Russia-Ukraine war live: two drones shot down near Moscow, says Russia, in latest attack on capital | Ukraine

More on those secondhand Leopard tanks: a source with direct knowledge of the deal said that the tanks were bought by a “major German defence player”.

Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Tuesday evening that the buyer was arms maker Rheinmetall which planned to prepare most of them for export to Ukraine. The company and the German defence ministry did not comment.

The German-made Leopards were at the centre of a public spat earlier this year after Belgian defence minister Ludivine Dedonder said it considered buying the tanks but accused the firm of trying to make a “huge profit” from the sale. Versluys at the time denied that the Belgian government had approached him.

The clash underlined a predicament faced by western governments trying to find weapons for Ukraine after more than a year of intense warfare – arms they discarded as obsolete are now in high demand, and often owned by private companies.

“The fact that they leave our company proves that we asked for a fair market price and someone was more than happy to take them,” Versluys said in a post on LinkedIn on Tuesday, accompanied by a picture of tanks next to a bottle of Ukrainian vodka.

EU country buys 49 secondhand Leopard tanks for Ukraine, arms dealer says

Pjotr Sauer

Dozens of secondhand Leopard 1 tanks that once belonged to Belgium have been bought by a major European country for the Ukrainian army fighting Russia, according to the arms trader who sold them.

Freddy Versluys, CEO of the private defence company OIP Land Systems, told the Guardian that he sold 49 tanks to another European government, which he could not name due to a confidentiality clause. He said he also could not disclose the price. Versluys added it could be up to six months before they were on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Versluys previously bought 50 Leopard 1 tanks for €37,000 each (about £29,600) that the Belgian government decommissioned in 2014 as part of a wider trend among western countries of cutting defence spending.

In case you missed this last night: Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of targeting rescue workers during the attack on Pokrovsk.

Moscow struck residential buildings with two consecutive missiles, with Ukrainian officials saying that the first one was aimed at drawing rescue workers to the scene and the second one at wounding or killing them.

The strikes Monday evening in the downtown district of the city of Pokrovsk killed at least nine people, Zelenskiy said, including an emergency official. The number of injured climbed to 82, most of them police officers, emergency workers and soldiers who rushed to assist residents, Ukrainian officials said.

Emergency crews were still removing rubble on Tuesday. The Iskander missiles, which have an advanced guidance system that increases their accuracy, hit within 40 minutes of each other, according to Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

Until a series of drone attacks in recent months, Moscow, Russia’s capital, had not been a target during the conflict, AFP reports.

On July 30, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that “war” was coming to Russia, and in particular, to the country’s “symbolic centres and military bases”.

An office block in the capital’s main business district was recently struck twice within days by debris from a downed drone attack. Russia’s defence ministry said Thursday it had downed seven drones – also near Kaluga, which is less than 200 kilometres (124 miles) southwest of Moscow.

Two Ukrainian combat drones headed for Moscow were shot down, Russian officials said on Wednesday, the latest attack targeting the capital.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram, “Two combat drones’ attempt to fly into the city was recorded. Both were shot down by air defence.”

Emergency services were at the scene, he said, but he did not list any casualties.

He said one drone was downed in the Domodedovo area on the southern outskirts of the city, while the second was shot down in the Minsk highway area, west of the capital.

“Air defence destroyed two UAVs,” the Russia’s defence ministry said, adding there were no reported casualties or damage.

Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Helen Sullivan with the latest.

Our top story this morning: two Ukrainian combat drones headed for Moscow were shot down, Russian officials said on Wednesday.

The attempted attack comes a day after the death toll from strikes on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk rose to nine. The attack is also the latest in series of drone attacks near Moscow, after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that the war was “coming to Russia”.

“Two combat drones’ attempt to fly into the city was recorded. Both were shot down by air defence,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram.

He said one drone was downed in the Domodedovo area on the southern outskirts of the city, while the second was shot down in the Minsk highway area, west of the capital. Kyiv is yet to comment, but Ukraine rarely claims responsibility for attacks on Russia.

We’ll have more shortly.

Elsewhere meanwhile:

• Ukrainian officials on Tuesday accused the Kremlin’s forces of targeting rescue workers by hitting residential buildings with two consecutive missiles – the first one to draw crews to the scene and the second one to wound or kill them. The strikes on Monday evening in the downtown district of the city of Pokrovsk killed nine people and wounded more than 80 others, Zelenskiy said in his nightly address. According to Ukrainian authorities, one of those killed was an emergency official, and most of those wounded were police officers, emergency workers and soldiers who rushed to assist residents.

• Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko put the number of wounded at 81, including 39 civilians, 31 policemen, seven employees of the state emergency service and four military personnel. Two children were among those injured. Donetsk is one of the regions of Ukraine that Russia partially occupies and claimed to unilaterally annexe late in 2022.

• Ukrainian special services have foiled an attempt by Russian hackers to penetrate the Ukrainian armed forces’ combat information system, the SBU security service said on Tuesday. “As a result of complex measures, SBU exposed and blocked the illegal actions of Russian hackers who tried to penetrate Ukrainian military networks and organise intelligence gathering,” Reuters reported the SBU as saying.

• Roman Starovoyt, governor of Kursk in Russia, has claimed a Ukraine “kamikaze” drone fell at the Gornalsky St Nicholas monastery in the region, injuring a child.

• Zelenskiy said in a video published on Tuesday that Ukraine would fight back against Russia in the Black Sea to ensure its waters were not blockaded and it could import and export grain and other goods. The comments, published on the president’s website, come days after Ukrainian maritime drones packed with explosives damaged a Russian warship near a major Russian port and struck a Russian tanker.

• Reuters has reported that dozens of ships are backed up around critical Danube arteries close to Ukraine’s river gateways days after Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian ports. Shipping data showed at least 30 ships anchored around Musura Bay in the Black Sea, which leads into a channel that links up with Izmail further along the waterway.

• Britain has said it is targeting Vladimir Putin’s access to foreign military supplies by imposing 25 new sanctions on individuals and businesses. The foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said: “Today’s landmark sanctions will further diminish Russia’s arsenal and close the net on supply chains propping up Putin’s now-struggling defence industry. There is nowhere for those sustaining Russia’s military machine to hide.”

• The Georgian prime minister, Irakli Garibashvili, labelled Russia an “aggressor” as he marked 15 years since the two countries fought a war over a breakaway region. “We have known for a long time that Russia was an aggressor, we know that and the whole world knows that.”

• Putin signed a decree suspending Russia’s double taxation agreements with what it calls “unfriendly countries” – those that have imposed sanctions on Moscow – the state news agency RIA reported.

• Two men were injured and hospitalised after Russian shelling in Kozacha Lopan in Kharkiv region, said Oleh Synyehubov, the governor of the region.

• Interfax reported that a tanker hit in the Kerch strait by Ukrainian drones had a metal patch welded to its damaged hull and was ready to be towed to a shipyard.