Russia-Ukraine war live: 42 Ukrainian drones launched over Crimea, says Russia; US to train F-16 pilots in October | Russia

Reuters: the US state department on Thursday imposed sanctions on 13 people and entities it said are reportedly connected to the forced deportation and transfer of Ukraine’s children, as Washington ramps up pressure on Moscow over its invasion.
The United States is also taking steps to impose visa restrictions on three Russia-installed purported authorities over their involvement in human rights abuses of Ukrainian minors, the state department said in a statement.
The sanctions coincided with Ukraine’s Independence Day.

“The United States will not stand by as Russia carries out these war crimes and crimes against humanity,” US Ambassador to the US Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a UN security council meeting on Ukraine on Thursday.

Sian Cain

Danish film-maker and provocateur Lars von Trier has defended himself from backlash after writing a social media post that criticised Denmark’s donation of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

“Russian lives matter also!” he wrote on Instagram on Tuesday after the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Denmark, where he and the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, inspected the F-16s to be delivered to his country.

Von Trier addressed his post to “Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin, and not least Mrs Frederiksen (who yesterday, like someone head over heels in love, posed in the cockpit of one of the scariest killing machines of our time, grinning from ear to ear)”.

Von Trier disabled comments on the post but it attracted the attention of Russian and Ukrainian media. Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, shared the director’s post, writing on Twitter: “War is not a movie where actors play life and death. Behind every living Russian terrorist, there is a dead Ukrainian. The choice between the executioner and the victim becomes a tragedy when the artist chooses the side of the executioner”:

The United States will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced.

The training would begin after the pilots receive English-language training next month, a Pentagon spokesperson, Brig Gen Pat Ryder, said on Thursday. The flight training would take place at the Morris air national guard base in Tucson, Arizona, he added.

Several pilots and dozens of aircraft maintenance crew would take the training, Ryder added.

Last Sunday, Denmark and the Netherlands pledged to donate F-16s to Ukraine, fulfilling a longstanding wish by Ukraine that it says will help strengthen air defences and aid its counteroffensive against Russia’s 2022 invasion. Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, on Thursday said his country would also give Ukraine F-16s:

AFP: Russia’s air defence forces destroyed 42 Ukraine-launched drones over the Crimean peninsula and one missile over the Kaluga region early on Friday, the Russian defence ministry said.

The ministry said nine drones were destroyed by air defence forces while 33 were suppressed by electronic warfare and crashed over Crimea without reaching their targets. Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea, said on the Telegram messaging app that a number of drones were destroyed over the Khersones promontory, on Sevastopol’s outskirts.

Earlier, the defence ministry said it had shot down a Ukraine-launched missile over the Kaluga region, which borders the Moscow region.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the attacks, which Russia blamed on Ukraine. Russian airports suspended flights for a few hours.

The number of drones launched was one of the largest in a surge of similar attacks.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Sullivan.

Our top stories this morning: Russia’s air defence forces destroyed 42 Ukraine-launched drones over the Crimean peninsula and one missile over the Kaluga region early on Friday, the Russian defence ministry said.

The ministry said nine drones were destroyed by air defence forces while 33 were suppressed by electronic warfare and crashed over Crimea without reaching their targets. Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

And the US will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced.

Elsewhere:

• Vladimir Putin has called Yevgeny Prigozhin a “talented businessman” with “a difficult fate”. In a meeting at the Kremlin, the Russian president addressed the crash of the Wagner chief’s business jet for the first time, offering condolences to the families of the 10 people onboard. He said that Prigozhin had returned to Russia from Africa on Wednesday and had met “some officials”, without specifying whom. “He was a man with a difficult fate. He made some serious mistakes in his life,” Putin said.

• An explosion onboard probably brought down the plane presumed to be carrying the Wagner leader, a preliminary US intelligence assessment concluded. US and western officials said it determined that Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that the explosion falls in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics”. Several of Prigozhin’s lieutenants were also presumed dead. Pentagon spokesperson Brig Gen Pat Ryder said he had no indication the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Kyiv had nothing to do with the explosion. The presumed death follows a pattern of “unclarified” fatalities in Russia, Germany’s foreign minister said on Thursday.

• Moscow’s Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports suspended flights early on Friday, Russia’s Tass news agency reported. Residents of the Russian regions of Tula and Kaluga earlier posted on social media about explosions they heard in the night, Russian online media outlet Baza reported. Flights were also briefly disrupted on Tuesday and Wednesday during Ukrainian drone attacks.

• Ukrainian forces marked the country’s independence day with a naval raid into occupied Crimea, and Zelenskiy praised Ukrainians for the defiance and courage that has won them global support in the fight with Russia. The national holiday celebrates Ukraine’s independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, but this year it also marks 18 months since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion plunged the country into a war for survival.

• Zelenskiy said early on Friday he spoke with the US president, Joe Biden. Zelenskiy said he thanked Biden for his Ukraine Independence Day greetings and support in the conflict with Russia. “Together, we prove that freedom and independence are worth fighting for,” he said in a statement.

• Russia will return to the Black Sea grain deal only if the west fulfils its “obligations to Moscow”, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told the UN secretary general, António Guterres.

• Russia has extended the detention of the Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich by three months. He was the first journalist arrested by Russian authorities on allegations of spying since the cold war.