Ukraine-Russia war – live: Putin’s top air defence system ‘hit by drone’, as UK vows help to ‘finish the job’

Ukraine has made gains in the south, one of the country’s top generals has said.

General Oleksander Tarnavskyi said in a Telegram post that Ukraine forces had advanced in the Tavria sector.

Tarnavskyi, head of the southern group of forces, said his troops had conducted 1,198 assignments in the past 24 hours and that Russian forces had sustained losses of 261 men and a further 10 being taken prisoner.

Ukraine is claimed to have struck one of Vladimir Putin’s top air defence systems as Kyiv launched a barrage of dozens of attack drones on Russia’s territory overnight.

Moscow’s defence ministry claimed it had downed 31 drones in the Russian regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk.

But a Ukrainian intelligence source claimed to local outlets that their drones struck elements of an S-400 ‘Triumph’ anti-aircraft complex in Belgorod.

It would mark the first time Kyiv had struck an S-400 on Russian soil. Moscow was estimated to have had around 95 of these systems in its arsenal at the start of the year, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Shortly before hard-right Republicans made history by ousting Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Ukraine’s western allies, including the UK, the European Union and Nato, received a phone call from President Joe Biden.

Congress may be frozen but support for Ukraine is “ongoing”, Mr Biden told those on the line.

It was intended as a message of reassurance but, devoid of any detail, it spoke to an impending issue largely outside of the president’s control.

Hardline Republicans in the US, the powerhoue of the West, are threatening to demonstratively derail US aid to Ukraine for the first time since last February.

Rishi Sunak has emphasised the UK’s support for Ukraine in the conflict against Russia.

In his first Conservative conference speech as party leader, the Prime Minister told members in Manchester to applause: “If we give President Zelensky the tools, Ukraine will finish the job.”

More than two-thirds of current hosts under the Homes for Ukraine scheme said the rising cost of living is affecting their ability to provide support for those they have taken in, according to a survey.

Ukrainians who fled the war to seek refuge in the UK are also facing difficulties affording costs, as they try to move into private rented accommodation, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) findings suggested.

Meanwhile, almost a third (31%) of hosts reported bias or discrimination against Ukrainians from landlords or estate agencies, the survey revealed.

Just under 5,500 hosts under the scheme, which was set up in March 2022, were surveyed in August this year and many reported struggles with bills and food prices.

Ukraine’s navy said on Wednesday that 12 more cargo vessels were ready to enter a fledgling Black Sea shipping corridor on their way to Ukrainian ports, as Kyiv steps up a push to defy a de facto Russian blockade on its vital sea exports.

Russia, which has a much more powerful and bigger naval fleet in the Black Sea, pulled out of a deal in July that had allowed wartime Ukraine to safely ship food products out through what is traditionally its main export corridor.

Ukraine responded by setting up a temporary “humanitarian corridor” for cargo vessels, and several ships have departed from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports since.

“In total to enter the new corridor we have 12, and 10 to leave. That is as of now,” Navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk told an online media briefing on Wednesday.

Those figures appeared to indicate an increase in the amount of shipping traffic set to use the corridor, although Pletenchuk did not say when the vessels were expected to sail.

He said Ukraine’s defence forces were doing everything to ensure the safety of civilian ships in their territorial waters and that they were proceeding into the waters of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, all of which are NATO member countries.

Time is running out to fund Ukraine, the White House has said as it faces an uphill task in getting more US aid for Kyiv through Congress.

Disagreements in Congress over an American support package for Ukraine threatened to shut down the US government at the end of last week, with a last-minute spending bill finally passed only after funding for Kyiv was withdrawn.

“Time is not our friend. We have enough funding authorities to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs for a bit longer, but we need Congress to act to ensure that there is no disruption in our support,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday in a press briefing.

Former Russian TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who captured world attention when she burst into a news broadcast with a placard that read “Stop the war” and “They’re lying to you”, was sentenced in absentia on Wednesday to eight and half years in jail.

Ovsyannikova was fined for her original protest, less than three weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, 2022, in what it called a “special military operation”.

But she later faced criminal prosecution for “spreading knowingly false information about the Russian Armed Forces” in connection with a July 2022 protest when she stood on a river embankment opposite the Kremlin and held up a poster calling President Vladimir Putin a murderer and his soldiers fascists.

“How many more children must die before you will stop?” the poster read.

Ovsyannikova, 45, fled Russia with her daughter for an unspecified European country a year ago after escaping from house arrest, according to her lawyer, saying she had no case to answer.

The case against her was brought under laws passed soon after Russia’s invasion that made it a crime to “discredit” the armed forces or spread false information about them.

Ukraine trained its Neptune missiles on Russian targets in the illegally-occupied Crimean peninsula on Tuesday in a fresh attack, according to reports.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said in an update that a Ukrainian Neptune missile was shot down over the northwestern part of the Black Sea off the coast of the Crimean peninsula. The attack was carried out around 8.30pm local time.

A Ukrainian drone also targeted Russia’s Black Sea port city of Sevastopol.

Debris from the drone landed on the roof of an apartment building but there were no injuries, said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russia-appointed governor of Sevastopol.

Russian emergency services were determining how to remove explosive materials from the site, Mr Razvozhayev said.