Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia launches wave of attacks across Ukraine | Ukraine

Russia launched attacks against regions across Ukraine on Saturday morning using weapons including hypersonic missiles, according to the local authorities and the Ukrainian air force.

The air force warned that Russia had fired Kinzhal missiles, which move at several times the speed of sound, making them very difficult to shoot down.

Here are the regions that have been affected, courtesy of the Kyiv Independent:

• In the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine, the governor said that the attack had caused damage in an unspecified location but there were no casualties.

• In central Ukraine, a missile was shot down over Kremenchuk in the Poltava region. A building was damaged but no casualties were reported.

• In the Dnipropetrovsk region in south-east Ukraine, two cruise missiles were downed over the district of Kryvyi Rih.

• Explosions were also heard in the city of Kropyvnytskyi in the Kirovohrad region in central Ukraine, with no casualties reported.

• In the Khmelnytskyi region in the west of Ukraine, with local authorities reporting that no “critical infrastructure” or civilians affected.

• Air defence forces were also operating in the Rivne region in western Ukraine, with no casualties or damage reported.

• In Lviv, western Ukraine, there was an air raid alert from around 6.30 am to 8.25am – but the governor said air defence forces meant “rockets did not manage to enter the airspace” of the Lviv region.

It comes after Russian shelling on Friday killed two people in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.

Good morning, we are restarting the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has praised a security deal signed with Britain during a visit by prime minister Rishi Sunak as a history-making “model for our time”.

The deal, which guarantees that the UK will give “swift and sustained” help should Russia attack Ukraine again “gives us confidence now, while we defend ourselves from Russian aggression, and establishes our strong security positions throughout the period until Ukraine joins Nato”, Zelenskiy said in his nightly address.

During his visit to Kyiv on Friday, Sunak made a £2.5bn commitment to Ukraine’s defence, and pledged that the UK would not falter at a time when military aid from the US has stalled.

More on that soon. In other developments:

• The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said he would visit Kyiv in the next few days. Warsaw is one of Ukraine’s key allies in its war against Russia but relations between the two countries became tense last year, under the rule of Tusk’s predecessor, Mateusz Morawiecki.

• Zelenskiy said he was more positive now than he was last month that his country would secure new financial aid from the US. But there was no indication in Washington that congressional approval for an aid package proposed by the White House would be forthcoming anytime soon. “I am viewing this with more positivity than in December, I think we will [get it],” Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kyiv.

• Ukraine’s military spy chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said Kyiv’s attacks in Russian-annexed Crimea were set to intensify, adding that Moscow’s economy was proving surprisingly resilient despite sanctions. “In 2023, the first Ukrainian incursions took place in temporarily occupied Crimea,” Budanov, 38, said in an interview with French daily Le Monde published on Friday. “And this is just the beginning.”

• Ukraine’s ground forces commander told Reuters that Kyiv needed more military aircraft for its war effort, such as US A-10 attack jets to support infantry as well as planes that could fire long-range cruise missiles. “I would talk about A-10s as an option if they’ll be given to us … this is not a new machine, but a reliable one that has proven itself in many wars, and which has a wide array of weapons for destroying land targets to help the infantry,” Col-Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said.

• Russian shelling on Friday killed two people in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, while a drone attack by Kyiv in the Moscow-controlled east killed another two, officials said. The head of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said the Russian army used artillery, striking a street. A Ukrainian drone, meanwhile, killed two people and wounded six during an evacuation of injured people near the Russian-controlled city of Gorlivka, the Russian-backed mayor, Ivan Prikhodko, said.

• Russia labelled the exiled writer Boris Akunin, who has spoken out against Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, as a foreign agent. The Kremlin has intensified its crackdown on dissent since launching its offensive in Ukraine in February 2022 and targeted the arts, with books by authors critical of Moscow disappearing from bookshops. Akunin is the pen name of Georgian-born writer Grigory Chkhartishvili.

• Moldova’s pro-Russian separatist Transniestria region accused central authorities in the ex-Soviet state of training Ukrainian soldiers to launch attacks on the rebel area’s institutions and leaders. Moldova’s pro-European government, which denounces Russia’s war in Ukraine, immediately denied the allegation.

• The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, made a £2.5bn commitment to Ukraine’s defence on Friday during a visit to Kyiv, and pledged that the UK would not falter at a time when military aid from the US has stalled. Sunak met the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, embracing him warmly and addressed Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. The two leaders held talks and signed a new UK-Ukrainian security treaty. It guarantees that the UK will give “swift and sustained” help should Russia attack Ukraine again.