Ukraine-Russia war latest: Huge blast at key airbase for Russian nuclear bombers after Ukrainian drone strike

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has urged leaders to pledge €5 billion (£4.1bn) for artillery shells for Ukraine to strengthen its hand in peace talks, amid divergences over how to bolster Kyiv and the EU’s own military capabilities.

Arriving at an EU summit in Brussels, Ms Kallas called on leaders to match words of support for Kyiv with deeds, as US President Donald Trump pushes ahead with his efforts to end the war, including through a rapprochement with Russia.

Ms Kallas has scaled back a proposal to pledge up to 40 billion euros in military aid to Ukraine this year, with each country contributing according to its economic size, after resistance from some countries, particularly in southern Europe.

She told reporters she was now focusing on what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy – who is addressing the summit by video link – says he needs most urgently, such as two million artillery shells at a cost of €5bn

“We should at least start to have a really concrete step – not only words, but also in deeds that we are helping Ukraine right now. Because the stronger they are on the battlefield, the stronger they are behind the negotiation table,” Ms Kallas said.

Moscow has accused Kyiv of attempting to disrupt peace efforts following a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian oil depot on Wednesday.

Authorities in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar said a fire erupted in the oil depot near the village of Kavkazskaya. The depot is a rail terminal for Russian oil supplies to a pipeline linking Kazakhstan to the Black Sea.

“It is absolutely clear that we are talking about another provocation specially prepared by the Kyiv regime and aimed at disrupting peace initiatives,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

Up to 250,000 Russian soldiers have been killed during Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.

The MoD believes the Russian leadership “likely prioritise their conflict objectives over the lives of Russian soldiers,” it said in an intelligence update on X.

“They are almost certainly prepared to tolerate continuously high casualty rates so long as this does not negatively affect public or elite support for the war, and those losses can be replaced.”

Russian president Putin and his leadership also place “significantly less value on the lives of ethnic minority citizens from impoverished regions”, it added.

Recruitment tends to be disproportionately focussed on people from these minorities, with “Slavic Russians” from “urban centres such as Moscow and St. Petersburg” less likely to be called up.

For the next stop in Volodymyr Zelensky’s endless European diplomacy, the Ukrainian president has just touched down in Norway.

He flew in from Finland, where he met with president Alexander Stubb and other senior political figures to discuss a common approach to sharing a border with Russia, and continued support for Ukraine.

The Norwegian government earlier this month said it would more than double its financial support to Kyiv this year, to 85 billion crowns (£6.17 billion) from a plan agreed in November of 35 billion crowns.

“Norway stands with Ukraine,” prime minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said on Thursday. “I look forward to good discussions on how Norway can best support Ukraine in both the short- and long-term.”

Jens Stoltenberg, until October NATO’s chief and now Norway’s finance minister, will have a meeting with Mr Zelensky’s delegation.

While the conversation was described as positive by both sides and focused on securing a truce between Ukraine and Russia on aerial attacks against one another’s energy infrastructure, subsequent readouts appeared to disagree with the extent to which the US could takeover Ukrainian nuclear power stations.

Ukrainian soldiers are not encircled in Kursk, intelligence officials have said, despite claims to the contrary by presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

It comes after intelligence assessments were shared with the White House, according to three US and European officials familiar with their government’s intelligence.

The assessments show that Ukrainian troops have faced intense pressure from Russian forces but are not “completely surrounded”, as Mr Trump said following a meeting between his special envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin.

Military chiefs will gather in the UK today as Sir Keir Starmer continues efforts to form the so-called coalition of the willing.

Sir Keir is expected to address the meeting of around 30 military officials, two days after Vladimir Putin demanded that all Western military aid to Ukraine be ended as a condition to end the fighting.

Mr Starmer and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron have been scrambling to build a coalition of countries willing to put troops onn the ground and be directly involved in peacekeeping efforts in Ukraine in any postwar settlement.

Taking to X following a major Russian attack overnight, Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Vladimir Putin of showing his “true attitude” towards peace.

“Russian strikes on Ukraine do not stop, despite their propaganda claims,” the Ukrainian president said in a post accompanied by pictures of Ukrainian rescuers working on the sites of the attacks.

“Every day and every night, nearly a hundred or more drones are launched, along with ongoing missile attacks. With each such launch, the Russians expose to the world their true attitude towards peace.

“Last night, the Russians launched nearly 200 ‘Shahed’ drones and decoy UAVs. A massive attack on the Kirovohrad region left 10 people wounded, including four children, and caused damage to homes, a church, and infrastructure.

“I thank everyone who works on the ground and helps to eliminate the consequences of Russian terror.”