Russia-Ukraine war live: Kyiv’s mayor says blasts reported in city | Ukraine

For the first time since September, Ukraine’s capital has been the target of a Russian attack.

Kyiv came under air attack this morning and big explosions were heard, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

There was no immediate information on if there were any casualties.

Strong explosions were heard on in the left bank of the capital. Preliminary, air defence was working against ballistic (missiles).

Air alerts for Kyiv and a nearby region were announced just minutes before the explosions were heard. City authorities urged residents to stay in shelters.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.

Two loud explosions have been heard in Kyiv, local media has reported, with the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, urging residents to stay in their shelters.

Air defences were targeting ballistic missiles near the capital, Klitschko wrote on Telegram, adding that several emergency calls had been made but that no victims had so far been found.

The attack came after a long period of calm in the Ukrainian capital. Air defences last downed a missile in Kyiv on 21 September with the falling debris wounding seven people, including a child.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian naval drones sank two small Russian landing boats in Crimea, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said. The attack, which could not be independently verified, sank an Akula class vessel and a Serna class vessel.

The Ukrainian military said the boats were crewed, and loaded with armoured vehicles. “Boats like this are quite a significant loss,” Andriy Ryzhenko, a military analyst and reserve officer, told Radio NV. “They allowed for the transport of a tactical landing force and equipment relatively inconspicuously.”

In other key developments:

• Russian forces are fighting to surround the war-battered frontline town of Avdiivka and capture a strategically located factory nearby, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said. Oleksandr Shtupun said Ukrainian forces were repelling Russian assaults on the large chemical plant and that the facility was under their control.

• A military analyst, Serhiy Zgurets, writing on the website of Espreso TV, said Russian forces sought to exploit Ukraine’s focus on Avdiivka by attempting to retake areas they had lost near Bakhmut to the north-east. Russian forces seized Bakhmut in May, but Ukrainian troops have since retaken nearby villages.

• Russia’s military said its forces had thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to forge a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River and on nearby islands in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine, killing about 500 Ukrainian soldiers in the past week. “On 9 November, personnel from a motorised rifle company in the Russian military grouping ‘Dnipro’ under the command of Senior LieutenantLt Zolto Arsalanov destroyed servicemen from a unit of Ukraine’s 36th Marine Infantry brigade as they were trying to gain a foothold on the left bank of the Dnipro River,” the defence ministry statement said. The claim could not be independently verified.

• A European Union plan to spend up to €20bn ($21.4bn) on military aid for Ukraine is meeting resistance from EU countries and may not survive in its current form, diplomats have said, according to Reuters. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, proposed in July that the bloc create a fund with up to €5bn a year over four years as part of broader western security commitments to bolster Ukraine. But as EU defence ministers prepare to discuss the plan in Brussels on Tuesday, diplomats say multiple countries – including EU heavyweight Germany – have voiced reservations about committing such large sums years in advance.

• Hungary’s prime minister said he did not support moving forward on negotiations on Ukraine’s future membership of the EU, signalling again that his country could pose a major roadblock to Kyiv’s ambitions to join the bloc, which must decide unanimously on the admittance of new countries. “The clear Hungarian position is that the negotiations must not begin,” Viktor Orbán said.

• Ukrainian and Russian officials said they had agreed to send a Ukrainian teenager, who was taken to Russia during the war last year, back to his home country, in accordance with his wishes. Bohdan Yermokhin, a 17-year-old whose parents died years ago, would be reunited with a cousin “in a third country” on his 18th birthday later this month, with a view to then return to Ukraine, the Russian children’s rights ombudswoman, Maria Lvova-Belova, said in a statement on Friday.

• Russian artillery and drone attacks on Friday killed three people and damaged an unspecified infrastructure facility, power lines and a gas pipeline in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions of Ukraine, local officials said. Both regions have come under regular shelling by Russian troops in occupied territory on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.

• Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff said he hoped a conference on joint Ukrainian-US weapons production would be held in December in the US, Kyiv’s most important supplier of military assistance. “There was a very important agreement between President Zelenskiy and President Biden,” Andriy Yermak said of the Ukrainian and US leaders. “Next month, I hope, a conference will be held in the United States dedicated to joint [weapons] production of Ukraine and the United States.”

• A French court rejected an appeal from the Ukrainian government and ruled that Ukrainian billionaire Kostyantyn Zhevago should not be extradited over accusations of embezzlement, a court spokesperson said. Zhevago, who controls London-listed iron pellet producer Ferrexpo, was arrested at a French ski resort in December 2022 at the request of Ukraine, which wants him for alleged embezzlement involving a now-collapsed bank. Zhevago has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

• Russia is under no obligation to say where a Ukrainian volunteer soldier convicted and jailed for trying to kill two civilians is being held, the Kremlin said. Human rights groups have demanded that Russia provide information on Maksym Butkevych, whose family and lawyers say they have been unable to establish his whereabouts since August. Butkevych was arrested last year, when his unit was captured on the frontline, and sentenced in March to 13 years in prison.