Ukraine live: Kyiv strikes Moscow after Putin tests cruise missile

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Britain and France for their commitment to helping Kyiv fend off the invading Russian forces.

Zelensky wrote on X on Sunday evening: “I want to express my particular gratitude to the United Kingdom and France: there is a decision from France to provide Ukraine with additional Mirage fighter jets and air defense missiles, while the UK will continue to assist us with air defense by supplying missiles and producing interceptor drones – thank you for that.”

“For the world to address Russia from a position of strength, we in Ukraine must stand on strong ground ourselves,” he added.

Nato forces must back Ukraine or prepare to see all that country’s innovative brilliance fall into the hands of the Kremlin:

Germany’s economics minister has told how she had to shelter in a bunker during a Russian bombardment of Kyiv.

Katherina Reiche said at a press conference on Sunday that the “distressing experience” had shown her “once again very clearly that Russia’s attacks on the Ukrainian population are aimed at wearing them down”.

At least two people were killed and 12 injured in the attack, dpa reports.

Ukraine is unlikely to dare to use American Tomahawk missiles to hit targets deep in Russian territory now that Russia has the Oreshnik and Burevestnik missiles, a former Russian prime minister said.

Sergey Stepashin told Russia’s TASS news agency that he was “confident” that “Tomahawks will not fly deep into Russia”.

“Listen to what [Putin] said. We also have the Burevestnik now,” he told reporters, asked whether Russia could deploy the Oreshnik in the event the US does provide Ukraine with Tomahawks.

Russia claimed on Monday to have downed 193 Ukrainian drones overnight in an apparently wide-reaching attack.

The Russian defence ministry said that 47 had been shot down over the Bryansk region; 42 over Kaluga region; 32 over the Tula region; 10 over the Kursk region; seven over the Oryol region; four over the Rostov region; four over the Voronezh region; two over the Orenburg region; two over the Tambov region; and one over the Belgorod, Lipetsk and Samara regions.

The ministry reported that 40 had been shot down over the Moscow region, including 34 UAVs that it said were flying towards Moscow.

Injuries were initially reported in Bryansk. Buildings were damaged in Oryol region and Kaluga region.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk has warned that Britain would be in the line of fire if the Kremlin were to attack a Nato country, and said he is been “shocked” by the level of public complacency about the UK’s safety.

Referring to the Russia-linked arson attacks on prime minister Keir Starmer’s former family home in Kentish Town, London, he told the Sunday Times of his shock.

“The problem is that no one in Britain was [taken aback] by this. I was shocked, frankly speaking,” Tusk said. “After information about it appeared in the British press, the reaction was like it was just an Arsenal-Liverpool football match. But if the Russians are ready and able to organise something like that, it means that they are ready and able to do anything.”

He added that if Moscow deployed its new hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missiles to Belarus or Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave next to Poland, it would be easily capable of unleashing a nuclear warhead in any European capital, including London, given the missiles’ range of up to 2,000 miles.

“The threat is global and universal, above all because of technology,” Tusk said. “You and we are both already under massive attack in cyberspace. In Poland they are ready to destroy the cyberinfrastructure [underpinning] our railways, our hospitals. It could be really painful. This is why you can’t live under this sweet illusion that you are too far away from them, that it’s not your war, it’s just Ukraine or Poland.”

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk has said that Ukraine is ready to fight for another three years, but hopes the war will not last longer.

Poland’s leader revealed that Kyiv was anxious about the toll the war could take on its population and economy should it stretch on for longer than a few more years.

“I have no doubts Ukraine will survive as an independent state,” he said in an interview with The Sunday Times. “Now the main question is how many victims we will see. President Zelensky told me [on Thursday] that he hopes that the war will not last 10 years, but that Ukraine is ready to fight for another two, three years.”

The Burevestnik has a poor test record of at least 13 known tests, with only two partial successes, since 2016, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), an advocacy group focused on reducing nuclear, biological and emergent technology risks.

The setbacks include a 2019 blast during the botched recovery of an unshielded nuclear reactor allowed to “smolder” on the White Sea floor for a year following a prototype crash, according to State Department reports.

Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom said five staff members died during the testing of a rocket on 8 August.

Putin presented their widows with top state awards, saying the weapon they were developing was without equal in the world, without naming the Burevestnik.