Ukraine Russia war latest news: Trump to send weapons to Kyiv after Putin’s forces kill six in drone attacks

NATO will need more long-range missiles in its arsenal to deter Russia from attacking Europe because Moscow is expected to increase production of long-range weapons, a US Army general told Reuters.

Russia’s effective use of long-range missiles in its war in Ukraine has convinced Western military officials of their importance for destroying command posts, transportation hubs and missile launchers far behind enemy lines.

“The Russian army is bigger today than it was when they started the war in Ukraine,” Major General John Rafferty said in an interview at a U.S. military base in Wiesbaden, Germany.

“And we know that they’re going to continue to invest in long-range rockets and missiles and sophisticated air defences. So more alliance capability is really, really important.”

Six people were killed and more than 20 were injured in Russian drone and missile attacks on Saturday, officials say.

Russia has continued to pound Ukraine with hundreds of drones as part of a stepped-up bombing campaign that has further dampened hopes for a breakthrough in efforts to end the more than three-year-old war.

Two people were killed by falling debris from a drone and 14 were wounded when Russian forces attacked the Bukovina area in the Chernivtsi region of southwestern Ukraine, regional governor Ruslan Zaparaniuk said on Saturday.

Two people were killed on Saturday in a missile strike in the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to regional governor Serhii Lysak.

Two other people were killed on Saturday in the Sumy region by a Russian guided bomb, officials said.

A drone attack in Ukraine’s western Lviv region wounded nine people, regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said.

Three people were wounded in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine when the city was hit by eight drones and two missiles, mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Russia fired 597 drones and decoys, with 26 cruise missiles, into Ukraine over Friday night and into Saturday, Ukraine’s air force said, the majority of which were shot down or lost through signal jamming.

Ukrainian authorities say they have detained a Chinese father and son on charges of spying on its Neptune anti-ship missile programme at a time when Kyiv is seeking to boost its domestic arms industry to counter Russian advances.

Neptune, a key component of Ukraine’s naval warfare capabilities, was used to destroy the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the early months of the war. It has since been used on a range of targets including oil terminals.

The Security Service of Ukraine said on Wednesday that counterintelligence officials arrested a 24-year-old former student in Kyiv after supplying him with “technical documentation” related to Neptune production. They then detained the student’s father who they alleged was working to give the classified documents to Chinese special services.

Ukrainian officials claimed that the father lived in China but visited Ukraine to “personally coordinate” his son’s work.

• A senior intelligence officer for Ukraine’s security service has been gunned down in Kyiv.
• CCTV footage published on social media showed the agent was slain in a residential parking lot on Thursday morning before a gunman clad in dark clothing fled the scene on foot in broad daylight.
• The victim’s name has not been publicly disclosed and the identity of the suspect remains unclear. A Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) official said that the intelligence officer had been a colonel, according to Reuters.
• Ukrainska Pravda has claimed the agent was Colonel Ivan Voronych, adding he died at the scene after the assailant fired five aimed gun shots.
• The New York Times claimed that Voronych was a part of the SBU’s Centre for Special Operations Alpha and had been within the organisation for decades.
• It remains unclear whether the agent’s death was a domestic issue or an assassination.

Russia is awaiting the “major statement” that US president Donald Trump announced he would deliver on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

Trump told NBC News on Thursday that he will make a “major statement” on Russia on Monday, without elaborating what it will be about.

In recent days, Trump has expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Russia-Ukraine conflict.

When asked about the new NATO weapons deliveries to Ukraine, Peskov called it “just business” as Kyiv had already been receiving weapons prior to this development.

Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine overnight and into Saturday killed at least six people and injured 20, officials said.

A senior Ukrainian intelligence officer was gunned down in broad daylight in Kyiv, officials said on Friday as a maternity hospital was hit by a Russian drone barrage on the city of Kharkiv.

Surveillance footage published on social media showed the agent was executed in a car park by a gunman clad in dark clothing who fled the scene. Police said they were trying to identify the shooter and that “measures are being taken to detain him”.

The victim’s name has not been publicly disclosed and the identity of the suspect remains unclear. A Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) official said that the intelligence officer had been a colonel, according to Reuters.

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