Russia Ukraine war latest: Putin loses over 1,000 soldiers in past 24 hours on frontline, says Ukrainian military

Below we have some photos from the frontline published by the Russian ministry of defence.

Defence secretary John Healey has warned that the west is facing “a decade or more of growing aggression” Vladimir Putin’s Russia as Labour seeks to drawn Britain closer into EU defence arrangements.

The new defence secretary was speaking to journalists at the Nato summit in Washington DC after a series of meetings with the other 31 allies and Ukraine.

Mr Healey has committed to UK £3 billion of aid to Ukraine for the war to be transferred within the first 100 days of the government.

Nato must not become an “anti-China” bloc amid rising tensions between the Western alliance and Beijing, Hungary has warned.

Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said Nato should avoid tension with China after it condemned Beijing for “enabling” Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

It comes after Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban – who has consistently delayed EU military aid to Ukraine – made a surprise visit to Beijing after similar trips to Moscow and Kyiv to discuss an immediate ceasefire.

“Nato is a defence alliance. We cannot organise it into an anti-China bloc,” Mr Szijjarto said when asked about Nato’s presence in the Indo-Pacific.

The Ukrainian air force said it shot down all five cruise missiles and 11 out of 19 drones launched by Russia in a statement on Friday.

Russia’s main target was the town of Starokostiantyniv, important Ukrainian air base and a frequent target of Moscow’s strikes, it added in the statement.

On Wednesday, Nato labelled China a “decisive enabler” of Putin’s war in Ukraine – in the alliance’s strongest rebuke of Beijing.

But Beijing hit back and accused Nato of smearing the country while demanding the transatlantic alliance stay out of Asia.

“Nato keeps playing up the interlink between Europe’s security and the security in Asia-Pacific. We urge it to stay within its role as a regional defensive organisation in the north Atlantic,” Beijing said.

Russian forces have lost 1,030 soldiers killed and wounded in the past 24 hours on the war frontline in Ukraine, the Ukrainian military has said.

The losses for Vladimir Putin’s troops include 48 artillery systems and 23 armoured combat vehicles, said the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s estimates of Russia’s losses since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022 state the Moscow has lost at least 556,650 of its troops to fatalities and injuries on Ukrainian battlefield.

Ukraine urged Nato to lift restrictions on its use of long-range weapons against targets in Russia, saying that would be “game-changer” in the ongoing war while China slammed Nato criticism of its support for Russia as biased and malicious.

Andryi Yermak, president Vlodomyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, told a public forum that Russia had no restrictions on its use of weapons and it would be “a real game-changer” if Ukraine‘s allies could lift all limits on the use of weapons they supply to Ukraine.

Nato members have taken different approaches to how Ukraine can use weapons they send to Kyiv. Some have made clear Kyiv can use them to strike targets deep inside Russia while the United States has taken a narrower approach, allowing its weapons to be used only just inside Russia’s border against targets supporting Russian military operations in Ukraine.

Mr Biden told a press conference the United States had allowed Mr Zelensky to use American weapons in a limited way within Russia’s borders.

“If he had the ability to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin, would that make sense? It wouldn’t,” he added.

The new defence secretary was speaking to journalists at the Nato summit in Washington DC after a series of meetings with the other 31 allies and Ukraine.

He denied that the UK’s bid to draw back on some of the Tory Brexit arrangements would see the UK joining an EU military force but he confirmed that work on a security pact will start next week when Britain hosts the European Political Council summit.

Four Pacific countries attending the Nato summit issued a joint statement yesterday to “strongly condemn the illicit military cooperation” between Russia and North Korea, showing how the North Atlantic military alliance and its Pacific allies are forging closer ties to counter what they see as shared security threats.

For the third year in a row, leaders or their deputies from Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia — which are not Nato members — attended the summit of the 75-year-old military alliance of European and North American countries. In Washington, they launched cooperative projects on Ukraine, disinformation, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

“We will address our shared security challenges, including Russia’s war against Ukraine, China’s support for Russia’s war economy and the growing alignment of authoritarian powers,” Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said when meeting officials of the four Pacific partners.

“We must work even more closely together to preserve peace and protect the rules-based international order,” he said. “Our security is not regional. It is global.”