Lithuania said two Russian planes entered its airspace on Thursday: a Sukhoi SU-30 fighter and an IL-78 tanker flying from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. In response, Nato scrambled two Typhoon Eurofighters from its air patrol mission in the Baltic. The Russian planes went 700 metres into Lithuanian airspace before leaving after 18 seconds, probably during aerial refuelling training, said the Lithuanian military. The foreign ministry in Vilnius said it had summoned the charge d’affaires from the Russian embassy and issued a “strong protest”. Russia’s defence ministry denied the incursion had taken place. In September, three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets lingered for 12 minutes in Estonian airspace, prompting protests at the UN security council and a warning from the Nato council.
Two Ukrainian journalists were killed by a high-powered Russian drone in the eastern city of Kramatorsk on Thursday in an attack described by Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman as a war crime. Olena Hubanova and Yevhen Karmazin from Ukraine’s state-funded Freedom television channel, were hit by a Lancet drone while in their car at a petrol station, said Vadym Filashkin, the Donetsk region governor. Freedom, which broadcasts in Russian, also confirmed their deaths. The general prosecutor’s office said a colleague of the two journalists had also been wounded and that it had opened a war crime investigation. It posted a photo of a destroyed red car and an image of two flak jackets marked “press” in the boot. Lancets are usually reserved for attacks on tanks and armoured vehicles. Last week, a correspondent for Russia’s RIA news agency was killed and another wounded in Zaporizhzhia in what RIA said was a Ukrainian drone strike.
Dan Sabbagh and Artem Mazhulin write that an attempt by Russia to connect the illegally occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the Russian grid in time for Vladimir Putin’s birthday was foiled by Ukrainian forces operating behind enemy lines. Ukrainian partisans attacked substations in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, damaging a new high-voltage connection from the plant to the Russian grid, according to sources. This forced Russian engineers to restore the original power line from Ukraine to power the cooling systems and prevent a radioactive meltdown. The cooling systems had been running on last-resort diesel backup generators after, according to Ukraine and independent experts, Russia deliberately damaged the Ukrainian line to try to justify transfer to the Russian grid. The International Atomic Energy Agency stepped in to insist that external power be restored immediately.
Ukraine’s forces struck Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery, the general staff of the Ukrainian military said. The attack caused a fire at the plant critical for Russian military supplies, the general staff said, adding that Ukrainian drones also hit an ammunition depot in Belgorod region. The reports could not be independently verified.
Keir Starmer will urge European leaders to boost long-range missile supplies to Kyiv at a London summit on Friday of the “coalition of the willing” that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is set to attend. Starmer will announce the acceleration of air defence missile manufacturing with the aim of supplying Ukraine with more than 5,000 of them. About 140 “lightweight-multirole missiles” will be delivered to Ukraine this winter. The UK and France already supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow and Scalp long-range missiles, and Ukraine produces its own Flamingo and Neptune cruise missiles.
Zelenskyy, urged EU leaders to agree as soon as possible on a plan to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine. A hoped-for decision was postponed on Thursday and the language around the proposal watered down after opposition from Belgium, which hosts most of the Russian central bank funds immobilised in the EU at the Brussels-based institution Euroclear. Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, said: “We want guarantees if the money has to be paid back that every member state will chip in. The consequences cannot only be for Belgium.”
EU leaders agreed at their summit in Brussels on Thursday to merely to ask the European Commission to present “options for financial support” for Ukraine, without direct reference to Russian frozen assets. Jennifer Rankin writes that Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, insisted there had been an agreement on the principle. “We agreed on the what – that is the reparation loan – and we have to work on the how – how we make it possible.” Zelenskyy told EU leaders that “anyone who delays this decision is not only limiting our defence but also slowing down your own progress”, promising that Ukraine would spend a lot of money buying European weapons. “The time to act on Russian assets is now and I urge for your full support.”
Finland will buy US weapons for Ukraine for €100m (£86m), the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat (HS) reported on Thursday, citing the prime minister, Petteri Orpo.
Moscow handed over the bodies of 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers and received 31 bodies of its own fallen soldiers in return, authorities on both sides reported on Thursday.
