Ukraine war latest: India PM Modi arrives in Kyiv as Putin loses troops in Kursk

India’s Narendra Modi has arrived in Kyiv for talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky, the first trip by an Indian prime minister to Ukraine since Kyiv gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The visit, which follows a trip by Modi to Moscow in July, is important for Western-backed Kyiv, which has been trying to nurture diplomatic relations in the Global South in its efforts to secure a fair settlement to end the war.

Modi’s visit to Moscow last month coincided with a heavy Russian missile strike on Ukraine that hit a children’s hospital. The attack prompted Modi to use emotive language to deliver an implicit rebuke to Putin at their summit.

But the trip elicited fierce criticism from Zelensky who said it was a “huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day”.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser in the Ukrainian president’s office, told Reuters Modi’s visit to Kyiv was significant because New Delhi “really has a certain influence” over Moscow.

Below are some of the latest photos coming out of Ukraine and Russia.

Ukraine’s border guard service said on Thursday that Kyiv had seen no signs of Belarusian troop or military hardware movements near their shared border since Minsk announced it was sending additional forces to the area.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday the country had deployed nearly a third of its armed forces along the border, claiming that Kyiv had stationed more than 120,000 troops there.

“We do not see any movement directly near our border – neither equipment nor personnel,” Andriy Demchenko, Ukraine’s border guard service spokesman, told national television.

He added that the situation near the Belarus border “generally has not changed”.

Ukraine ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, taking a step toward membership and opening the possibility of more prosecutions of Russian officials for war crimes.

Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, voted Wednesday to ratify the ICC statute.

Membership of the ICC is a requirement for joining the European Union, which Ukraine hopes to do. It was formally accepted as a candidate in June 2022, four months after Russia began its full-scale invasion.

A Russian guided bomb attack in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region bordering Russia’s region of Kursk killed two people, prosecutors said on Thursday.

Moscow troops dropped two guided bombs on civilian infrastructure, according to the regional prosecutors’ statement on Telegram.

One person was injured in the attack, it added.

Russia has been pummelling Ukrainian border regions with strikes, and Kyiv said its shock incursion into the Kursk region was aimed at cutting off Moscow’s ability to stage such attacks.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday he had visited the Sumy region and added there had been a decrease in shelling and in civilian casualties since the Kursk operation.