Ukraine-Russia war: UK pledges missiles worth £162m as Putin ramps up air attacks

Ukraine shot down just over half of 44 Russian drones launched at the country overnight, Kyiv’s air force said.

Two missiles were also used in the attack. It comes as Vladimir Putin continued to ramp up Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine following Kyiv’s cross-border incursion into Kursk one month ago.

Defence secretary John Healy, who is said to want to be known as the most pro-Ukrainian minister in the British government, will also send 650 Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) systems to Kyiv this year.

The UK will send 650 missiles to Ukraine in a £162m commitment to the country’s defence against Russia, John Healey is expected to say during a visit to Germany.

The Defence Secretary will announce Britain’s latest commitment to Kyiv’s war effort when he meets fellow ministers from across Europe at a defence summit.

Mr Healey will use his first appearance as Defence Secretary at the latest meeting of the group to reaffirm the new Government’s commitment to president Volodymyr Zelensky’s war-torn nation.

“This new commitment will give an important boost to Ukraine’s air defences and demonstrates our new government’s commitment to stepping up support for Ukraine,” Mr Healey said ahead of the summit.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has two secret sons who live an isolated life of luxury in a heavily guarded mansion, according to a Russian investigative journalism website.

The Dossier Centre reported that Ivan, nine, and Vladimir Jr, five, spend most of the year at their father’s vast mansion near Lake Valdai, northwest of Moscow.

Their mother is Alina Kabaeva, the former Olympic rhythmic gymnast whose relationship with Putin has been an open secret in Russia for more than a decade, the Dossier Centre claims.

Ukraine’s top military commander defended Kyiv’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, claiming it deterred Russia from advancing on a key area of the eastern front in Ukraine.

Col Gen Oleksandr Syrski told CNN that the offensive has been effective and the strategy was working.

“Over the past six days, the enemy hasn’t advanced a single metre in the Pokrovsk direction,” he said. “In other words, our strategy is working.”

“We’ve taken away their ability to maneuver and to deploy their reinforcement forces from other directions … and this weakening has definitely been felt in other areas.”

Syrskyi said his forces control nearly 1,300sq km and about 100 settlements in the Kursk region after Ukraine launched a surprise offensive on 6 August.

The death toll from a Russian missile strike on a military institute in the east central Ukrainian town of Poltava rose to 55, the emergency service said yesterday.

Russian troops struck the educational facility with two extremely hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles, barely giving people time to seek shelter.

The deadliest single attack of this year wounded 328 others, with 27 of them being in intensive care.

The rescue operation continued for three days but had to be stopped due to new air raid alerts, officials added.

Russia must “respond appropriately” to restrictions on its media imposed by the West, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said today.

This week the US justice department filed money-laundering charges against two employees of Russian state broadcaster RT over what it called a scheme to hire a US company to produce online content to influence the November presidential election.

“We criticise the West for pursuing the path of destroying our media abroad, they obstruct the dissemination of information, they obstruct the work of our journalists,” Mr Peskov was quoted by TASS news agency as saying.

“And, of course, in this situation of heated confrontation there needs to be reciprocity. Therefore we must respond appropriately.”

The US justice department has charged Virginia-based Russian television contributor Dimitri Simes and his wife Anastasia Simes with two separate schemes to violate American sanctions.

In one of two indictments, Mr Simes and his wife are accused of laundering funds and violating US sanctions for the benefit of Channel One Russia, a Russian broadcasting station sanctioned in May 2022.

In exchange for providing services as a presenter and producer, prosecutors alleged that Simes and his wife received over $1m (£758,800), a personal car and driver, a stipend for an apartment in Moscow and a team of 10 employees from Channel One Russia.

In a second indictment, Anastasia Simes is charged with violating sanctions to benefit Aleksandr Yevgenyevich Udodov, a Russian oligarch sanctioned in February 2023. She is accused of purchasing art and other antiques for Udodov from various galleries and auction houses in the United States and Europe.

A father has lost his entire family after his house was destroyed during Russia’s attack on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

Yaroslav Bazylevych’s wife Eugenia and the couple’s three daughters, Yarya, 21, Daria, 18 and Emilia, seven, were all killed on Wednesday morning.

The attack led Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi to accuse Russia of “eliminating Ukrainians by (killing off) entire families”.

Ukrainian emergency services said his daughters – Daryna, 18, her sisters Yaryna, 21, and Emilia, 7, and their 43-year-old mother Yevhenia were killed while sheltering in the staircase of their residential building.