Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia and Ukraine both report thwarting drone strikes; Zelenskiy calls for more air defences | Ukraine

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy says his country needs more air defences to protect its grain export routes as well as regions bordering Russia.

“There is a deficit of air defence – that is no secret,” Zelenskiy said at the Grain from Ukraine summit on food security in Kyiv, which was attended by senior officials from European countries, including Swiss president Alain Berset and Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Simonyte.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine would be supplied by its foreign partners with vessels to accompany convoys of cargo ships from Ukraine’s ports to guarantee their security. “I have agreements with several countries about powerful accompaniment of convoys by Ukrainians, but using [foreign] equipment,” he said.

Zelenskiy was speaking after Russia attacked Ukraine with 75 drones overnight, the biggest drone assault of the war. The joint press conference of the three leaders was cut short by another air raid siren.

Separately, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen pledged support in a letter to Zelenskiy that she shared on social media platform X, saying the Commission would make available 50m euros for “quick repairs and upgrades of infrastructure in Ukraine’s ports.”

Zelenskiy said Kyiv hoped to solve its air defence shortage through new supplies from partners and increasing its own production capacity, something on which he said there had been progress.

Ukraine, a major exporter of grain, has been exporting grain via unilateral corridors through the Black Sea, after Russia withdrew in July from a UN-brokered deal to allow grain ships through its blockade.

Russia’s defence ministry says it has thwarted a major Ukrainian drone strike with at least 20 drones shot down over its regions, including Moscow. One person was injured in the city of Tula when an intercepted drone hit an apartment building, the region’s governor Alexei Dyumin said.

Overnight, Ukraine’s military also reported destroying eight of nine attack drones launched by Russia. There were no immediate reports of damage.

More details shortly, here are some other key developments:

• Russia sent waves of kamikaze drones into Ukraine in what Kyiv claimed Saturday was the most intensive drone attack since the start of the war. Five people were wounded by falling debris, including an 11-year-old child, the mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, said. Several buildings, including a kindergarten, were damaged and about 17,000 people in the Kyiv region were left without electricity. Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 74 of the 75 drones launched in the attack.

• The former Russian prime minister turned Kremlin critic Mikhail Kasyanov has been added to a list of “foreign agents”, Russia’s justice ministry has announced. Kasyanov who served as prime minister for the first four years of Putin’s administration, now appears in the justice ministry’s register of foreign agents, a term reminiscent of the Soviet-era “enemy of the people”. He was sacked in February 2004 and he went into opposition to the Kremlin. In 2022, Kasyanov left the country and has criticised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• Switzerland’s president, Alain Berset was in Kyiv and paid homage to the victims of the Holodomor famine that he said was “provoked by Soviet leaders”. Berset met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to discuss “humanitarian demining, the use of frozen profits from the assets of the aggressor country and the peace formula”, according to Zelenskiy. Latvia’s president, Edgars Rinkēvičs, was also in Ukraine and with met the country’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal to discuss the progress of Ukraine’s integration into the EU.

• The UK Ministry of Defence reported that Russia’s Black Sea fleet is facing issues reloading its vessels with cruise missiles. Russia will, the MoD said, need to overcome such issues “in time for maritime cruise missiles to be included in any winter campaign of strikes against Ukraine”.

• Ukraine needs more air defences to protect its grain export routes as well as regions bordering Russia, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said as he addressed an international summit on food security in Kyiv. “There is a deficit of air defence – that is no secret,” Zelenskiy told the Grain from Ukraine summit, which was attended by senior officials from European countries, including Swiss president Alain Berset and Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Simonyte. Zelenskiy said Ukraine would be supplied by its foreign partners with vessels to accompany convoys of cargo ships from Ukraine’s ports to guarantee their security.

• A Ukrainian soldier who was posthumously awarded a medal after a widely shared video showed him declaring “Glory to Ukraine” before apparently being shot dead, was commemorated with a statue in his northern home town. The video shared in March showed a man the military later named as Oleksandr Matsievskiy, a sniper with a unit from the region of Chernihiv, saying “Slava Ukraini”, a phrase more than a century old that has become a popular expression of resistance to Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Standing smoking a cigarette in a wooded area, carrying no visible weaponry, Matsievskiy is then seen slumping to the ground, apparently struck repeatedly by unseen shooters. Kyiv blamed “brutal and brazen” Russians for his death.