Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin launches overnight drone attack in Odesa port

The US appears to have tempered demands for Ukraine to repay aid, as mineral deal talks between the two countries continue.

Following a round of negotiations in Washington last week, Donald Trump’s administration reduced its estimate of US aid provided to Kyiv to about $100 billion from $300 billion, sources told Bloomberg.

The US sees the bilateral minerals deal it is seeking as a way to recover the billions of dollars spent on aid in Ukraine – even though the payments were not a loan.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that talks with the US.regarding a minerals deal were “positive”, and that more meetings were expected.

Russia’s intelligence chief has 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.

“They should understand, but do not yet understand, that in the event of aggression by the North Atlantic Alliance against (Russia and Belarus), damage will be done, of course, to the entire Nato bloc, but to a greater extent, the first to suffer will be the bearers of such ideas among the political circles of Poland and the Baltic countries,” Mr Naryshkin told the TASS news agency.

He claimed that these nations have shown “high aggressiveness” towards Russia and accused Poland and the Baltics of “constantly rattling their weapons”.

Dozens of Ukrainian families gathered on Tuesday to mourn the dead after Vladimir Putin’s forces carried out a missile attack killing at least 35 people.

As some of the victims of Sunday’s attack were laid to rest yesterday, Viktor Voitenko, 56, described to AP how he ended up paralysed in a hospital bed.

He was working as a security guard when the second missile hit and shattered his spine.

As he spoke, his wife Hanna, 40, lovingly applied his deodorant – a simple act he could no longer perform.

The attack in Sumy, which had a prewar population of about 250,000, came just over a week after a Russian missile strike killed about 20 people, including nine children, in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.

Russia said it was targeting a meeting of soldiers, but there is no evidence to support the claim.

The drone attack sparked fires and damaged homes and civilian infrastructure, officials of the southern Ukrainian region said early today.

“The enemy has again attacked Odesa with a massive drone attack,” Oleh Kiper, governor of the region whose administrative centre is the city of Odesa, said on his Telegram channel, though the full scale of the attack was not clear.

Russia’s attack on the Ukrainian port city came just hours after Nato secretary general Mark Rutte was visiting the region with president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Russian defence units destroyed 26 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s defence ministry said this morning.

Of these, nine drones were destroyed over the southern Voronezh region and eight over the border Belgorod region, and the rest were downed over the Kursk, Lipetsk and Moscow regions, and over the Crimean Peninsula, the ministry said in a post on Telegram.

Russian officials do not detail the total number of drones launched or the drones that caused damage.

Economic partnerships between the US and Russia could prove to be an incentive to Russian president Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

“There is an incentive for Russia to end this war and perhaps that could be economic partnerships with the United States. But we need to see a ceasefire first and the president and the presidential envoy, Witkoff, made that very clear to the Russians,” Ms Leavitt said last night at a press briefing.

She also confirmed that the US special envoy Steve Witkoff’s one-on-one meeting with Mr Putin last week was “productive”.

“(Witkoff) believes that Russia wants to end this war and the president believes that as well,” she said.

A Russian soldier has been jailed for 15 years after he deserted the military and voluntarily surrendered to Ukraine.

In what is a Russian military court’s first such prosecution, the crime of voluntary surrender, which is punishable by between three and 10 years in prison, was first introduced in September 2022.

According to the Kommersant newspaper, a court on the far eastern Russian island of Sakhalin found soldier Roman Ivanishin guilty of voluntary surrender, of attempting to voluntarily surrender, and of desertion.

Ivanishin, who was reported to have denied all the charges, will serve his sentence in a maximum security facility. Local media reported that his trial was held behind closed doors.