Ukraine Russia war latest news: Putin ‘will be seeing things happen’, warns Trump after Kharkiv maternity ward hit

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said wartime censorship in Russia is justified amid the conflict with Ukraine.

Russian authorities swiftly blocked Russian-language media outlets in February 2022 to quash dissenting voices as Russia invaded Ukraine, and they introduced laws threatening many years in prison for those “discrediting” the army, Reuters reported.

Speaking to a Russian magazine called Expert, Peskov said that many media outlets have been closed and some reporters have emigrated from the country in the past three years.

“But don’t forget the situation we are in. Now is the time of military censorship, unprecedented for our country. After all, the war is going on in the information space too,” Peskov is quoted as saying by the magazine.

“It would be wrong to turn a blind eye to the media that are deliberately engaged in discrediting Russia. Therefore, I believe that this regime (censorship) is justified now,” Peskov told the magazine.

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 U.S. 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.”

The United States has resumed military supplies to Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

Zelensky, speaking in his nightly video address, also set out a long list of areas in Ukraine, where the military is facing challenges in resisting the slow advance of Russian forces in the 40-month-old war.

Zelensky restated that Ukraine had received high-level signals from Washington and its other Western allies that arms supplies, paused for a time last week, had now resumed.

“According to all reports, deliveries have resumed. We are currently working with partners on new supplies, increased weapons production in Ukraine and better support for our army,” he said.

“Next week, we will continue working with the U.S. side on a military level, including between our military and General Kellogg. We are also preparing new European defence packages. We expect strong sanctions soon, including sanctions against Russia for this war. The pressure must work.”

Kellogg, interviewed by the Ukrainian media outlet Novyny.LIVE while attending a conference about Ukraine in Rome, said: “We’ll be in Kyiv Monday. We’ll be there all week.”

Donald Trump has said the US is selling weapons to Nato to give to Ukraine.

“We’re sending weapons to Nato, and Nato is paying for those weapons, 100%,” Trump said in an interview with NBC.

“So what we’re doing is, the weapons that are going out are going to Nato, and then Nato is going to be giving those weapons (to Ukraine), and Nato is paying for those weapons.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that some of the US-made weapons Ukraine is seeking are deployed with Nato allies in Europe.

Those weapons could be transferred to Ukraine, with European countries buying replacements from the US, he said.

“It’s a lot faster to move something, for example, from Germany to Ukraine than it is to order it from a (US) factory and get it there,” Rubio told reporters during a visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Friday damaged a maternity hospital, authorities said, terrifying patients as windows shattered and shards of glass fell on to the beds, leaving families rushing to shelter their babies.

Nine people were injured in drone strikes in Kharkiv; some of the women attending the maternity ward were a part of this figure.

Three women and three newborns suffered acute stress and received medical help, according to Kharkiv’s regional prosecutors.

Oleksandra Lavrynenko was at the hospital after just giving birth. “We woke up and heard a very loud whistle. My husband and I got up and quickly went to our little one, and at that moment there was a hit and the windows shattered,” she said.

They rushed to shelter one-day-old Maksym underground.

“It was very scary, because I was so full of adrenaline that I probably forgot that I had stitches. Now I am slowly recovering from the shock,” Lavrynenko said.

“It is very difficult and scary to give birth at this time,” she said, laying next to her son.

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.