Ukraine latest: Kyiv allies pledge to take Russian oil off global market

Three people were killed and 29 injured, including six children, in a Russian overnight air attack on Kyiv that destroyed two high-rise apartment buildings, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.

Seven of the injured, including two children, were taken to the city’s hospitals, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app.

Debris from destroyed Russian air weapons fell onto a nine-storey apartment building in Kyiv’s leafy Desnianskyi district, sparking a fire that quickly engulfed several stories, the mayor added.

The fire has since been extinguished.

Ukraine’s state emergency service said that 13 people were rescued from the building’s upper floors.

The full scale of the attack was not immediately known. Kyiv and its surrounding region were under air-raid alerts for about 1-1/2 hours before the air force called them off at around 0030 GMT.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in their strikes on each other’s territory. But thousands, mostly Ukrainians, have been killed in the war that Russia started with its full-scale invasion of Ukrainein February 2022.

Russia has tested a new nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered cruise missile named the Burevestnik, Russia’s top general told President Vladimir Putin in remarks released on Sunday.

The missile travelled 14,000 km (8,700 miles) and was in the air for about 15 hours, General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, told Putin.

Putin has said the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel) – dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall by NATO – is “invincible” to current and future missile defences, with an almost unlimited range and unpredictable flight path.

In his remarks on Sunday, Putin, dressed in camouflage fatigues, told Gerasimov that the crucial Burevestnik tests have now been completed and that work should start on the final stage before deploying the missiles.

Donald Trump has said the stalled peace talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin have been “very disappointing” and that it was easier for the US president to resolve the India-Pakistan conflict.

“I thought the India-Pak war deal would’ve been tougher than the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire, but it didn’t work out that way,” Mr Trump told reporters.

He added that the hostility between Moscow and Kyiv has prevented a breakthrough in the three-year-long war. “There’s a lot of hatred between the two, between Zelensky and Putin. It was tremendous hatred.”

Nato member Lithuania closed its capital airport late last night and shut both crossings on the border with Belarus after helium weather balloons drifted into the Baltic country’s territory for a second consecutive day.

Traffic at Vilnius Airport was suspended until 2am, while the Belarus border will remain shut until the same time, Lithuanian officials said.

European aviation has repeatedly been thrown into chaos in recent weeks by drone sightings and other air incursions, including at airports in Copenhagen, Munich and the Baltic region.

Alex Ross reports.

Sam Kiley meets Russian volunteers in Ukraine’s army near the southern front line who explain why they turned on Vladimir Putin – and how they’re happy to kill their countrymen.

Japan scrambled fighter jets to monitor nuclear-capable Russian warplanes that flew over international waters along the edge of Japanese airspace off its coast.

Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said Japan’s air force launched the jets in response to Russian bombers approaching the Sea of Japan.

The defence ministry said the two Tu-95 bombers, accompanied by two Su-35 fighters, had initially flown toward Japan’s Sado Island before turning northward. The ministry also released a map showing the flight path of the Russian aircraft off Japan’s west coast over the Sea of Japan.

More here.

The Donald Trump administration has reportedly prepared additional sanctions to target Russia’s economy to bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table to end Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

US officials have also told European counterparts that they support the EU using frozen Russian assets to buy US weapons for Kyiv, two US officials told Reuters.

Washington has held nascent internal conversations about leveraging Russian assets held in the US to support Ukraine’s war effort, according to the report.

While it is not clear whether Washington will actually carry out any of those moves in the immediate term, it shows there is a well-developed toolkit within the administration to up the ante further after Mr Trump imposed sanctions on Russia on Wednesday for the first time since returning to office in January.

One senior US official told Reuters that he would like to see European allies make the next big Russia move, which could be additional sanctions or tariffs.

A separate source said Mr Trump was likely to hit pause for a few weeks and gauge Russia’s reaction to Wednesday’s sanctions announcement.

Those sanctions took aim at oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft. The moves spiked oil prices by more than $2 and sent major Chinese and Indian buyers of Russian crude looking for alternatives.

North Korean foreign minister Choe Son Hui will visit Russia and Belarus, state media KCNA said.

Her trip follows the invitation of the foreign ministries of Russia and Belarus, KCNA said.

Meetings between Russian president Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, Kirill Dmitriev, and US officials will continue today, Reuters reported.

“Meetings between special envoy of the president of Russia for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries, Kirill Dmitriev and representatives of president (Donald) Trump’s administration were held on October 24 and 25 and will continue on October 26,” a source told the news agency.

Mr Dmitriev is in the US for what he said was a series of long-planned meetings.