War latest: Belarus leader urges Ukraine and Russia to end conflict; Ukraine 'captures' largest Russian town so far (2024)

Russian state media has aired footage of the ongoing evacuations in the Kursk region as Ukraine's incursion continues.

According to the video report, dozens of people from the Glushkovsky district were evacuated to facilities in safe areas.

The report also mentioned a family from Sudzha who claimed to have escaped from an attack by a Ukrainian drone as it hit their car.

"I heard an explosion, glass shattered and I didn't even understand what happened", an evacuee from Sudzha said.

Earlier today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv's troops had captured the Russian town.

The town is the largest that Ukraine has claimed control over so far, with a pre-war population of around 5,000 people.

Yesterday, a Ukrainian news channel released a video appearing to show soldiers taking down Russian flags from an administrative building in the town, shouting "glory to Ukraine, glory to heroes".

Air-to-surface missiles have been used to target Ukrainian troops in Kursk, the Russian defence ministry said.

In a post on Telegram, it said a helicopter crew delivered the strikes at "manpower, armoured hardware and a motor vehicles cluster" belonging to Ukrainian forces.

"After the use of aviation strike assets, the crews performed a manoeuvre, releasing decoy flares, and returned to the departure airfield," it added.ِ

It claimed all the targets were "neutralised".

Ukrainian troops launched their invasion of the Russian region last week.

A ballerina has been jailed in Russia for 12 years after donating £40 to a charity supporting Ukraine.

US-Russian citizen Ksenia Karelinawas accused of treason when she was arrestedin Yekaterinburg, in southwestern Russia, in February.

The 33-year-old admitted the charge at a closed trial in the city earlier this month, according to Russian news agencies.

Today, Karelina appeared in court in a white sweatshirt and blue jeans, sitting calmly in a glass courtroom cage to receive her sentence.

Three people, including a 15-year-old and an 18-year-old, have been detained for setting fire to military vehicles on behalf of Russia, Ukraine's national police has said.

Russian special services promised money for the destroyed cars, with the attackers recording the fires on the phones to report back to them, the force said.

The teenagers operated in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, targeting three military SUVs that were undergoing maintenance after being used on the frontline.

"The young men cycled around the territory of the district, where they were tracking the cars of the Ukrainian troops," the police said.

"After identifying potential targets, the attackers photographed them and sent them to the customer for approval.

"Then, according to the instructions of the curator, the participants made a highly flammable mixture, poured it over military vehicles and set them on fire."

In Kharkiv, a 22-year-old "contract deserter" was detained for setting fire to six SUVs after being offered money by Russian intelligence, it added.

It said all the perpetrators were in custody and face eight to 10 years in prison.

A key ally of Vladimir Putin has urged Ukraine and Russia to end their conflict to avoid the war spilling over into Belarus.

Speaking to Russian state television, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said only "high-ranking people of American origin" wanted the war to continue.

The West, he said, was encouraging Kyiv to fight because it wants Ukraine and Russia to "destroy each other".

Mr Lukashenko has positioned himself as a main backer of Mr Putin since the Russian president ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 - part of which was staged from Belarusian soil.

But, instead of allowing battles to rage on, he urged for talks to take place.

"Let's sit down at the negotiating table and end this brawl," he said.

"Neither the Ukrainian people, nor the Russians, nor the Belarusians need it. They (the West) need it."

Excerpts of the nearly two-hour interview were published on the Belarusian presidential website earlier today.

He was speaking after Ukraine launched its invasion of Russia's Kursk region last week.

Kyiv has said its forces haveadvanced 35km (22 miles) into Russia since the incursion began andcontinue to gain ground.

But, Mr Lukashenko suggested, without providing evidence, that Ukraine could have plans to attack Belarus.

He said Minskwould not allow Ukrainian troops to "trample on our country".

He suggested that the West was betting that thedestabilising situation in Kursk would encourage a troopmobilisation in both Belarus and Russia and "shake up societyfrom within".

"We don't want escalation and we don't want a war againstthe whole of NATO. We don't want that," he said.

But if Ukraine does provoke Belarus, he cautioned,"we'll have no other choice".

On Saturday, Minsk said it was sending troops to reinforceits southern border with Ukraine after accusing Kyiv ofviolating its airspace with drones.

Kyiv said it had seen nosigns of such a build-up.

At least two people have been killed and 12 more have been injured in Russian guided bomb attacks, Ukrainian authorities have said.

The strike hit a civilian area in Kupiansk in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region earlier today, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

A warehouse was also set alight in the attack, with six employees suffering injuries, regional prosecutors added.

Six more people, including a 12-year-old child, werewounded in the Zolochiv village when Russian forces dropped twobombs, the regional police said.

Administrative buildings, a nursery, and more than 20 homes were damaged, the police added.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, and the surroundingregion have long been targeted by Russian strikes.

For months, Moscow's troops have been pummelling Ukraine's border regionswith highly destructive guided bombs.

Moscow denies targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure during the war, but thousands have been killed andinjured in its strikes.

While Kyiv's troops push ahead with their invasion of Russia's Kursk region, shelling has continued in parts of Ukraine.

In Horlivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, locals have been clearing rubble after a recent attack.

Several houses have been destroyed in the town, which is located in part of Donetsk that has been occupied by Moscow's forces.

Russian-installed authorities blamed the Ukrainian military for the shelling.

A 45-year-old man has been detained after two people were killed in a shooting, the National Police of Ukraine has said.

Three other people were injured in the incident and have been taken to hospital, it added.

It said the force received a report this afternoon from the village of Dobrovody in the western city of Ternopil that a man dressed in a military uniform fired several shots from an automatic weapon.

The suspect fled the scene and a special police operation was launched to find him.

"Law enforcement officers established the identity of the suspect and his possible direction of movement," it said on Telegram.

"He turned out to be a 45-year-old resident of the Zhytomyr region. The police took away his weapon."

The force said the circ*mstances leading to the incident were still being established.

Ukrainian troops have taken more than 100 Russian soldiers prisoner during their invasion of the Kursk region, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said yesterday.

The Ukrainian president said they would be used to swap for his country's prisoners of war.

Our security and defence editor Deborah Haynes has been able to speak to some of the Russian prisoners being held in a secret location.

A number of them told her they were conscripts, while the youngest soldier she spoke to said his family did not know he had been captured.

"Each person that we've spoken to said that when they were met by Ukrainian soldiers and when they were captured, that they were treated well," Deborah said.

A Russian strategic bomber has crashed in Siberia, a newspaper in the country has reported.

The Tu-22M3 aircraft came down in the Irkutsk region due to a technical malfunction, the Izvestia reported, citing the Russian defence ministry.

It said the crew had been able to eject from the plane.

"The plane crashed in an uninhabited area. There is no damage on the ground," the ministry was quoted as saying.

The Tu-22M3 is described by its designer, Tupolev, as a long-range supersonic missile carrier bomber that has been created to destroy sea- and ground-based targets with guided missiles and aerial bombs.

Ukraine and its Western allies have claimed Russia has frequently used the aircraft to bomb Ukraine.