Ukraine-Russia war latest: At least 23 injured in Kharkiv missile strike as Putin launches mass drone attack

Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz has said supporting Ukraine will be a key plank of his re-election campaign after his party named him as their lead candidate for February’s vote.

Popular defence Minister Boris Pistorius ruled himself out of the running last Thursday, putting an end to weeks of speculation over whether he should lead the centre-left SPD into the election instead of Scholz.

The party executive committee of the centre-left SPD unanimously voted for Scholz as chancellor candidate, allowing him to run for a second term despite overseeing the collapse of his three-way coalition earlier this month.

In his coronation speech, Scholz spelled out the key points for his election campaign: ensuring peace by cautiously supporting Ukraine against Russia’s full-scale invasion, reviving the ailing economy and taming the cost of living crisis.

Mr Scholz, the least popular chancellor since reunification in 1990, has an uphill battle ahead of him. His SPD is currently polling in third place, with a survey by INSA putting the party on 14 per cent, behind the opposition conservatives on 32 per cent and far-right Alternative for Germany on 19.

British spies will seek to counter Russian cyber warfare with a new laboratory for artificial intelligence, a minister will announce, warning Russia will not “think twice” about targeting the UK.

Vowing never to let Vladimir Putin deter the UK from supporting Ukraine, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden will say the UK and its Nato allies are “watching” Moscow and combatting its attacks both publicly and “behind the scenes”.

In a major speech on Monday, Mr McFadden will warn that Britain “learned long ago” not to appease dictators and that Mr Putin “will not be successful” in attempting to weaken backing for Ukraine.

And the minister, responsible for UK national security, will announce a new Laboratory for AI Security Research (LAISR) aimed at helping the UK stay ahead in “the new AI arms race”.

Our political correspondent Archie Mitchell reports:

Kharkiv authorities have revised the casualty toll following Russia’s missile attack in the northeastern city.

At least 23 people are now reported to have been injured, with the attack having damaged more than 40 buildings on Monday morning, the regional governor and national police said.

At least 10 people were also injured in a missile attack on the southern city of Odesa, where residential buildings were also damaged, Ukraine’s interior ministry said.

Russia claims to have shot down eight ballistic missiles allegedly fired overnight by Ukraine.

“Russian air defence forces shot down eight ballistic missiles, as well as six guided US-made JDAM bombs and 45 aircraft-type drones in the past 24 hours,” Russia’s defence ministry was quoted as saying by state news.

While the veracity of the claims were unclear, Ukraine’s military said on Monday it had attacked an oil depot in Russia’s western Kaluga region, along with targets in Bryansk and Kursk.

Russia will consider deploying short and intermediate-range missiles in Asia if the United States deploys such missiles to the same region, deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov has been quoted as saying by state news.

Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday that Tokyo and Washington were aiming to put together a joint military plan for a possible Taiwan emergency, which would include the US deploying missiles to the Nansei Islands in Japan’s southwestern Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures, and to the Philippines.

Britain’s foreign secretary David Lammy has said that “we will do all we can” to offer support to a British man who reportedly captured by Russian forces while fighting for Ukraine.

Mr Lammy was asked about the reports regarding the man who identified himself as James Scott Rhys Anderson and said he was a former British Army soldier in footage that was widely circulated on Sunday.

Speaking in Italy, Mr Lammy told reporters: “I have been updated about that development in the last couple of days and of course we will do all we can to offer this UK national all the support we can.”

A Ukrainian war crimes investigator was pictured photographing the site of the Russian missile attack on Kharkiv which left 10 people injured, the Associated Press reports.

Russia’s land forces are now larger than when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022 but their quality has decreased, a top Nato military official has said.

“The quality of those forces has gone down,” Nato’s highest-ranking military officer Admiral Rob Bauer said, pointing to the state of the force’s equipment and the level of training of its soldiers.

“At the moment, the Russians are not the same threat as in February 2022, so we have a bit of time to prepare ourselves,” he said, adding that this meant ramping up investments into the defence industry.

Photographs have emerged showing the aftermath of a Russian missile attack on Kharkiv, as at least 10 people were injured.

The Kremlin has claimed not to be particularly familiar with the views on Russia of Calin Georgescu, the far-right Romanian presidential candidate who has emerged as the shock winner in the first round of the country’s elections.

The success of Mr Georgescu, a little-known independent candidate who has claimed that Romania’s best chance lies with “Russian wisdom” and who won 22.9 per cent of the first round vote, has surprised both pollsters and commentators alike.

Given his anti-Nato stance, one political commentator told Reuters that Russian meddling could not be ruled out. “Based on Georgescu’s stance towards Ukraine and the discrepancy between opinion surveys and the actual result, we cannot rule [that] out,” said Sergiu Miscoiu, a political scientist at Babes-Bolyai University.

But asked on Monday for the Kremlin’s take on Mr Georgescu and his electoral prospects ahead of the second round of voting on 8 December, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “I would not make any predictions yet.

“We probably cannot say that we are that familiar with the world view of this candidate as far as relations with our country are concerned. For now, we understand very clearly the current leadership of Romania, which is not a friendly country to us. We will of course watch how the electoral processes develop and who wins.”