Ukraine-Russia war live: Putin’s troops thwart cross-border attack as he warns against long-range weapons

A string of Russian attacks killed and injured civilians in widely separated parts of Ukraine, prompting president Volodymyr Zelensky to issue a new call to Kyiv’s allies yesterday to intensify pressure on Moscow.

Rescue teams in the central city of Dnipro completed operations on Friday after Russian missile attacks that killed five people, including a child, and injured more than 20.

A Russian glide bomb killed one person and injured three yesterday in Kostiantynivka, near the front line in Donetsk region, the regional governor said. Russian shelling killed two people in a small town west of the Ukrainian-held southern city of Kherson.

And in Kyiv, a drone struck a high-rise apartment building on Friday west of the city centre, killing a teenage girl.

Mr Zelensky, in his nightly video address, said the assaults showed Russia was “determined to continue its aggression”.

“These are conditions in which the lack of stronger decisions from partners to support Ukraine only encourages (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to invest further in terror,” Mr Zelensky said.

“The world can stop the escalation of war. Abstractions and words are not enough for this. Concrete steps are needed.”

Ukraine’s air defence units were in operation early this morning trying to repel a wave of Russian drones headings towards Kyiv, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said.

“Stay in shelters,” Vitali Klitschko, the mayor, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russian forces have advanced further into several eastern Ukrainian towns, bringing them closer to capturing the strategic city of Pokrovsk, Russian and Ukrainian bloggers said.

“The enemy advanced in Selydove,” DeepState, a group with close links to the Ukrainian army that analyses combat footage, wrote on the Telegram messaging app late yesterday. It posted a map indicating Russian troops in the town’s southeast.

Russian forces have been storming the coal mining town of Selydove in Ukraine’s Donetsk region for the past week. Capturing it would pave the way for a Russian advance on the logistical hub of Pokrovsk 20km (12 miles) northwest.

The Russian news outlet Shot said on Telegram that Moscow’s troops control 80 per cent of Selydove.

The Russian-installed head of Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, said Russian forces had hoisted their unit’s flag on the roof of one of the buildings in the town of Hirnyk, some 14km south of Selydove, Russia’s state news agency RIA reported.

Russian military bloggers also reported that Russian forces were close to taking over the town of Kurakhove, just southwest of Hirnyk. Reuters could not independently verify the reports. Ukraine has not commented on them.

Leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies yesterday reached consensus on delivery of some $50bn in loans to Ukraine backed by the earnings from frozen Russian sovereign assets starting as early as December.

“These loans will be serviced and repaid by future flows of extraordinary revenues stemming from the immobilization of Russian Sovereign Assets,” the G7 statement said.

“Our aim is to begin disbursing the funds by the end of the year,” said the statement, which was released as global finance chiefs were meeting in Washington for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings.

An accompanying statement from G7 finance ministers said that the loans would be disbursed through a series of bilateral loans, starting as soon as 1 December and continuing through the end of 2027 “in installments that will reflect Ukraine’s urgent financing needs.”

Each bilateral loan would enter into force no later than 30 June 2025, which provides some timing flexibility for G7 members to arrange details.

Russia’s air defence destroyed at least 30 Ukrainian drones overnight, the defence ministry said early this morning.

The drones were destroyed over Russia’s southern regions of Voronezh, Bryansk, Oryol, Lipetsk and Belgorod, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

One woman was moderately injured as a result of the drone attack in the border region of Belgorod, the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram. He added that a few cars were also damaged.

Maxim Yegorov, governor of the Tambov region, some 450km southeast of Moscow, said a Ukrainian drone fell in the Michurinsky district of the region, sparking a short-lived fire but causing no injuries or material damage.

The Russian defence ministry reports only how many drones its units destroy, not how many Ukraine launches. Russian officials also rarely disclose the full scale of damage inflicted by the attacks, especially when they involve military or energy infrastructure.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Kyiv has often said that its attacks inside Russia target infrastructure key to Russian war efforts and are in response to Moscow’s continued strikes on Ukrainian territory.

Former diplomats tell Tom Watling that Vladimir Putin’s deepening ties with North Korea risks damaging relations with China

The US has joined Ukraine and South Korea in confirming reports of North Korea dispatching troops, estimated to be in the thousands, to aid Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

“We are no longer in a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia, North Korea and Ukraine,” said Marie Dumoulin of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

But analysts said it was unclear how North Korean troops will be used adding the North Korean forces do not have combat experience.

“I don’t think that sending a few thousand North Korean troops, whose level of training we don’t know, will make much difference on the battlefield in operational terms,” said Dumoulin.

“In any case, 10,000 soldiers is not that many,” added Isabelle Facon from the France-based Foundation of Strategic Research.

The Kremlin has denied a Wall Street Journal report about regular contacts between Elon Musk and President Vladimir Putin.

“No, this is not true,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Peskov said that Putin had one contact with Musk - the world’s richest man - and it was before 2022.

The Journal said Musk had been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022. Peskov said the report was absolutely false.

One Russian soldier was killed after a planned ambush on a convoy, according to Russian state media.

“Unknown people attacked a military convoy in the Grozny suburbs,” reported Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

“One serviceman was killed and a second was wounded. Measures are being taken to find and detain the attackers,” the statement added.

A local resident described the attack as being “rapid and well-coordinated” with the attackers fleeing shortly after.

The witness was unable to describe the gunmen but indicated that there was more than one attacker.