Ukraine-Russia war live: Zelensky says Russia lost 6,000 troops in Kursk incursion

Three people have been killed and three others wounded by Russian artillery shelling of the eastern Ukrainian town of Kostyantynivka, Donetsk’s regional governor has said.

Three men aged between 24 and 69 were killed and a multi-storey block, administrative building and a shop were damaged, governor Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram.

Ukraine’s counter-invasion of Russia saw it take more than 300 square miles of the Kursk region in its first month, raised morale at home and challenged a growing sense in the West that stalemate was the best Kyiv could hope for. Yet as a daring incursion looks set to become an open-ended occupation, doubts are growing about its long-term wisdom.

When Ukrainian forces crossed the Russian border on 6 August, Kyiv was tight-lipped about its objectives, both to keep Moscow guessing and also because it did not want to set itself up for a fall. It needed a victory for both foreign and domestic audiences.

Since then, though, the goals seem to have changed – and gaps opened between the military and political leadership.

Historian and author Mark Galeotti has more analysis on the incursion here:

Debris from a drone shot down in an overnight Russian attack was found next to Ukraine’s parliament building, Kyiv’s parliament said in a statement on Telegram.

Ukraine’s air force said earlier that Russia had launched 67 drones in a nationwide overnight attack.

The chair of the Ukrainian parliament has met with the speaker of the House of Commons Lindsay Hoyle at the sidelines of a G7 summit in Italy for parliamentary leaders.

Ruslan Stefanchuk thanked the UK for its support for Ukraine and stressed the importance that this remains unchanged, as he highlighted the need for Ukraine to be granted permission to strike military targets in russia with Western weapons, according to a statement issued by Ukrainian officials.

In their first ever joint statement, the heads of MI6 and the CIA have warned that “staying the course” in backing Ukraine’s fight against Russia was more important than ever and vowed to further their cooperation.

Writing in the Financial Times, CIA Director William Burns and Richard Moore, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, said: “The partnership lies at the beating heart of the special relationship between our countries.”

The agencies “stand together in resisting an assertive Russia and Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” they said, noting that their services marked 75 years of partnership two years ago.

“Staying the course is more vital than ever. Putin will not succeed in extinguishing Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence,” they said, adding that their agencies would continue aiding Ukrainian intelligence.

The spy chiefs said their agencies would keep working to thwart a “reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe by Russian intelligence” and its “cynical use of technology” to spread disinformation “to drive wedges between us.”

Ukraine’s air force has said that Russia launched a total of 67 long-range drones in a mass overnight attack, 58 of which it was able to shoot down.

The air force said in a statement on the Telegram app that air defence units were scrambled into action in 11 regions across Ukraine.