Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin vows to launch more missiles as Poland warns threat of global war is real

Russian units fighting in Ukraine which were previously considered “elite” are now becoming “increasingly obsolete” as a result of Russia’s strategy of throwing waves of troops into battle that has turned the frontline into a “meat grinder”, a leading war monitor has said.

Army formations which once carried out specialised tactical tasks in their assault on Ukrainians are now “understrength”, and reliant on infantry-led assaults which fail to deploy any “unique tactics”, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.

Once considered “elite”, the units are “now essentially functioning as understrength motorised rifle units, relying on infantry-led frontal assaults to make tactical gains as opposed to employing any sort of doctrinally unique tactics,” the US-based think tank said in an update on Thursday.

The Foreign Secretary has vowed to continue to “do everything that is necessary” to help Ukraine combat Russia after Vladimir Putin threatened strikes on the UK.

The Russian president used a new ballistic missile against Ukraine on Thursday, with Mr Putin claiming the use of the weapon was in response to the UK and US allowing missiles they have supplied to Ukraine to be used to strike targets in Russia.

“We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities,” he said.

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Nato and Ukraine will meet in Brussels, Belgium, next week in response to Moscow’s use of the Oreshnik missile on Dnipro, central Ukraine.

The meeting on Tuesday of the Nato-Ukraine council will happen on ambassadorial level. It was called by Kyiv after the strike on the city of Dnipro.

A British man admitted on Friday that he carried out an arson attack on a London commercial property linked to Ukraine, and that he had accepted pay from a foreign intelligence agency, in a case prosecutors have linked to Russia.

Jake Reeves, 22, pleaded guilty at London’s Woolwich crown court to charges of aggravated arson on the premises belonging to a “Mr X” on an industrial estate in east London in March.

He also admitted a charge under the UK’s new National Security Act (NSA) of obtaining a material benefit from a foreign intelligence service.

A Russian drone attack on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy killed two people and injured 12 on Friday morning, regional authorities said.

Twelve apartment buildings, five private residences, a store and three cars were damaged after three drones attacked the city around 5am (0300 GMT), the national police said.

Volodymyr Artiukh, Sumy regional governor, said Russian forces had equipped drones with shrapnel for the attack on a densely populated area of the city.

“This weapon is used exclusively to kill people,” Artiukh said, pointing to scars on a damaged building. “Not for a facility, but in order to destroy more people.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has said the Korean Peninsula has never been so close to a nuclear war, after what he described as “aggressive” moves from the US in particular.

“Never before have the warring parties on the Korean Peninsula faced such a dangerous and acute confrontation that it could escalate into the most destructive thermonuclear war,” Kim said.

“We have already gone as far as we can on negotiating with the United States, but what we became certain of from the result is not the superpower’s willingness to coexist, but its thorough stance of power and aggressive and hostile policy toward us that can never change.”

Russia’s use of a new experimental hypersonic missile is a severe escalation of the conflict, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky warned.

Zelensky said the attack on Dnipro, central Ukraine, with a medium-range ballistic warhead on Thursday was “yet more proof that Russia has no interest in peace”.

Ukrainian air defence forces said the missile – which has a range of more than 3,400 miles and can be used to carry nuclear warheads – was fired from Russia’s Astrakhan region, on the Caspian Sea.

“He is testing you, dear partners. He must be stopped. A lack of tough reactions to Russia’s actions sends a message that such behaviour is acceptable. This is what Putin is doing,” Zelensky said.

“Pressure is needed. Russia must be forced into real peace, which can only be achieved through strength,” he added.

While launching an intermediate-range missile is a less threatening signal, the incident could still set off alarms and Moscow notified Washington briefly ahead of the launch, according to US officials.

The Kremlin said Russia had not been technically obliged to warn the United States about the strike because the missile used had been intermediate-range rather than intercontinental, but added that Moscow had informed the US 30 minutes before the launch anyway.

Russian military expert Anatoly Matviychuk said it could carry six to eight conventional or nuclear warheads, and was probably already in service.

Putin said the missile travelled at 10 times the speed of sound [Mach 10] and so could not be intercepted, with Russian sources saying the range was 3,1000 miles.

It also appeared to have multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles: separate warheads able to hit different targets.

Ukraine’s air force initially said the missile was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) - the kind that Russia could hit the United States with.

But the US military later said the weapon was an intermediate-range missile based on the design of Russia’s longer-range RS-26 ICBM missile.

The Pentagon said it was fired with a conventional warhead but Moscow could modify it if it wanted, with Russia only possessing a handful of them.

“It could be refitted to certainly carry different types of conventional or nuclear warheads,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed on Friday that all of the missile’s warheads had hit their targets and hailed what it said was its first successful use of an intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile with conventional warheads in combat.