Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskyy says Ukraine ‘victory plan’ depends on decisions by allies this year – as it happened

• Russia has charged four of its soldiers serving in occupied Ukraine with torturing a US citizen living in Russian-held Donetsk who had fought with pro-Moscow forces since 2014. It is rare instance for Russia to accuse active soldiers in Ukraine – who are glorified at home – of committing crimes, AFP reported. The authorities did not say what had motivated the soldiers to kill Russell Bentley, who regularly appeared on pro-Kremlin social media channels, backing Moscow’s full-scale military offensive in Ukraine.

• Authorities in Ukraine advised residents in the capital Kyiv to stay indoors Friday as air pollution, partly caused by fires in the region, blanketed the city. Ukraine’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources said the pollution was a result of the burning of peatlands and other wildfires in the region combined with autumn temperature fluctuations, AP reported.

• Ukraine has banned use of the Telegram messaging app on official devices used by state officials, military personnel and critical workers because it believes its enemy Russia can spy on both messages and users, a top security body said on Friday. The National Security and Defence Council announced the restrictions after Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, presented the Council with evidence of Russian special services’ ability to snoop on the platform, it said in a statement.

• Nato concluded a major anti-drone exercise this week, with Ukraine taking part for the first time as the western alliance seeks to learn urgently from the rapid development and widespread use of unmanned systems in the war there. The drills at a Dutch military base, involving more than 20 countries and 50 companies, tested cutting-edge systems to detect and counter drones and assessed how they work together, Reuters reported.

• Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s prime minister, said that “using immobilised Russian Central Bank assets for non-repayable assistance underscores the EU’s unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and resilience amid Russia’s aggression.” “Russia must and will pay for their atrocities,” he added.

• Italy is about to send another Samp-T anti-missile system to Ukraine, foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday, underlining the need, however, to avoid entering war with Russia. “We are sending a new Samp-T (anti-missile system) to protect hospitals, schools, universities … for this country that was attacked by Russia,” Tajani told Radio 24.

• The EU will grant a loan of up to 35 billion euros ($39.06bn) to Ukraine to help the country stuck in a grinding war with Russia, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday. The loan, which was announced while the bloc’s Commission chief is on a visit to Kyiv, is part of a wider plan among G7 nations to raise funds using proceeds from Russian assets frozen to sanction the country for invading its neighbour.

• Ukraine’s “victory plan” in the war against Russia depends on quick decisions being taken by allies this year, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday during a visit by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Zelenskyy told a joint press conference with von der Leyen that Ukraine planned to use a proposed multi-billion dollar European Union loan for air defence, energy and domestic weapons purchases.

• Russia said on Friday that the West should stop supplying weapons to Ukraine and sponsoring “terrorist activity” if it wanted to send a signal it was serious about seeking an end to the war. Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters that a peace plan put forward by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had nothing to do with settling the conflict.

• Ukraine’s forces destroyed 61 out of 70 Russian attack drones and one out of four missiles launched overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Friday. “The air defence system operated in Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Sumy, Poltava, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Khmelnytsky, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Kherson regions,” it said on the Telegram messenger.

• The United States should take into account Moscow’s warnings on risks of further escalation around the conflict in Ukraine, Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti cited Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Friday. Commenting on the possibility of a meeting between Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and US state secretary Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he said there will not be any meeting as the sides have “nothing to talk about”.

• Russia’s military command had anticipated Ukraine’s incursion into its Kursk region and had been making plans to prevent it for several months, according to a cache of documents that the Ukrainian army said it had seized from abandoned Russian positions in the region. The disclosure makes the disarray among Russian forces after Ukraine’s attack in early August all the more embarrassing. The documents, shared with the Guardian, also reveal Russian concerns about morale in the ranks in Kursk, which intensified after the suicide of a soldier at the front who had reportedly been in a “prolonged state of depression due to his service in the Russian army”.

• Ukraine’s offensive into the Russian border region of Kursk diverted about 40,000 Russian troops away from the frontline, Zelenskyy said on Thursday. Kyiv launched its Kursk offensive on 6 August in a bid to pull Moscow’s forces away from eastern Ukraine, where the Russian army has captured a string of villages in recent months.

That’s all from the Ukraine live blog for today. Thanks for following along.

Russia has charged four of its soldiers serving in occupied Ukraine with torturing a US citizen living in Russian-held Donetsk who had fought with pro-Moscow forces since 2014.

It is rare instance for Russia to accuse active soldiers in Ukraine – who are glorified at home – of committing crimes, AFP reported. The authorities did not say what had motivated the soldiers to kill Russell Bentley, who regularly appeared on pro-Kremlin social media channels, backing Moscow’s full-scale military offensive in Ukraine.

Known as “Texas”, 64-year-old Bentley was declared dead in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk in April. His wife said at the time he had been abducted and killed by Russian troops.

The Russian Investigative Committee said on Friday it had “established all the persons involved in the death of Russell Bentley and the circumstances of the offences committed”. It named the four soldiers involved as Vladislav Agaltsev, Vladimir Bazhin, Andrei Iordanov and Vitaly Vansyatsky.

They are accused of “using physical violence and torture, causing the death of a victim by negligence, as well as the concealment of a particularly serious crime by moving the remains of the deceased to another place”, the committee said.

According to the investigation, the soldiers tortured and killed Bentley in Donetsk on 8 April. Two of them then blew up a military car containing his body, before another moved the remains to cover up the crime, investigators said.

Ukraine has banned use of the Telegram messaging app on official devices used by state officials, military personnel and critical workers because it believes its enemy Russia can spy on both messages and users, a top security body said on Friday.

The National Security and Defence Council announced the restrictions after Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, presented the Council with evidence of Russian special services’ ability to snoop on the platform, it said in a statement.

But Andriy Kovalenko, head of the security council’s centre on countering disinformation, posted on Telegram that the restrictions apply only to official devices, not personal phones.

Telegram is heavily used in both Ukraine and Russia and has become a critical source of information since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

But Ukrainian security officials had repeatedly voiced concerns about its use during the war.

Nato concluded a major anti-drone exercise this week, with Ukraine taking part for the first time as the western alliance seeks to learn urgently from the rapid development and widespread use of unmanned systems in the war there.

The drills at a Dutch military base, involving more than 20 countries and 50 companies, tested cutting-edge systems to detect and counter drones and assessed how they work together, Reuters reported.

The 11-day exercise ended with a demonstration of jamming and hacking drones in a week when their critical role in the Ukraine war was demonstrated once again.

On Wednesday, a large Ukrainian drone attack triggered an earthquake-sized blast at a major Russian arsenal. The following day, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Moscow was ramping up drone production tenfold to nearly 1.4 million this year.

• Italy is about to send another Samp-T anti-missile system to Ukraine, foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday, underlining the need, however, to avoid entering war with Russia. “We are sending a new Samp-T (anti-missile system) to protect hospitals, schools, universities … for this country that was attacked by Russia,” Tajani told Radio 24.

• The EU will grant a loan of up to 35 billion euros ($39.06bn) to Ukraine to help the country stuck in a grinding war with Russia, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday. The loan, which was announced while the bloc’s Commission chief is on a visit to Kyiv, is part of a wider plan among G7 nations to raise funds using proceeds from Russian assets frozen to sanction the country for invading its neighbour.

• Ukraine’s “victory plan” in the war against Russia depends on quick decisions being taken by allies this year, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday during a visit by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Zelenskyy told a joint press conference with von der Leyen that Ukraine planned to use a proposed multi-billion dollar European Union loan for air defence, energy and domestic weapons purchases.

• Russia said on Friday that the West should stop supplying weapons to Ukraine and sponsoring “terrorist activity” if it wanted to send a signal it was serious about seeking an end to the war. Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters that a peace plan put forward by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had nothing to do with settling the conflict.

• Ukraine’s forces destroyed 61 out of 70 Russian attack drones and one out of four missiles launched overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Friday. “The air defence system operated in Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Sumy, Poltava, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Khmelnytsky, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Kherson regions,” it said on the Telegram messenger.

• The United States should take into account Moscow’s warnings on risks of further escalation around the conflict in Ukraine, Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti cited Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Friday. Commenting on the possibility of a meeting between Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and US state secretary Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he said there will not be any meeting as the sides have “nothing to talk about”.

• Russia’s military command had anticipated Ukraine’s incursion into its Kursk region and had been making plans to prevent it for several months, according to a cache of documents that the Ukrainian army said it had seized from abandoned Russian positions in the region. The disclosure makes the disarray among Russian forces after Ukraine’s attack in early August all the more embarrassing. The documents, shared with the Guardian, also reveal Russian concerns about morale in the ranks in Kursk, which intensified after the suicide of a soldier at the front who had reportedly been in a “prolonged state of depression due to his service in the Russian army”.

• Ukraine’s offensive into the Russian border region of Kursk diverted about 40,000 Russian troops away from the frontline, Zelenskyy said on Thursday. Kyiv launched its Kursk offensive on 6 August in a bid to pull Moscow’s forces away from eastern Ukraine, where the Russian army has captured a string of villages in recent months.

• Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had captured the village of Heorhiivka, east of the city of Kurakhove, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The General Staff of Ukraine’s military, in an afternoon report, referred to the village as one of several engulfed by fighting. Popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said the village was in Russian hands. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine’s forces had “managed to diminish the occupiers’ assault potential in Donetsk region,” though the situation remained difficult in areas subjected to the heaviest attacks, near Kurakhove and another key Russian target, the city of Pokrovsk.

• Russian forces hit a geriatric care home in the Ukrainian city of Sumy and targeted its energy sector in a new wave of airstrikes on Thursday, killing at least one civilian, Ukrainian officials said. During a daytime strike on the northern city, a Russian guided bomb hit a five-storey building, regional and military officials said. One person was killed and 12 wounded, the interior ministry said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said rescue teams were checking to see whether people were trapped under rubble. Images from the site shared alongside the ministry’s post showed elderly patients evacuated from the damaged building lying on the ground on carpets and blankets.

• The UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said attacks on the power grid probably violated humanitarian law while the International Energy Agency said in a report that Ukraine’s electricity supply shortfall in the critical winter months could reach about a third of expected peak demand. Moscow has repeatedly attacked the Sumy region, which borders Russia’s Kursk region, the site of a major Ukrainian incursion in which Kyiv says it seized over 100 settlements.

Ukraine’s “victory plan” in the war against Russia depends on quick decisions being taken by allies this year, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday during a visit by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

Zelenskyy told a joint press conference with von der Leyen that Ukraine planned to use a proposed multi-billion dollar European Union loan for air defence, energy and domestic weapons purchases.

Ukraine’s forces destroyed 61 out of 70 Russian attack drones and one out of four missiles launched overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Friday.

“The air defence system operated in Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Sumy, Poltava, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Khmelnytsky, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Kherson regions,” it said on the Telegram messenger.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday she had arrived in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv to discuss Europe’s support, winter preparedness, defence and progress on the G7 loans.

“My 8th visit to Kyiv comes as the heating season starts soon, and Russia keeps targeting energy infrastructure,” von der Leyen said on the X social network.

Von der Leyen said on Thursday that the sum of 160 million euros from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets would be allocated to meet Ukraine’s urgent humanitarian needs for this winter, Reuters reported.

Russia has knocked out about 9 gigawatts (GW) of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which von der Leyen said was the “power equivalent of the three Baltic states”.

She also said that the EU aimed to restore 2.5 GW of power generating capacity and would increase exports to supply 2 GW of electricity to Ukraine.

Von der Leyen will meet Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other officials.

Italy is about to send another Samp-T anti-missile system to Ukraine, foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday, underlining the need, however, to avoid entering war with Russia.

“We are sending a new Samp-T (anti-missile system) to protect hospitals, schools, universities … for this country that was attacked by Russia,” Tajani told Radio 24.

He added that “defending Ukraine does not mean bringing a world war … We are helping Ukraine and must reach a fair peace”.

Hello and welcome to the Ukraine live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and the time in Kyiv is 10.15am.

We start with news that Russia’s military command had anticipated Ukraine’s incursion into its Kursk region and had been making plans to prevent it for several months, according to a cache of documents that the Ukrainian army said it had seized from abandoned Russian positions in the region.

The disclosure makes the disarray among Russian forces after Ukraine’s attack in early August all the more embarrassing. The documents, shared with the Guardian, also reveal Russian concerns about morale in the ranks in Kursk, which intensified after the suicide of a soldier at the front who had reportedly been in a “prolonged state of depression due to his service in the Russian army”.

Unit commanders are given instructions to ensure soldiers consume Russian state media daily to maintain their “psychological condition”.

In other news:

• Ukraine’s offensive into the Russian border region of Kursk diverted about 40,000 Russian troops away from the frontline, Zelenskyy said on Thursday. Kyiv launched its Kursk offensive on 6 August in a bid to pull Moscow’s forces away from eastern Ukraine, where the Russian army has captured a string of villages in recent months.

• Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had captured the village of Heorhiivka, east of the city of Kurakhove, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The General Staff of Ukraine’s military, in an afternoon report, referred to the village as one of several engulfed by fighting. Popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said the village was in Russian hands. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine’s forces had “managed to diminish the occupiers’ assault potential in Donetsk region,” though the situation remained difficult in areas subjected to the heaviest attacks, near Kurakhove and another key Russian target, the city of Pokrovsk.

• Russian forces hit a geriatric care home in the Ukrainian city of Sumy and targeted its energy sector in a new wave of airstrikes on Thursday, killing at least one civilian, Ukrainian officials said. During a daytime strike on the northern city, a Russian guided bomb hit a five-storey building, regional and military officials said. One person was killed and 12 wounded, the interior ministry said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said rescue teams were checking to see whether people were trapped under rubble. Images from the site shared alongside the ministry’s post showed elderly patients evacuated from the damaged building lying on the ground on carpets and blankets.

• The UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said attacks on the power grid probably violated humanitarian law while the International Energy Agency said in a report that Ukraine’s electricity supply shortfall in the critical winter months could reach about a third of expected peak demand. Moscow has repeatedly attacked the Sumy region, which borders Russia’s Kursk region, the site of a major Ukrainian incursion in which Kyiv says it seized over 100 settlements.

• Zelenskyy will meet Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at the White House next week in what is likely to be his last such visit before US elections that could upend Washington’s policy on Kyiv. Zelenskyy is expected to share a “victory plan” with the US leaders to end the war with Russia during the visit on 26 September – as Kyiv frets that a second Donald Trump presidency could loosen US commitment to Ukraine. In a separate announcement, Zelenskyy said he would also meet Trump.

• Ramzan Kadyrov, the powerful leader of Russia’s Chechen Republic, accused Elon Musk on Thursday of disabling a Tesla Cybertruck that he claimed to have received from the billionaire last month. Kadyrov, who has ruled Chechnya with an iron fist for over 17 years, shared a video in August of him driving around in the electric vehicle with what appeared to be a machine gun mounted on its roof. Kadyrov said he received the vehicle from Musk, a claim that the Tesla owner called a lie on his social media platform, X. “Now, recently, Musk remotely disabled the Cybertruck,” said Kadyrov in a post on his Telegram account. It was not possible to independently verify Kadyrov’s claims.