Ukraine-Russia war latest: UK issues defiant message to Putin after dangerous Black Sea flyby

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has said that Belarus would not be dragged into the Ukraine war, after Volodymyr Zelensky said the country could be helping Russia to prepare an offensive from the north.

Russia and Belarus would jointly defend themselves in case of aggression, Belarusian state news agency BELTA reported.

Lukashenko also said that he is ready to meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, as joint nuclear exercises held by Russia and Belarus get underway, according to BELTA.

Three people were injured in â a drone attack in the town of â Shebekino ​and â the nearby area â in Russia’s Belgorod ​region â bordering ‌Ukraine, local authorities said on Telegram, ‌

Ukraine ‌also reported one person injured â in the southeastern city of Dnipro.

Russia's massive war games in Belarus an attempt to regain military initiative by threatening armageddon, world affairs editor Sam Kiley writes.

The ​Kremlin has dismissed as false a Reuters report that China’s army secretly trained about 200 Russian â soldiers in China late last year, some of whom went on to fight in Ukraine.

A Russian-Chinese agreement from July â 2025 reviewed ​by Reuters said â about 200 Russian troops would be trained at military facilities â in locations including Beijing and the eastern ​city â of Nanjing.

The agreement ‌also said hundreds of Chinese troops would undergo training at military facilities ‌in Russia.

Asked about the ‌report on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: «A great deal of false information is â published by newspapers in both Europe and the United States.â€

Beijing says it is ‌neutral in the Ukraine conflict ​and has sought to present ‌itself as a â peace mediator.

Latvia said on Thursday it had detected at least one drone flying in the â country’s airspace and that NATO fighter jets were activated to combat the threat, the latest in a series of such security incidents in the Baltic region.

The Latvian Armed Forces later announced that the threat had ended, without providing further detail.

Ukraine has in recent months stepped up its long-range drone attacks on Russia, including in the â Baltic Sea area, where several Ukrainian military drones have strayed into ​the airspace â of NATO members Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and â his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping discussed â ongoing efforts ​to â find a resolution â to the ​conflict â in ‌Ukraine during Putin’s visit to China ‌earlier this ‌week, the Kremlin â said.

China was ready to help forge a peace deal, ‌Kremlin spokesman Dmitry ​Peskov ‌told â reporters.

Ukraine must be very precise when using drones to avoid Russia interfering with their flight path, the Polish defence minister said as Ukraine increasingly faces annoyance from Baltic states over a series of airspace violations.

«Ukraine must ‌be more precise here, of â course, to avoid giving rise to Russian provocations,» Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told a news conference ‌in the ​Estonian capital ‌Tallinn.

«Our territories… â should not be â violated, they ‌should ​not be threatened,†he said.

The Baltic states, all strong backers of Ukraine, have blamed the drone incidents on Moscow, saying it redirects Ukrainian drones from their intended targets in Russia, but without providing evidence for the claims.

Russia delivered nuclear munitions to field storage facilities in â Belarus as part of major nuclear drills, the Russian defence â ministry ​said this morning.

“As part of the nuclear forces exercise, nuclear munitions were delivered to the field storage facilities of the missile brigade’s position area in the Republic of Belarus,» the ministry said.

Russia â said the missile unit in Belarus was carrying out training to receive special munitions for the mobile ‌Iskander-M tactical missile system, ​including loading ‌munitions onto â launch vehicles and secretly â moving to a ‌designated ​area for ‌launch preparation.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky says there has recently been productive contact with the US regarding talks to end the ​war.

«If, in the coming weeks, we manage to return to meaningful trilateral communication and involve the Europeans, this would be the right outcome,» Zelensky said in his overnight video message.

“For our part, we are ready for ‌such steps. I ​count on our partners to ‌be ready as well – and ​that the Russians will not hide,†he said.

EU members are discussing whether former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, or former German chancellor Angela Merkel, could represent the bloc in talks for potential negotiations with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin.