Closing summary
We will be closing this blog shortly. Here is an overview of today’s developments:
Power has been restored to 270,000 consumers in Kyiv after Russian overnight attacks knocked it out, Ukraine’s energy minister Svitlana Hrynchuk wrote on Facebook on Friday. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia used over 450 drones and 30 missiles in a country-wide attack targeting the energy sector. He reported power outages across nine regions and stressed the need for partners’ support with air defence systems and sanctions enforcement.
Russian drones and missiles damaged 12 apartment buildings in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing a seven-year-old boy and injuring four people, according to the regional governor. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said 12 people had been injured, with eight of them taken to hospital.
Twenty-three Ukrainian children and adolescents have been brought out of Russian-occupied areas of the country to territory under Kyiv’s control, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff said on Thursday. Andriy Yermak, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the rescue was carried out under the president’s “Bring Kids Back UA” programme aimed at bringing to safe areas children deported to Russia or confined to Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
French president Emmanuel Macron will convene a meeting of France’s mainstream political parties on Friday ahead of a self-imposed deadline to name a new prime minister, as the country’s central bank chief warned the political crisis was curbing growth. Macron is searching for his sixth prime minister in under two years and will need to find a personality whose appeal spans the centre-right to centre-left in order to steer a budget through a fragmented and fractured parliament.
Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado has won the Nobel peace prize. The committee commended Machado as a “brave and committed champion of peace” who “keeps the flame of democracy burning during a growing darkness”. Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, made the announcement at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
Spain on Friday rejected US president Donald Trump’s suggestion it should be expelled from Nato for failing to meet his ramped-up defence spending target. Spanish government sources said: “Spain is a committed and full member of Nato. And it meets its capacity targets as much as the United States.”
Police in Belgium have arrested three young adults suspected of plotting a jihadist-inspired attack using drone-mounted explosives, with the Belgian prime minister reported to be among the politicians targeted. The arrests were made in the northern city of Antwerp as part of an investigation into “attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group”, the federal prosecutor Ann Fransen told a news conference.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has accused the EU of “an obvious double standard” for maintaining a minerals deal with Rwanda to supply Europe’s hi-tech industries when it deployed a far-wider sanctions regime in response to the war in Ukraine. Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, the DRC foreign minister, urged the EU to levy much stronger sanctions against Rwanda, which has fuelled the conflict in eastern DRC, describing the bloc’s response to violations of DRC territory as “very timid”.
A Swedish appeal court on Friday acquitted one man of accessory to the murder in 2024 of the rapper known by the alias C. Gambino, Reuters reports.
The Swedish award-winning artist, who kept his identity hidden, was shot dead in a suspected gang-related attack in Gothenburg on the country’s west coast.
A lower court had found Hassan Rabeie, 22, Vide Atterstam, 20, and Fatjam Vardari, 21, guilty of accessory to murder.
It sentenced Rabeie to life imprisonment and the other two to 15 years and six months, and 12 years and six months, respectively.
The court of appeal for Western Sweden on Friday acquitted Vardari of the charge, while upholding the verdicts for the other two.
All three have denied all the charges against them.
Lisa O’Carroll is a Guardian senior staff correspondent who writes about international trade, post-Brexit EU affairs and Anglo-Irish affairs
Irregular migration dropped by 22% in the first nine months of 2025, the EU border enforcement agency, Frontex has said.
But the figures also see the scale of the issue confronting the UK government which has seen a 14% surge of small boats and dinghies loaded by people smugglers attempting to cross the English channel.
New figures show the west Africa route into the EU, largely to the Canary Islands, is down by almost 60% while the Western Balkans is down 47%.
Attempts to cross the Mediterranean, mainly to Italy and Greece, remains the busiest route with almost 51,000 attempting the route.
The Frontex figures also confirm the jump in attempts to cross into the UK from France, up 14% to 54,300.
This is 20,000 more than the number who made the crossing across the English channel, according to British data up to the end of September.
UK foreign minister Yvette Cooper on Thursday announced £10m ($13m) for solutions to tackle gangs transporting migrants through Europe at a conference in Northern Ireland with counterparts from the Western Balkans.
Over 34,000 people have arrived in the UK in small boats this year, with at least 27 people killed attempting the perilous journey in the same time, according to an AFP tally based on official data.
Updated
Spain on Friday rejected US president Donald Trump’s suggestion it should be expelled from Nato for failing to meet his ramped-up defence spending target, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Spanish government sources said:
Spain is a committed and full member of Nato. And it meets its capacity targets as much as the United States.
The US president suggested on Thursday the Nato alliance should weigh throwing Spain out of its membership ranks over a dispute about the western European nation’s lagging military spending.
Members of the US-backed security alliance agreed in June to sharply increase their military spending to 5% of gross domestic product, delivering on a major priority for Trump, who wants Europeans to spend more on their own defense.
But Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said at the time that he would not commit to the 5% target, calling it “incompatible with our welfare state and our world vision.”
Below is a video published by the Guardian showing power cuts that were triggered in districts across Ukraine’s capital by a ‘massive attack’ as Russia pummelled the city’s infrastructure.
The strikes cut off water and energy supplies while also triggering a fire in a high-rise apartment building. Nine people were injured.
Kremlin forces also hit the south-eastern region of Zaporizhzhia with at least seven overnight drone strikes, killing a seven-year-old and wounding at least three people, according to Ivan Fedorov, the head of the regional military administration.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has accused the EU of “an obvious double standard” for maintaining a minerals deal with Rwanda to supply Europe’s hi-tech industries when it deployed a far-wider sanctions regime in response to the war in Ukraine.
Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, the DRC foreign minister, urged the EU to levy much stronger sanctions against Rwanda, which has fuelled the conflict in eastern DRC, describing the bloc’s response to violations of DRC territory as “very timid”.
Referencing the EU’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she said: “It is an obvious double standard – I want to be constructive here – that makes us curious and inquisitive about understanding why the EU again struggles so much to take action.”
The DRC and Rwanda signed a peace deal in June, brokered by the US and Qatar, aiming to end the decades-old conflict, which escalated early this year when the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group seized swathes of DRC territory, including two key cities. But deadly attacks on civilians have continued and a deadline to reach a peace agreement was missed in August.
Last year a group of UN experts said up to 4,000 Rwandan troops were fighting alongside M23 and that the Rwandan military was in “de facto control of M23 operations”. Rwanda has long denied backing M23 and says its forces act in self-defence.
You can read Jennifer Rankin’s full piece here: DRC says EU’s minerals deal with Rwanda is ‘obvious double standard’
Power returns to Kyiv after Russian strikes
Power has been restored to 270,000 consumers in Kyiv after Russian overnight attacks knocked it out, Ukraine’s energy minister Svitlana Hrynchuk wrote on Facebook on Friday.
Kyiv residents heard blasts throughout the night and many woke up without power after a vast overnight air attack which targeted Ukraine’s energy system, Reuters reports.
Hrynchuk did not say how many consumers had been affected in total.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia used over 450 drones and 30 missiles in a country-wide attack targeting the energy sector.
He reported power outages across nine regions and stressed the need for partners’ support with air defence systems and sanctions enforcement.
Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado wins Nobel peace prize
Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado has won the Nobel peace prize.
The committee commended Machado as a “brave and committed champion of peace” who “keeps the flame of democracy burning during a growing darkness”.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, made the announcement at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
This year’s award committee has been under particular scrutiny after an intense public and private campaign by Donald Trump. The US president has been openly envious that four of his predecessors, including Barack Obama, received the award.
Trump’s outbursts have caused concern in Norway about the risk of retaliation if the 79-year-old did not get what is often considered the world’s most prestigious award.
Last year, the Japanese atomic bomb survivor movement Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the prize. This year, the committee had a total of 338 candidates to choose from, including 244 individuals and 94 organisations.
You can read the full piece from Anna Ehlebracht and Oliver Holmes here: Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado wins Nobel peace prize
Europe must quickly get its own reusable rocket launcher to catch up to billionaire Elon Musk’s dominant SpaceX, European Space Agency director Josef Aschbacher told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in an interview.
While the US company has an overwhelming lead in the booming space launch industry, a series of setbacks, including Russia’s withdrawal of its rockets, left Europe without an independent way to blast its missions into space.
That year-long hiatus ended with the first launch of Europe’s much-delayed Ariane 6 rocket in July 2024. But the system is not reusable, unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9 workhorse.
“We have to really catch up and make sure that we come to the market with a reusable launcher relatively fast,” Aschbacher said at AFP’s headquarters in Paris.
“We are on the right path” to getting this done, he added, ahead of the ESA’s ministerial council in the German city of Bremen next month.
Police in Belgium have arrested three young adults suspected of plotting a jihadist-inspired attack using drone-mounted explosives, with the Belgian prime minister reported to be among the politicians targeted.
The arrests were made in the northern city of Antwerp as part of an investigation into “attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group”, the federal prosecutor Ann Fransen told a news conference.
She said:
Certain elements indicate that the suspects intended to carry out a jihadist-inspired terrorist attack against political figures.
There are also indications that the suspects aimed to construct a drone capable of carrying a payload.
The prosecutor’s office declined to name the intended targets, but several Flemish media outlets reported that they included the prime minister, Bart De Wever, who was previously the mayor of Antwerp.
“Prime minister Bart, all our support goes out to you and your family. Thank you to the security services,” the defence minister, Theo Francken, said on social media.
You can read the full story here: Belgian PM reported to be among targets of ‘jihad-inspired’ drone plot
One in three doctors and nurses in Europe report suffering from depression or anxiety, a study published Friday by the European branch of the World Health Organization (WHO) said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
The rate is five times higher than that among the general population in Europe, the report said.
WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said in a statement.
The mental health crisis among our health workers is a health security crisis, threatening the integrity of our health systems.
More than one in 10 have thought about ending their lives or hurting themselves. This is an unacceptable burden on those who care for us.
Doctors and nurses who experience violence, work consistently long hours, and work in shifts (especially at night) are much more likely to be depressed and anxious and to have suicidal thoughts, the report said.
Here are some of the latest photos from Ukraine coming to us through the wires.
French president Emmanuel Macron will convene a meeting of France’s mainstream political parties on Friday ahead of a self-imposed deadline to name a new prime minister, as the country’s central bank chief warned the political crisis was curbing growth, Reuters reports.
Macron is searching for his sixth prime minister in under two years and will need to find a personality whose appeal spans the centre-right to centre-left in order to steer a budget through a fragmented and fractured parliament.
The president’s office said late on Wednesday that he would name his next prime minister within 48 hours.
The meeting – which does not include the far-right National Rally or the hard-left France Unbowed, two of the National Assembly’s largest political parties – is due to take place from 12.30pm British time.
The country’s central bank chief, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, forecast the political uncertainty would cost the economy 0.2 percentage points of gross domestic product.
Business sentiment was suffering but the economy was broadly fine, he said.
“Uncertainty is … the number one enemy of growth,” Villeroy told RTL radio.
Ukraine’s top general said Ukraine struck Russian territory 70 times last month.
Oleksandr Syrskyi wrote on Facebook:
We are destroying the production of fuels and lubricants, explosives, and other components of the Russian military-industrial complex in the aggressor country.
In particular, oil refining in Russia has been reduced by 21%.
Ukrainian capital plunged into darkness by 'massive' Russian attack
Kyiv was plunged into darkness early on Friday by what the air force called a “massive attack”, as Russia pummelled the capital’s infrastructure, cutting off water and energy supplies and triggering a fire in a high-rise apartment building, Reuters reports.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia used over 450 drones and 30 missiles in a country-wide attack targeting the energy sector.
He reported power outages across nine regions and stressed the need for partners’ support with air defence systems and sanctions enforcement.
In the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, drones and missiles damaged 12 apartment buildings, killing a seven-year-old boy and injuring four people, the regional governor said.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said 12 people had been injured, with eight of them taken to hospital. He said power cuts and disruptions to the water supply had hit districts on the east bank of the Dnipro river that runs through the city.
Pictures posted online showed apartments ablaze as firefighters moved into position. Fragments from downed drones also struck several parts of the city.
“The capital of the country is under an enemy ballistic missile attack and a massive attack by the enemy strike drones,” the Ukrainian air force said, urging people in Kyiv to remain in shelters.
The energy minister, Svitlana Grynchuk, said Russian forces were “inflicting a massive strike” on the grid.
“Energy experts are taking all necessary measures to minimise negative consequences,” she said on Facebook.
Kyiv plunged into darkness by ‘massive’ Russian attack targeting Ukraine energy sector
Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of Europe.
Kyiv was plunged into darkness early on Friday by what the air force called a “massive attack”, as Russia pummelled the capital’s infrastructure, cutting off water and energy supplies and triggering a fire in a high-rise apartment building.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia used over 450 drones and 30 missiles in a country-wide attack targeting the energy sector.
He reported power outages across nine regions and stressed the need for partners’ support with air defence systems and sanctions enforcement.
In the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, drones and missiles damaged 12 apartment buildings, killing a seven-year-old boy and injuring four people, the regional governor said.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said 12 people had been injured, with eight of them taken to hospital. He said power cuts and disruptions to the water supply had hit districts on the east bank of the Dnipro river that runs through the city.
Pictures posted online showed apartments ablaze as firefighters moved into position. Fragments from downed drones also struck several parts of the city.
“The capital of the country is under an enemy ballistic missile attack and a massive attack by the enemy strike drones,” the Ukrainian air force said, urging people in Kyiv to remain in shelters.
The energy minister, Svitlana Grynchuk, said Russian forces were “inflicting a massive strike” on the grid.
“Energy experts are taking all necessary measures to minimise negative consequences,” she said on Facebook.
In other developments:
Twenty-three Ukrainian children and adolescents have been brought out of Russian-occupied areas of the country to territory under Kyiv’s control, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff said on Thursday. Andriy Yermak, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the rescue was carried out under the president’s “Bring Kids Back UA” programme aimed at bringing to safe areas children deported to Russia or confined to Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog said on Thursday the process had started to restore external power to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south-eastern Ukraine, cut off from the electricity grid for more than two weeks. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the process had begun after consultation with authorities in Ukraine and Russia, who blame each other for the downing of the external lines.
Russia accused Ukraine on Thursday of rupturing a now defunct pipeline used to transport Russian ammonia into Ukraine for export, releasing toxic gas into the air. The incident took place near the frontline village of Rusin Yar in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Russia said.
French president Emmanuel Macron will convene a meeting of France’s mainstream political parties on Friday ahead of a self-imposed deadline to name a new prime minister, as the country’s central bank chief warned the political crisis was curbing growth. Macron is searching for his sixth prime minister in under two years and will need to find a personality whose appeal spans the centre-right to centre-left in order to steer a budget through a fragmented and fractured parliament.
Police in Belgium have arrested three young adults suspected of plotting a jihadist-inspired attack using drone-mounted explosives, with the Belgian prime minister reported to be among the politicians targeted. The arrests were made in the northern city of Antwerp as part of an investigation into “attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group”, the federal prosecutor Ann Fransen told a news conference.
A man has been found guilty on appeal of raping Gisèle Pelicot after she was drugged unconscious by her husband – and has had his prison sentence increased to 10 years. Husamettin Dogan, 44, an unemployed builder, who had contested his first conviction last year, faced a retrial this week at Nîmes court of appeal.
US president Donald Trump suggested on Thursday the Nato alliance should weigh throwing Spain out of its membership ranks over a dispute about the western European nation’s lagging military spending. Members of the US-backed security alliance agreed in June to sharply increase their military spending to 5% of gross domestic product, delivering on a major priority for Trump, who wants Europeans to spend more on their own defense.
Sweden will invest 3.5bn Swedish crowns ($367.11m) in more anti-drone systems, its defence minister said on Friday, citing a growing threat posed by aerial violations. A wave of drone sightings has rattled European aviation, sparking concerns about hybrid attacks potentially targeting Ukraine’s allies in Europe, though Russia has denied involvement.
Updated
