Ukraine-Russia war – live: Kremlin warns of ‘grave mistake’ as Kyiv fires American-supplied ATACMS missiles

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky met with Romanian prime minister Marcel Ciolacu in Kyiv to discuss defence assistance and cooperation in grain transit.

Russian attacks overnight and on Wednesday killed at least seven civilians in Ukraine and damaged the power grid in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said.

Four civilians were killed in a morning missile strike on a residential building in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, and a 31-year-old woman was killed in an attack on the village of Obukhivka in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, they said.

A man and a woman were also killed in an overnight attack on the southern region of Kherson, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he discussed figuring out ways to strengthen his country’s air defence and naval capabilities during a phone call with Emmanuel Macron.

The two also discussed the Black Sea grain corridor, as well as the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza.

Russia’s Black Sea fleet repelled an aerial attack today, according to the governor of Sevastopol, the fleet’s home on the Crimean peninsula.

“Rescuers have already left for the scene,” Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram.

“Information about infrastructure damage is being clarified.”

The images of EU member state Hungary’s prime minister shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin were “very, very unpleasant” and defied logic given Budapest’s past history with Moscow, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said on Wednesday,

Hungary maintains closer ties with Russia than other European Union states, and is seen as the key potential opponent to a decision due in December on whether to open EU accession talks with Ukraine, which would require the unanimous backing of the bloc’s 27 members.

With great pomp, Viktor Orban and Putin held talks in China on Tuesday. Broadcast on Russian television, Orban told Putin that he had never wanted to oppose Moscow and is trying to salvage bilateral contacts.

“It was very, very unpleasant to see that,” Kallas, one of Ukraine’s staunchest defenders, told Reuters in an interview in Paris. “How can you shake a criminal’s hand, who has waged the war of aggression, especially coming from a country that has a history like Hungary has?”

Putin said earlier this month he was aware of calls for Russia to resume nuclear testing but was not ready to say whether Moscow should do so or not.

Back in February, he said Russia must “make everything ready” to conduct a test in case Washington did so. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Russia’s testing ground in the remote northern archipelago of Novaya Zemlya in August.

CNN published satellite images last month showing Russia, the United States and China have all built new facilities at their nuclear test sites in recent years.

Since he invaded Ukraine last year, Putin has repeatedly reminded the West of Russia’s nuclear might.

On Wednesday state TV showed rare footage of him during a visit to Beijing being accompanied by naval officers carrying the so-called nuclear briefcase that can be used to order a nuclear strike.

Russia says it will not resume atomic testing unless Washington does, but arms control experts are concerned it may be inching towards a test that the West would perceive as a Russian nuclear escalation amid the Ukraine war.

They say a test by either Russia or the United States could prompt the other to do the same, and China, India and Pakistan might then follow, triggering a new global arms race. All are currently observing test moratoriums, and only North Korea has conducted a test involving a nuclear explosion this century.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to North Korea comes after their leader Kim Jong Un traveled to Russia in September, as the two countries build a closer relationship.

The White House said on Friday that North Korea has delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia for its ongoing war in Ukraine. Speculation about a possible North Korean plan to refill Russian munition stores drained by its protracted war with Ukraine flared during Kim’s visit to Russia. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. believes Kim is seeking sophisticated Russian weapons technologies in return for the munitions to boost North Korea’s military and nuclear program. Kim called last month for an exponential increase in production of nuclear weapons and for his country to play a larger role in a coalition of nations confronting the United States in a “new Cold War,” North Korean state media said.