Ukraine yesterday mourned 18 people, including nine children, killed in a Russian ballistic missile strike on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home city of Kryvyi Rig, as the region’s governor said it was “the kind of pain you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy”.

Russia’s defence ministry yesterday said Ukraine had increased its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, hitting targets 14 times in the last 24 hours, despite a US-brokered moratorium.

A Russian ballistic missile strike on Volodymyr Zelensky’s home city of Kryvyi Rig killed 14 people yesterday, including six children, the Ukrainian leader said.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “promises are hollow” on any eventual ceasefire with Ukraine, as Kyiv’s allies met in Paris for a summit.

A military correspondent from Russia’s main state TV channel, Channel One, was killed by a mine on the border with Ukraine earlier, her employer said yesterday.

The United States yesterday reached deals with Ukraine and Russia on a truce in the Black Sea and a pause in attacks on energy facilities, with Washington also pledging to push for the lifting of some financial sanctions against Moscow.

Russian attacks killed a family of three late on Friday in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia and four more people in the country’s north and east, officials said. 

Russia and Ukraine yesterday accused each other of blowing up a Russian gas pumping station in a border area where Ukrainian troops have been retreating, amid talks over a proposed US-backed moratorium on attacks on energy infrastructure.

UK premier Keir Starmer yesterday said the “ball was in Russia’s court” and that President Vladimir Putin would “sooner or later” have to “come to the table,” after a virtual summit to drum up support for a coalition willing to protect any eventual ceasefire in Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin has called for beleaguered Ukrainian troops in the Russian region of Kursk to “surrender” as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russian leader of seeking to sabotage a ceasefire initiative.

US President Donald Trump urged Putin to spare the lives of the Ukrainian troops

Vladimir Putin has said he has many questions about the proposed US-brokered ceasefire with Ukraine and appeared to set out a series of sweeping conditions that would need to be met before Russia would agree to such a truce.

Ukraine said talks with the United States in Saudi Arabia began “very constructively” yesterday, with a partial ceasefire with Russia on the table hours after Kyiv conducted its largest drone attack on Moscow in three years of war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday ahead of talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia that Ukraine wants peace and Russia is the “only reason” that the war has dragged on.

Ukraine said yesterday that Russia launched over one hundred drones overnight, targeting the capital and several regions at a crucial point in the war as Washington has frozen aid supplies.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin “has no interest in peace”, the European Union’s foreign policy chief said yesterday, after overnight strikes by Moscow’s troops killed 14 people in Ukraine.

Russia launched a “massive” drone and missile attack on Ukrainian energy facilities early yesterday, just days after President Volodymyr Zelensky and European allies proposed that Moscow and Kyiv halt strikes on critical infrastructure.

A resident of Krasnodar, southwest Russia, has been sentenced to 15 years for passing information on the Russian Black Sea Fleet to Ukrainian intelligence, RIA Novosti news agency said yesterday.

European leaders yesterday said they would stand by Ukraine and spend more on defence in a world upended by Donald Trump’s reversal of US policies.

In an address to the nation, Macron said that the French were "legitimately worried" about the start of a "new era" after Trump began his second stint in the White House by reversing US policy on Ukraine and risking a historic rupture with Europe