Ukraine war live: Russia kills seven in ‘largest missile attack’ in months on Kyiv

Eight people were killed and at least 20 were injured in a Russian missile strike on Sumy on Sunday evening.

A 9-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl were killed in the strikes which led to 20 local residents sought medical help, including three children.

The rocket attack on a densely populated residential neighborhood in the city of Sumy saw at least ten high-rise buildings damaged, as well as vehicles.

Prosecutors in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies are documenting the consequences of the shelling.

Two young Ukrainian refugees who were “scared to talk” when starting school in the UK have said joining their local Scout group has helped them to learn English.

Artem Horchuck and Yehor Kremnov, both six, arrived in Gosport, Hampshire, in 2022 after their families fled Ukraine when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Since their arrival the pair have started school, joined their local Squirrels group, a younger branch of the Scouts, and are now integrated and thriving in the UK.

“When I started school I was scared to talk as I didn’t know how to talk English,” Artem told the PA news agency.

Artem, who came to Gosport from Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, met Yehor, from Kyiv, at 6th Gosport Squirrels after their families were both referred by their Ukrainian family support worker.

“England is really quiet. It’s safe here,” Yehor told PA.

“We don’t have rockets or shooting here. I can sleep more here.

“I like the Squirrels as I can learn more English, make friends and have fun.”

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin seriously underestimate what the other is capable of and that carries far-ranging risks for Ukraine over Russia’s invasion, Britain’s former spy chief and ex-diplomats have told The Independent.

Trump’s US election victory last week has upended Europe’s plan to back Kyiv for “as long as it takes”. His focus is on ending the war quickly, even if that potentially means pushing Kyiv to cede territory currently occupied by Russia.

In a secret factory in central Russia, engineers are manufacturing hundreds of decoy drones meant to overwhelm Ukrainian defences as they try to protect against a horrific new weapon.

The plant in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone recently started churning out thermobaric drones alongside the decoys, an Associated Press investigation has found. The thermobaric warheads create a vortex of high pressure and heat that can penetrate thick walls. They suck out all the oxygen in their path, and have a fearsome reputation because of the injuries inflicted even outside the initial blast site: Collapsed lungs, crushed eyeballs, brain damage.

Joe Biden witnessed the devastation of drought up close as the first sitting American president to visit the Amazon rainforest.

The massive Amazon region, which is about the size of Australia, stores huge amounts of the world’s carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas driving climate change.

But development is rapidly depleting the world’s largest tropical rainforest, and rivers are drying up.Biden said the fight against climate change has been a defining cause of his presidency — he’s pushed for cleaner air, water and energy, including legislation that marked the most substantial federal investment in history to fight global warming.

But he’s about to hand the nation over to Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who is highly unlikely to prioritize the Amazon or anything related to climate change, which he’s cast as a “hoax.”

Trump has pledged to again pull out of the Paris agreement, a global pact forged to avert the threat of catastrophic climate change, and he says he’ll rescind unspent funds in energy efficiency legislation.

North Korea has supplied Russia with long-range rockets and artillery systems, Ukrainian intelligence assessment has found, amid reports of Pyongyang deploying 12,000 of its soldiers to Moscow to fight against Ukraine.

Pyongyang has provided 50 domestically produced 170mm M1989 self-propelled howitzers and 20 updated 240mm multiple launch rocket systems, Financial Times reported citing the assessment.

Some of the weapons have been moved to the border region of Kursk where Moscow has deployed 50,000 Russian and North Korean soldiers to retake the territory from Ukrainian troops. The Russian forces are facing difficulty in pushing back Ukraine’s cross-border incursion launched on 6 August.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that “missiles speak for themselves” and “such things are not announced”, after reports that Washington had granted Kyiv permission to conduct strikes deeper into Russia with US-made missiles.

Zelensky has been calling for the US and UK to agree to allow them to strike infrastructure such as airfields that contribute to the barrages of missiles and drones that strike across Ukraine on a near-daily basis.

Washington’s decision to let Ukraine strike deep into Russia with long-range US missiles could lead to World War Three and will receive a swift response, Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy head of the Russian upper house’s international affairs committee, said on Sunday, according to the TASS news agency.

Two U.S. officials and a source familiar with the decision revealed the significant reversal of Washington’s policy in the Ukraine-Russia conflict earlier on Sunday.

Sir Keir Starmer has “no plans” to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin as he said “we need to double down” on support for Ukraine with the conflict approaching its 1,000th day.

The Prime Minister pledged that Ukraine was “top” of his agenda at this week’s G20 summit of world leaders and told reporters that “there’s got to be full support as long as it takes”.

There has been concern about the level of support the US may continue to give Ukraine when President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House in January.

Earlier this week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke to Mr Putin on what was the Russian leader’s first publicly announced conversation with the sitting head of a major western power in nearly two years.

Asked if he had any plans to make a similar call, Sir Keir said: “It’s a matter for Chancellor Scholz who he speaks to. I have no plans to speak to Putin.”

Prominent Putin critic Sir Bill Browder told The Independent: “[Putin’s] psychology is one where he’s provoked by weakness, not by strength, and the only way to deal with Russia is to put a boot on the throat.

“This is all bluster, as far as I can see. Good luck to him if he wants to go to war with Nato. He would lose that war in a matter of days.”