Ukraine-Russia conflict newest: Putin’s forces hit flats in Kyiv with in a single day drone assault, officers say

A drone attack killed one person in a car in Russia’s Rostov region, the acting governor of the southern Russian region said this morning.

“A car caught fire due to a drone attack,” acting governor Yuri Slyusar said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

“A person in the car was killed.”

Some £25bn worth of Russian assets have been frozen by the UK government since the start of the Ukraine war, newly-released figures have revealed.

A report released by the Treasury on Friday revealed the total, which accounts for all assets that have been sanctioned by the UK since February 2022 when the invasion of Ukraine began.

Some 2,001 individuals and entities have been sanctioned under the regime as of March 2024, according to the Treasury.

Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have both insisted that Ukraine’s forces in Kursk are surrounded by Russian troops and are in imminent danger, but U.S. intelligence reports have contradicted those claims.

A trio of U.S. and European officials familiar with intelligence details of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine told Reuters that the situation on the ground does not reflect the comments made by Trump and Putin.

One of the U.S. officials also said that the White House was briefed on the actual situation in Ukraine, so it’a unclear why Trump has and continues to claim that Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region are surrounded.

Read the full report:

As Donald Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff has also emerged at the forefront of negotiations with Russia over its war in Ukraine – from a perch that did not require Senate confirmation.

Witkoff, who runs a real estate development and investment firm, is a longtime friend and golf partner of Trump. He played a less visible role during Trump’s first term, serving on the board of trustees for the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Witkoff first met Trump in the 1980s, when he worked for a real estate law firm that handled a deal for Trump, himself a real estate developer, according to testimony Witkoff gave in the president’s civil fraud trial in 2023.

Witkoff testified that a few years later, he ran into Trump at a deli. Trump didn’t have money with him and asked Witkoff to order him a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich. Years later when they met again, Trump remembered the sandwich and the two became friends, Witkoff said.

He’s been more than a friend. Witkoff has donated millions to Trump’s political causes over the years. He also partnered with Trump on the president’s family cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial.

Michelle L Price and Aamer Madhani have more in this report:

Russia has launched an overnight drone attack on Kyiv, hitting apartment buildings and sparking several fires throughout Ukraine’s capital, officials have said.

Emergency services were dispatched to Kyiv’s historic Podil district after drones hit two high-rise apartment buildings there and started fires, said Timur Tkachenko, the head of the capital’s military administration.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged people to stay in shelters, but said there were no immediate reports of injuries from the attacks that also sparked fires in at least two other districts of the capital. Kyiv, its surrounding region and the eastern half of Ukraine were under air raid alerts on Saturday night.

Reuters staff reported hearing several blasts in what sounded like air defence units in operation.

Moldovan authorities have issued an international wanted notice for a missing pro-Russian member of parliament, who disappeared the day he was handed a 12-year jail sentence on corruption charges.

A second pro-Russian parliamentarian, due to be sentenced next week, has also disappeared, officials said.

Both are associates of Ilan Shor, a fugitive business magnate also jailed for his part in a mass fraud scheme who now leads a political party from exile in Moscow. Moldova’s pro-European government accuses him of trying to destabilise Chisinau.

The warrant for politician Alexandr Nesterovschi was issued late on Friday and interior minister Daniela Misail-Nichitin said attempts to locate him had failed. Authorities in neighbouring Ukraine and Romania had found no trace of him. Ms Misail-Nichitin said police had considered whether Nesterovschi, who was granted Russian citizenship as his sentence was being announced, was hiding in the Russian embassy, but that had proved to be untrue.

Mr Nesterovschi was accused of accepting money from a criminal group to finance the activities of Shor’s “Victory” bloc. Politician Irina Lozovan, awaiting sentencing on similar charges, has also disappeared.

Shor was sentenced to 15 years in prison two years ago in connection with the disappearance of $1bn from the banking system in Moldova’s “theft of the century” in 2014-15. He fled initially to Israel then to Moscow, now has Russian citizenship and has evaded all attempts to extradite him.

Moldovan courts have banned political parties linked to Shor, who has organised noisy anti-government protests in the capital.

With Donald Trump floating the idea of taking control of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, my colleague Tom Watling has this report on the location and details of the facilities in the US president’s sights:

Ukraine’s military have reported 70 combat clashes along the frontline so far on Saturday as of 4pm local time.

The heaviest fighting was once again reported in the direction of Pokrovsk, the key Donetsk city which has for months been central in Vladimir Putin’s sights – an axis of fighting in which the casualty rate is believed to be particularly high since fighting intensified there last year.

The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in their update on Saturday afternoon that Russia’s forces had also launched artillery attacks in Sumy, Chernihiv and Karkhiv, with fighting ongoing in the latter region, near the settlement of Vovchansk.