Ukraine-Russia war latest: Huge explosion in attack on Kyiv gas facilities

American defence firm Northrop Grumman is testing higher calibre bullets capable of taking down drones at a lower cost, a top company executive told Reuters.

Vice President Steve O’Bryan said Ukraine had welcomed its counter unmanned aircraft system, M-ACE, which uses a cannon to shoot down drones.

“They’ve asked: Hey, we need a higher calibre so it goes further. And that’s what we’re working on right now. We’re in test on that,” he said, adding the company was looking into 50mm and higher calibres.

Speaking on Thursday, the Russian president praised Donald Trump as a “comfortable conversationalist” who “listens, hears, and responds” following their Alaska summit in August.

However, he said that deployment of US Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine “would mark a completely new, qualitatively new stage of escalation”, as well as hurt ties between the US and Russia.

Russia’s Energy Ministry is not currently considering a diesel export ban for producers, it said on Friday.

Earlier this week Russia imposed a partial ban on diesel exports and extended an existing gasoline export ban until the end of the year, the government said on Tuesday.

Bavaria’s prime minister demanded permission to shoot down drones “immediately” after Munich airport was closed due to a reported sighting.

Markus Söder told the Bild newspaper on Friday: “The drone incidents demonstrate the immense pressure. From now on, the rule must be: Shoot down drones instead of waiting! And do so consistently!

“Our police must be able to shoot down drones immediately,” he said.

A Russian drone attack caused a fire on a farm in Ukraine’s north east, killing some 13,000 pigs, emergency services said on Friday.

“About 13,000 pigs died as a result of a Russian UAV attack on a farming enterprise in the Novovodolazka community” in Kharkiv, the state emergency service said.

A farm worker was also injured in the attack, they added.

Russian air defences shot down 20 Ukrainian UAVs overnight, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Friday.

Between 11pm on Thursday and 7am on Friday, air defences “destroyed and intercepted” nine UAVs over the Black Sea and four over the Voronezh region, a statement read.

They also claimed Russia had intercepted three UAVs over the Belgorod region, three over Crimea and one over Kursk.

Russian warships have repeatedly sailed on collision courses, aimed weapons at Danish naval vessels and disrupted navigation systems in Denmark’s straits connecting the Baltic and North Sea, its intelligence service said Friday.

“We have seen several incidents in the Danish straits, where Danish air force helicopters and naval vessels have been targeted by tracking radars and physically pointed at with weapons from Russian warships,” Danish Defence Intelligence Service Director Thomas Ahrenkiel told a press conference.

Denmark’s intelligence service said such incidents risk unintended escalation.

It comes after Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that Kyiv was deploying military experts to Denmark to share its experience in combating Russian drones:

A Finnish court dismissed a case on Friday against the crew of the Russian-linked tanker which damaged Baltic Sea cables last year, ruling prosecutors failed to prove intent and that alleged negligence must be pursued by the ship’s flag state or the crew’s home countries.

The December 25 incident was one of a string of cable and gas pipeline outages in the Baltic Sea since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, putting NATO forces in the region on high alert. Russia has denied involvement in cable cutting.

Finnish prosecutors will decide within a week if they will appeal the ruling, state prosecutor Jukka Rappe told Reuters.

The criminal trial against the captain and two officers was among the first judicial attempts to punish suspected perpetrators for damaging critical underwater infrastructure, but was complicated by provisions of international maritime law and the difficulty of proving criminal intent.