infrastructure.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 29, 2024
Additionally, Russian forces… pic.twitter.com/z3adMrTcvj
A single Russian ship, carrying Kalibr missiles, continues its combat duty in the Black Sea, the Ukrainian navy said in an operational update posted to Facebook this morning.
“There is one hostile ship in the Black Sea, carrying Kalibr cruise missiles with a total volley of up to four missiles. No hostile ships in the Sea of Azov,” the post reads.
The Black Sea fleet has been used, in part, by the Kremlin to project power into the Middle East and Mediterranean.
The navy added in its Facebook post that there is one hostile Russian ship capable of carrying up to 16 Kalibr cruise missiles which is on duty in the Mediterranean Sea.
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Belarus has begun an inspection of the combat readiness of its armed forces, the defence ministry has said. The exercises will involve the preparation of weapons and special military equipment, according to the military.
The Belarusian military frequently engage in training exercises within Belarus, including large-scale operations. They are not directly fighting in Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Military drills in Belarus, which allowed Russia to use its territory as a staging post for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, periodically raise security concerns in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states.
Minsk – which is the junior partner in a “union state” alliance with Moscow – denies any hostile plans towards its neighbours, but warned that any incursion against Belarusian territory will provoke a response.
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Frontline regions receive hundreds of generators to prepare for potential blackouts over winter
Seven frontline regions – Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Sumy and Chernihiv – have received 600 generators as part of humanitarian aid ahead of winter, the Ukrainian ministry of reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories wrote on Telegram.
The generators will be used to provide “uninterrupted power supply to social and healthcare institutions” and “staging areas” in the event of blackouts, the ministry said.
“The implementation of this project is a successful example of cooperation between central and local authorities and international partners to support the war-affected civilian population,” the ministry said.
Ukraine is much better prepared for the winter now than at the beginning of the war, with hospitals, critical infrastructure and many businesses having generator capacity.
Russia has already destroyed much of Ukraine’s energy capacity with its frequent attacks on the country’s energy facilities.
There are concerns that many Ukrainians will still have to cope with emergency blackouts over the winter if Russia pounds critical infrastructure then. There will be intense pressure on the system as power demands will rise amid sub-zero temperatures.
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Russia says it has captured another village in eastern Ukraine - report
Russian forces have captured the village of Nelipivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the Interfax news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying today. This claim has not been independently verified by the Guardian.
Russian forces continued offensive operations near Nelipivka and west of Toretsk in the direction of the village of Shcherbynivka, also in the Donetsk region, on 28 and 29 September, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
Nelipivka had a population of just under 1,000 people before the war began in 2022, according to official statistics.
Russian forces have in recent weeks accelerated their progress in Donetsk, taking a series of towns and villages, including claiming to have captured Marynivka and Ukrainsk.
Moscow’s forces have been pushing towards the important logistics hub of Pokrovsk. If the east Ukrainian city falls, then Russian forces will cut off one of the main supply routes in the region.
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We have been reporting on Russia launching several waves of drone attacks targeting Kyiv overnight. Air defence units engaged in repelling the strikes for several hours, according to reports. Here are the latest images from the Ukrainian capital that have been sent to us over the newswires:
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented a so-called “victory plan” to Joe Biden, who has just months left in office, at the White House last week. He also discussed it with presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and members of Congress.
Zelenskyy has kept the details of the plan secret, but US officials have said it includes additional American aid to prevent a Ukrainian rout on the battlefield and “provide the [Ukrainian] people with the assurance that their future is part of the west”. Ukraine’s request to be able to use western-made long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia is reported to also likely be included in the plan.
The plan will be made public but some parts will remain secret, the head of the presidential office Andriy Yermak has now said.
Yermak said the plan will be presented to Ukrainians with some “sensitive” details left out to prevent information from leaking to Russia.
Speaking on national TV, he was quoted by the Kyiv Independent as saying:
Everything that becomes public is heard not only in our country, but also by the enemy. That is why some details of this plan are classified. But it is important to see the implementation of this plan on enemy territory.
Ukraine’s new foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, is on a diplomatic trip to Hungary today to meet with his counterpart, Peter Szijjarto, according to Ukraine’s press service. Topics that will be discussed will include the economy, the promotion of Ukraine’s accession to the EU and Nato and border infrastructure.
Sybiha replaced Dmytro Kuleba, who had led the foreign ministry since 2020, as foreign minister earlier this month in the biggest ministerial reshuffle since Russia launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has been an outspoken critic of western military aid to Ukraine and is Europe’s most pro-Russian leader. It has made for frosty relations between Kyiv and Budapest.
You won't hear bad words about #Hungary for a couple of days. Everyone in #Kyiv will be biting their lips and accentuating the positives as new Foreign Minister @andrii_sybiha meets his counterpart Péter Szijjártó in #Budapest#Ukraine wants Hungary to support EU/NATO accession pic.twitter.com/gt33KtVKH2
— Tim White (@TWMCLtd) September 30, 2024
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US citizen Stephen James Hubbard pleaded guilty to charges of mercenary activity in a Moscow court on Monday, admitting that he had received money to fight for Ukraine against Russia, the RIA state news agency reported.
“Yes, I agree with the indictment,” RIA cited him as saying. Hubbard, 72, was placed in pre-trial detention last week for six months and is facing a sentence of seven to 15 years if convicted, Reuters reports.
The prosecution said Hubbard, whose sister said he had worked as an English teacher abroad for decades, was promised $1,000 (£745) a month and was given training, weapons and ammunition. Hubbard’s sister Patricia Fox denied her brother was a mercenary and said he had no interest in fighting in any war.
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Putin says Russia will accomplish 'all goals set' in Ukraine
As we mentioned in the opening summary, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has released a video message released to mark the second anniversary of what Russia calls “Reunification Day” – two years since Moscow formally claimed the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as its own.
Having held referendums – widely condemned as shams – in the four regions on 30 September 2022, Putin signed a document with the Russian-installed leaders of the occupied regions to unilaterally incorporate them into the Russian Federation, despite Russia not fully controlling the territories.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion was launched in February 2022, Kyiv has stepped up its pursuit of Nato and EU membership, steps that it regards as vital for its self-defence and independence from Russia but are opposed by Moscow.
Putin said when he started the war that his aim was to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine – a statement dismissed by Kyiv and the west as a pretext for an imperial-style conflict of expansion.
“The truth is on our side. All goals set will be achieved,” Putin said in his video message on Monday.
He went on to criticise “western elites” who he claims “turned Ukraine into their colony, a military base aimed at Russia” and who fanned “hate, radical nationalism … hostility to everything Russian”.
“Today we are fighting for a secure, prosperous future for our children and grandchildren,” Putin said.
Russia launches waves of drone attacks on Kyiv, Ukrainian military says
We are restarting our live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine and will give you the latest updates throughout the day.
Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, has been targeted by several waves of Russian attack drones overnight, the country’s military has said, with air raid sirens sounding in the capital just after 1am local time.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said drone debris fell by a residential building with emergency services working on site.
The Ukrainian air force said it shot down 67 out of 73 drones and one of three missiles launched by Russia during the overnight attack. It did not specify how many had attacked Kyiv.
All these drones were destroyed by defence systems or “neutralised” by electronic warfare, Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, wrote on Telegram. There have been no casualties reported from the attack.
Russian drone attacks on Kyiv have intensified in recent weeks as Moscow’s forces target Ukraine’s critical energy, military and transport infrastructure ahead of the winter.
Here are some of the other latest developments from Ukraine:
Vladimir Putin has vowed that Moscow would accomplish all goals it has set for itself in Ukraine. “The truth is on our side. All goals set will be achieved,” the Russian president said in a video message released to mark the second anniversary of what Russia calls “Reunification Day”, when Moscow annexed four Ukrainian regions. In his address, Putin repeated his justification for his full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, as protecting Russian speakers against a “neo-Nazi dictatorship” that aimed to “cut them off forever from Russia, their historic homeland”.
Russia hit the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia with multiple guided bombs on Sunday, wounding at least 16 people and damaging railways, infrastructure and residential and commercial buildings, Ukrainian officials said.
Russian forces attacked 14 communities across the Sumy region, including in the town of Esman and in Hlukhiv, injuring 10 people throughout the day, the Sumy oblast military administration reported.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its forces had repelled six new Ukrainian attempts to enter its western Kursk region and had also taken control of the settlement of Makiivka in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk region. The ministry said on Telegram that its forces, with the support of aircraft and artillery, repelled attempts to enter the region near the village of Novy Put, about 80km (50 miles) west of Sudzha, a strategic crossing point for Russian natural gas exports to Europe via Ukraine. Ukrainian forces raided the Kursk region on 6 August and Zelenskyy said earlier this month that his forces controlled 100 settlements over an area of more than 1,300 sq km (500 sq miles).
Denmark said it was unlocking 1.3bn kroner ($194m) to help Ukraine bolster its arsenal against Russia’s invasion. The weapons and equipment would be produced in Ukraine but financed by Denmark and frozen Russian assets, the Danish defence ministry said.
