Ukraine-Russia warfare newest: Child killed in Dnipro assault earlier than Trump crew meets in Paris to debate ceasefire

US secretary of state Marco Rubio has arrived in Paris for what Washington had billed as talks with French officials on ending the war in Ukraine.

Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff – who has met with Vladimir Putin multiple times in recent months – is also due to attend the talks, but was not seen touching down alongside Mr Rubio in the French capital.

A delegation from Kyiv has also announced it will be visiting Paris on Thursday for talks with US, French, British and German officials. It did not specify whether Mr Rubio and Mr Witkoff were expected to attend those meetings.

Top Ukrainian officials have flown to Paris, where Europeans are assembling to plead Kyiv’s case to US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff.

The arrival of a Ukrainian delegation in Paris was not previously announced ahead of what Washington had described as planned talks between Mr Rubio, Mr Witkoff and French officials.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said his delegation – which also included Ukraine’s foreign minister and defence minister – would meet a US delegation as well as French, British and German officials, and would work on “important issues for the security of Ukraine and the whole of Europe”.

Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said: “The parties will discuss ways to achieve a complete ceasefire, the involvement of a multinational military contingent to guarantee sustainable peace, further development of Ukraine’s security architecture and ensuring the security of our country.”

Ukraine has inflicted 1,230 casualties upon Vladimir Putin’s forces in the past 24 hours, while also damaging 16 tanks, 54 armoured vehicles and 65 artillery systems, Kyiv’s military has said.

In its daily morning update, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces reported 125 combat clashes along the frontline over the previous day, with the heaviest fighting situated in the direction of the Donetsk city of Pokrovsk – which has been the key target of Russia’s offensive efforts for months.

According to Ukraine’s military, Russia carried out 94 air strikes, deployed more than 2,750 kamikaze drones and fired more than 6,600 artillery shells over the same period.

British troops have successfully taken down multiple drones in a groundbreaking trial of a new directed energy weapon, marking a significant advancement in counter-drone technology.

The exercise, conducted at a testing facility in west Wales, represents the largest counter-drone swarm operation undertaken by the British Army, according to the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

This innovative weapon, developed within the UK, utilises invisible radio waves to disrupt and disable drone swarms, offering a potentially game-changing defence against increasingly sophisticated aerial threats. Further details about the technology remain scarce due to security concerns.

The weapon system demonstrator is a type of Radiofrequency Directed Energy Weapon (RF DEW) and has “proven capable of neutralising multiple targets simultaneously with near-instant effect”, the MoD said.

Claudia Savage reports:

The number of people injured in the Russian drone attack on Dnipro has risen to 31, including 10 who are still in hospital, while three people – including a child – have been killed, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk has said.

Serhiy Lysak said people were clearing the rubble together on Thursday after their homes in a high-rise building were destroyed in the strike.

“Someone remembers how this building was built many decades ago, entire generations grew up here. A few steps away is a playground, where, along with toys and swings, there are cars destroyed by fire. And there is also rubble and blood,” Mr Lysak wrote on Telegram.

Warning that there are “many such locations around the city”, he added: “The enemy has once again committed terrible terror against local residents.”

Vladimir Putin has drawn a parallel between Elon Musk and a key figure in the Soviet space race, Sergei Korolev, praising the SpaceX founder as a visionary.

Speaking on Russia’s space policy at a student meeting, Putin reportedly described Musk, a key adviser of US president Donald Trump, as “absolutely crazy about Mars”, according to state news agency Tass.

Mr Putin reportedly invoked the legacy of Korolev, the engineer behind Yuri Gagarin’s historic 1961 spaceflight, to highlight the rarity of people like Musk.

Tass quoted Mr Putin as saying: “Such people rarely appear in the human population, charged with a certain idea. Even though it may seem incredible to me today, after a time such ideas are often realised.”

Felix Light has the full report:

A child is among three people who have been killed along with 30 others who were injured in a Russian drone attack on Dnipro, Ukrainian officials have said.

Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk region, said that 30 people had been wounded, including five children. Sixteen people were being treated in hospital.

Mayor Borys Filatov said one strike came within 100 metres of the municipal offices. He also said at least 15 homes had been damaged, as well as a student residence, an educational institution and a food processing plant.

Pictures posted online showed a large blaze and firefighters working at the scene well into the night, as well as gutted vehicles and buildings with smashed windows and damaged facades.

Ukraine’s foreign minister and defence minister have arrived in Paris to meet US and European allies, the head of Ukrainian president’s office, who is also a part of the delegation, said this morning.

“We are working on important issues for the security of Ukraine and the whole of Europe,” Andriy Yermak said about the meetings planned with representatives from the US, France, Germany and Britain.

Ukraine has targeted Russia’s town of Shuya in an overnight attack for the second night in a row, officials in Moscow said.

In a statement posted on Telegram, the authorities in Russia’s Ivanovo region, which is east of Moscow, said that Ukrainian drones had attacked the town of Shuya, but that no casualties or damage had been inflicted.

Shuya, which is around 1,150km (715 miles) from the Ukrainian border, hosts the base of a Russian missile brigade that Ukraine has blamed for a strike on the city of Sumy on Sunday that killed at least 35 people.

Russian Telegram channels were circulating videos that appeared to show the base being struck, and at least one fire burning on its premises.

In total, Russian air defence systems destroyed or intercepted 71 Ukrainian drones over six Russian regions overnight, Russia’s defence ministry said.

Polish president Andrzej Duda has responded to Russia’s latest threats towards Warsaw and the Baltic nations, calling it “bloodythirsty imperialism”.

“Russia, which is behaving aggressively towards Nato and implementing its brutal and bloodthirsty imperialism, has been attacking Ukraine for three years,” Mr Duda said yesterday.

His comments were in response to Russia’s intelligence chief, who threatened Poland and the Baltic states saying they will be the “first to suffer” in a direct fight between Nato and Russia.

Russia’s foreign intelligence service director Sergey Naryshkin said that any Nato aggression against Russia or Belarus would have damaging consequences for Poland and the Baltic countries – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Mr Duda described the threats by Mr Naryshkin as “classic Russian misleading disinformation.”

Mr Duda said: “Everything Nato does is a response to Russian aggression… Nato has never attacked anyone and does not attack, it is an alliance that exclusively supports security.”