Ukraine Russia war live: Dozens injured in Kharkiv apartment strike

North Korean foreign minister Choe Son Hui has flown to Russia to attend the fourth Eurasian Women’s Forum and the BRICS Women’s Forum in Saint Petersburg, Russia’s embassy in North Korea said today.

“Russian ambassador (Alexander Ivanovich) Matsegora saw off North Korean foreign minister Choe Son Hui at the Pyongyang International Airport,” the embassy said in a post on its Vkontakte social network.

The embassy said that the minister’s speeches and participation in discussions are planned at the forum, which will take place 18 to 20 September.

Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, said in June that delegations from almost a hundred countries were expected at the forum.

“We will strive to ensure a record foreign representation in the entire history of the Forum,” Matviyenko said in June, according to a transcript provided on the Council’s website.

Vladimir Putin has attended previous meetings of the forum, but the Kremlin is yet to announce his participation in this year’s forum.

Warming ties between the countries reached a new high this year when Putin signed a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that included a mutual defence pledge during a visit to Pyongyang.

Ukraine air force has downed 53 out of 56 Russian drones fired overnight, officials said.

Russia launched its eighth air attack in September on Kyiv overnight, with air defence units destroying nearly 20 drones that were heading towards the country’s capital, Ukrainian military said this morning.

“Russian attack drones were heading to Kyiv from different directions and in different groups,” Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said on Telegram. “According to preliminary information, there were no casualties or damage in Kyiv.”

The scale of the attack, which kept Kyiv under air raid alerts for about 3.5 hours, will only be known later today, he added.

Prime minister Keir Starmer and US president Joe Biden discussed the fact that Iran and Russia are strengthening their military cooperation during a summit in Washington on Friday, which also covered other key issues around Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, including Kyiv’s use of Western long-range missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia.

Mr Starmer and Mr Biden discussed intelligence pointing to a deal that would see the Kremlin providing Iran nuclear technology, sources on the British side told The Times.

If confirmed, such a deal would be especially alarming as Tehran is advancing its programme of uranium enrichment – a step towards developing a nuclear weapon.

Western arms are arriving too slowly to equip the armed forces properly and causing Ukrainian troops to suffer high losses, president Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN in an interview aired yesterday.

Russia has been gaining ground in parts of eastern Ukraine including around Pokrovsk. Capture of the transport hub could enable Moscow to open new lines of attack.

Mr Zelensky said the situation in the east was “very tough”, adding that half of Ukraine’s brigades there were not equipped.

“So you lose a lot of people. You lose people because they are not in armed vehicles… they don’t have artillery, they don’t have artillery rounds,” he said in an interview conducted on Friday.

The Ukrainian leader said weapons aid packages promised by the United States and European nations were arriving very slowly.

“We need 14 brigades to be ready. Until now… from these packages we didn’t equip even four,” he said.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Saturday said Washington was working on a “substantial” new aid package for Ukraine.

Two people died in a missile attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa, local officials said yesterday, as Moscow and Kyiv exchanged drone and missile attacks.

Oleh Kiper, Odesa’s regional governor, said the two who died in the suburbs of Odesa on Saturday night were a married couple, and that another person was wounded in the attack.

At least 41 people were wounded yesterday when a Russian aerial bomb struck a multistory residential building in Kharkiv, mayor Ihor Terekhov said, adding that the guided bomb hit the 10th floor of the building, with the fire spreading across four stories. Twelve other buildings were also damaged, he said.

The Ukrainian air force said Sunday it shot down 10 of the 14 drones and one of the three missiles Russia launched overnight.

The suspect in the Donald Trump’s assassination attempt, Ryan Wesley Routh, had shown support for Ukraine in some alleged social media profiles in his name.

The 58-year-old resident of Hawaii was identified as the suspect by the CNN, Fox News and The New York Times who cited unnamed law enforcement officials.

Some social media profiles by his name were found on X, Facebook and Linkedin by those news organisations.

The three accounts bearing Routh’s name suggest he was an avid supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia. In several of the posts, the social media user appeared to be trying to help recruit soldiers for Ukraine’s war effort.

Public access to the said Facebook profile was removed a few hours after the shooting.

Watch the moving moment a Ukrainian prisoner of war is reunited with her family.

The freed woman said: “I am so happy, I cannot express with words, I was waiting for this day for so long. I am so happy to see the Ukrainian flag. Thank you, friends.”

Ukraine saw 49 people returned from Russian captivity, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Friday (13 September).

According to Zelensky, among those returned are servicemen of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, National Guard, National Police, State Border Service, and civilians.