Russia-Ukraine war live: drones attack Russian Black sea ships for second day; Boris Johnson blasts UK policy on war

Suspilne reports that a six-year-old boy was killed and four more people were injured by Russian shelling in the village of Novodmytrivka, which is located in Kherson region. It cited the local prosecutors office.

Drone debris is also reported to have partially destroyed a house near Nikopol region in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Ukraine’s air force has claimed on the Telegram messaging service that it downed 17 out of 22 drones sent over its territory by Russia overnight.

Reuters reports it posted “On the night of 14 September, between 9pm to 2.30am, the Russian invaders attacked Ukraine with several groups of Shahed-136/131 types from three directions.”

Vehicle traffic has been suspended on the bridge that connects the Crimea peninsula to mainland Russia, state media has reported.

No reasons were given for the move, the RIA news agency reported on Thursday.

A message on bridge operations on the messaging app Telegram said:

Those on the bridge and in the inspection area are asked to remain calm and follow the instructions of transport security officers.

The 19km (12-mile) Crimean bridge, also known as the Kerch bridge, has been attacked repeatedly during the war.

The Russian military destroyed Ukrainian five drone boats that were trying to attack a patrol ship in the Black Sea early on Thursday, Russian official media reported, citing the defence ministry.

The ministry said the unmanned boats were “destroyed by fire from the ship’s standard weapons” while repelling the attack on the Sergei Kotov about 5am.

On Wednesday the Russian military destroyed three Ukrainian unmanned boats in the Black Sea, it said.

Boris Johnson has attacked the UK government over its policy on Ukraine, saying it should urgently provide more weaponry requested by Kyiv and asking the west: “What the hell are we waiting for?”

The former prime minister, who formed a close relationship with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy after the outbreak of the war with Russia, called on the UK to provide howitzers, Storm Shadow cruise missiles and “as much help as we can give them with drone technology”.

Writing for the Spectator magazine, which he used to edit, Johnson said it could be a “relatively trivial outlay for extraordinary potential reward” if western nations were to provide more military support. He called for a “far greater sense of urgency about our programme of military assistance”.

He wrote:

I have asked it before and I ask it again: what the hell are we waiting for?

Johnson said Ukrainians did not want warm words but “weaponry to finish the job – and so I simply do not understand why we keep dragging our feet”.

Read the full story by Rowena Mason here:

Welcome back to our rolling coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. This is Adam Fulton and here’s a rundown on the latest key developments.

Five Ukrainian sea drones attacked a Russian navy ship in the Black Sea on Thursday and were destroyed, Russia’s defence ministry said.

It also said Russian air defences had destroyed 11 hostile drones over Crimea, the official RIA news agency reported.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has blasted the UK government over its policy on Ukraine, saying it should urgently provide more weaponry requested by Kyiv and asking the west: “What the hell are we waiting for?”

The former prime minister called on the UK to provide howitzers, Storm Shadow cruise missiles and “as much help as we can give them with drone technology”. He also called for a “far greater sense of urgency about our program of military assistance”.

More on both those stories shortly. In other news:

• Ukraine struck Russian naval targets and port infrastructure in the Crimean city of Sevastopol early on Wednesday in what appeared to be the biggest attack yet on the home of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet. A large vessel and a submarine struck in the pre-dawn attack were so badly damaged as to be likely beyond repair, Ukrainian military intelligence official Andriy Yusov said. Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine attacked a Black Sea shipyard with 10 cruise missiles and three uncrewed speedboats, wounding 24 people.

• Kim Jong-un invited Vladimir Putin to his country during their meeting in Russia and Putin accepted, Pyongyang’s state media KCNA reported on Thursday. The invitation came after the North Korean leader offered the Russian president his support for Russia’s “sacred fight” against the west during talks at a space base in Russia’s far east. The talks also touched on possible Russian help with North Korea’s space program.

• The US state department said the Biden administration “won’t hesitate” to impose additional sanctions on Russia and North Korea if they establish further new arms deals.

• Romania has found new fragments of a drone similar to those used by the Russian army near its border, officials say. Romanian specialist teams were deployed to the eastern county of Tulcea, where the fragments were spread over an area of “several dozen metres”, the defence ministry said. Preliminary analyses of the first two drone fragments had shown they did not explode in Romania, a Nato member, and were not carrying explosives.

• The US ambassador to Russia has visited jailed US citizen Paul Whelan and reiterated Washington’s support to bring him back to the US, the state department said on Wednesday. Whelan, a former marine, was arrested in 2018 in Russia, convicted in 2020 on espionage charges and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

• A Russian-installed court in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region jailed two Ukrainian soldiers for 29 years each, Russia’s investigative committee has said, after it accused them of killing three civilians. Moscow has repeatedly sentenced captured Ukrainian soldiers to long jail terms, in court proceedings that Kyiv does not recognise on Russian-occupied territory.

• Russia’s defence minister said his forces were maintaining “active defence” in the face of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and that Moscow had no choice but to win. Sergei Shoigu said the autumn campaign was now under way and acknowledged to Rossiya-1 state TV that the situation on the front was difficult in places.

• More than 100 port infrastructure facilities have been damaged in Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports since 18 July, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister has said. Oleksandr Kubrakov also said Ukrainian grain exports had fallen by almost 3m tonnes a month since 18 July, a day after Russia quit the UN- backed Black Sea grain export deal.

• The European Commission president has said a major series of policy reviews will launched to ensure the 27-nation bloc can still function properly as it invites in new members in coming years. Ursula von der Leyen said the EU must prepare to grow to more than 30 members. Ukraine, Moldova and countries in the western Balkans are among those in line.