Russia Ukraine war live: Kyiv inflicting significant losses on Putin’s forces near Dnipro River

Russia plans to produce more than 32,000 drones each year by 2030 and for domestic producers to account for 70% of the market, the TASS news agency cited First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov as saying on Saturday.

Drones have been widely used by Moscow and Kyiv since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and both sides are sharply increasing military production as the war drags on.

“The annual production volume of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – excluding educational UAVs – is planned at 32,500 units,” Belousov told TASS. “This is almost three times higher than current production volumes.

“At the same time, it is planned that the share of Russian UAVs will make up 70% of the market in this type of UAV.”

Moscow has been using the cheaply-produced, Iranian-made Shahed drones, known in Ukraine for their noisy petrol engines, more and more frequently in aerial assaults on Ukrainian infrastructure far behind the war’s front lines in the east and south of the country.

Russia will finance the national project on UAVs with 696 billion roubles ($7.66 billion) by 2030, Belousov said, and will publish more details this month.

Last year President Vladimir Putin said that UAVs could be used across virtually all industries, not just the military.

Russian drones initially confused Ukrainian air defences as they were harder to detect than missiles, while shooting down cheaply-made drones with expensive air defence missiles was not the most cost-effective strategy.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has intensively used FPV drones – small drones originally meant for personal civilian use but modified for the battlefield – as a cheap but effective option for reconnaissance and attacks, a tactic Russia has copied.

Ukraine said in December it planned to produce more than 11,000 medium- and long-range attack drones in 2024, as well as one million FPV (first-person-view) drones, widely in demand on the front line.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has called for more than $300 billion (£236bn) in frozen Russian assets to be repurposed for Ukraine.

The idea has become a mainstay after the US and European Union failed to pass further support packages for Kyiv.

In a statement on X, Mr Zelensky wrote: “Russian assets currently frozen abroad total around $300 billion. They must be put to use in support of Ukraine.

“This is a historic opportunity to make the terrorist state pay for its terror. The Russian elite and leadership do not care about human lives, but they do care about money above all else.

“I encourage partners to move quickly on relevant legal frameworks. This year, we must achieve tangible progress toward using frozen Russian assets for the benefit of Ukraine. We firmly rely on G7 leadership on this matter.”

The White House on Thursday said U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russia has acquired ballistic missiles from North Korea and is seeking close-range ballistic missiles from Iran as Moscow struggles to replenish arms for its war with Ukraine

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said recently declassified intelligence found that North Korea has provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and several ballistic missiles. Russian forces fired at least one of those ballistic missiles into Ukraine on Dec. 30, he said. Kirby said Russia launched multiple North Korean ballistic missiles on Tuesday as part of its overnight aerial attack.

Kirby said a Russia-Iran deal had not been completed. But, he said, the U.S. “is concerned that Russia negotiations to acquire close range ballistic missiles from Iran are actively advancing.”

Russian air defences have downed dozens of Ukrainian drones in occupied Crimea and southern Russia on Friday, officials said.

The move comes as Kyiv presses its strategy of targeting the Moscow-annexed peninsula and taking the 22-month war well beyond Ukraine‘s borders.

Air raid sirens wailed in Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea, and traffic was suspended for a second straight day on a bridge connecting the peninsula, which Moscow seized illegally a decade ago, with Russia‘s southern Krasnodar region.

The span is a crucial supply link for Russia‘s war effort.

The Russian defence ministry said its defences intercepted 36 drones over Crimea and one over Krasnodar, part of an emerging pattern of intensified Ukrainian aerial attacks in recent days.

A Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missile also was destroyed over the north-western part of the Black Sea, the ministry said.

The developments came after three people were injured on Thursday night by other Ukrainian rocket and drone attacks on the Russian border city of Belgorod and the surrounding region, said Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

Ukrainian attacks on December 30 in Belgorod killed 25 people, officials there said.

“The UK strongly condemns Russia’s decision to use ballistic missiles sourced from North Korea in recent attacks against Ukraine,” the UK’s foreign office spokesperson said in a statement.

“We urge North Korea to cease its arms supply to Russia,” the statement said.

The European Union imposed sanctions on the world’s biggest diamond mining company and its chief executive officer on Wednesday as part of what it called its “unwavering commitment” to Ukraine in the war against Russia.

The move targeted Alrosa, which accounts for about 90% of Russia’s diamond production, and CEO Pavel Marinychev. The EU headquarters said the company “constitutes an important part of an economic sector that is providing substantial revenue” to Moscow.

It means Alrosa’s assets in Europe will be frozen and EU citizens and companies will be barred from making funds available to the company. Marinychev, who was appointed CEO last May for three years, also faces a travel ban in Europe.

NATO announced Wednesday that it would help buy up to 1,000 Patriot missiles so that allies can better protect their territory as Russia ramps up its air assault on Ukraine.

NATO’s Support and Procurement Agency said it will support a group of nations, including Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain, in buying the Patriots, which are used to defend against cruise and ballistic missiles as well as enemy aircraft.

According to industry sources, the contract could be worth around $5.5 billion.

With trembling hands and labored breath, Serhii Slobodiannyk meticulously searched his fire-damaged apartment, seeking to salvage any of his family’s treasured belongings following a Russian missile attack on Kyiv.

“Everything I had worked for over 30 years was destroyed in less than a second,” says Slobodiannyk, still dressed in the clothes he managed to throw on in his burning apartment Tuesday.

He and his wife, Olena, had moved into the building in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district in 1984. Now the structure is uninhabitable — ravaged by fire, part of its facade torn off, and a huge crater gouged next to it by the missile that struck at 7:40 a.m.

Russia has fired more than 450 missiles and drones at Ukrainian civilian areas over the past week, killing more than 60 civilians and injuring hundreds more.

Ukraine has fired dozens of drones and missiles over the Russian border and in Moscow-occupied Crimea in return, as the aerial duel between the two escalates while the frontlines on the ground remain deadlocked.

The British Ministry of Defence (MoD), in its latest intelligence update, suggested that Russia had committed a significant proportion of its stockpiled weapons to carry out the aerial attacks.

It added that Russia appears to have transitioned from targeting critical energy infrastructure to Ukraine’s defence industry – seeking to reduce Kyiv’s ability to fire missiles and drones. That is an acknowldgement that the Kremlin is expecting a long war of attrition both in the air and on the ground.

At least 230 Ukrainian prisoners of war returned to their homes and a total of 248 Russian servicemen were released from Ukrainian territory on Wednesday after the United Arab Emirates brokered a swap deal between the two nations.