We’re now closing the blog. Here is a summary of events today:
Rishi Sunak made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday to meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – his first visit to the country since taking office.
Sunak announced that Britain will provide a £50m air defence package for Ukraine, including anti-aircraft guns and technology to counter Iranian-supplied drones.
Zelenskiy thanked Sunak, for his support and tweeted: “With friends like you by our side, we are confident in our victory. Both of our nations know what it means to stand up for freedom.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office has said at least 437 Ukrainian children have been killed and more than 837 have also been injured as a result of Russia’s invasion.
Five people were injured in a Russian strike on a humanitarian station in southern Ukraine, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said.
Nine people, including four children, have died after a suspected gas explosion in a residential building in Russia’s Sakhalin island, the local governor said.
Kyiv is in a “critical situation” with power shortages while the country faces hours-long blackouts, officials say, amid Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Ukrainians should consider leaving the country to help save energy, Maxim Timchenko, chief executive of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm, DTEK, said.
Ukrainian forces could be in Crimea by the end of December, the country’s deputy defence minister, Volodymyr Havrylov, has said.
The UK Ministry of Defence has released its latest intelligence update on the war Ukraine. Russia made its largest single-day issuance of debt in history on Wednesday, it said.
Moscow has not officially contacted Kyiv about peace negotiations, but Russia would have to completely withdraw its forces for talks to take place, Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian presidential chief of staff said.
The first passenger train to the recently liberated Kherson city has arrived from Kyiv for the first time since Russian troops occupied the southern Ukrainian city.
The funeral took place on Saturday of a Polish man who was one of two victims killed when a missile crashed into a grain storage facility in the Polish village of Przewodow.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said China and Russia are seeking a world where force is used to resolve disputes and he vowed the United States will continue to defend humanitarian principles and international law.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to the Ukrainian president, has dismissed “conspiracy theories” about his country surrendering. “Ukraine will not kneel to Russians,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
Asia-Pacific leaders added their voices on Saturday to international pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, issuing a summit statement saying “most” of them condemned the war.
A Polish man who was killed this week by a missile near the Ukrainian border had worked hard to shelter Ukrainian refugees in the early days of the war, locals said.
Two grain drying facility workers were killed on Tuesday when a missile crashed into the tiny village of Przewodów earlier this week while Russia was firing missiles into Ukraine. Polish authorities say it was a Ukrainian air defence weapon that went astray; Kyiv has called for further investigation.
Residents said the man was who was buried on Saturday had played a big role when the village of barely 440 people mobilised in the early days of the war to help Ukrainian refugees, Reuters reports.
Stanislaw Staszczuk, a local official from the nearby district centre of Dołhobyczów said the man …
… was very engaged from the very beginning. He was driving, bringing all the necessities, food, diapers, wipes and all the other necessary items.”
The deceased man has been referred to as Boguslaw W in Polish media. They have refrained from publishing both men’s surnames to protect their families’ privacy. The other victim, known as Bogdan C, is due to be buried on Sunday.
Boguslaw W had prepared three rooms where Ukrainian families stayed early in the war, in a building at the Argocom grain storage facility near where the missile landed.
Federico Viola, the grain facility’s Italian owner said:
We hosted lots of people, 150 or maybe 200, the rotation was huge until the end of May or early June and (Boguslaw W) was very involved.”
Viola added that when the news of Boguslaw W’s death emerged, messages of grief and support from Ukrainians he had hosted poured in.
Updated
