Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 689

The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, made a £2.5bn commitment to Ukraine’s defence on Friday during a visit to Kyiv, and pledged that the UK would not falter at a time when military aid from the US has stalled. Sunak met the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, embracing him warmly and addressed Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. The two leaders held talks and signed a new UK-Ukrainian security treaty. It guarantees that the UK will give “swift and sustained” help should Russia attack Ukraine again.

The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said he would visit Kyiv in the next few days. Warsaw is one of Ukraine’s key allies in its war against Russia but relations between the two countries became tense last year, under the rule of Tusk’s predecessor, Mateusz Morawiecki.

Zelenskiy said he was more positive now than he was last month that his country would secure new financial aid from the US. But there was no indication in Washington that congressional approval for an aid package proposed by the White House would be forthcoming anytime soon. “I am viewing this with more positivity than in December, I think we will [get it],” Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kyiv.

Ukraine’s military spy chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said Kyiv’s attacks in Russian-annexed Crimea were set to intensify, adding that Moscow’s economy was proving surprisingly resilient despite sanctions. “In 2023, the first Ukrainian incursions took place in temporarily occupied Crimea,” Budanov, 38, said in an interview with French daily Le Monde published on Friday. “And this is just the beginning.”

Ukraine’s ground forces commander told Reuters that Kyiv needed more military aircraft for its war effort, such as US A-10 attack jets to support infantry as well as planes that could fire long-range cruise missiles. “I would talk about A-10s as an option if they’ll be given to us … this is not a new machine, but a reliable one that has proven itself in many wars, and which has a wide array of weapons for destroying land targets to help the infantry,” Col-Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said.

Russian shelling on Friday killed two people in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, while a drone attack by Kyiv in the Moscow-controlled east killed another two, officials said. The head of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said the Russian army used artillery, striking a street. A Ukrainian drone, meanwhile, killed two people and wounded six during an evacuation of injured people near the Russian-controlled city of Gorlivka, the Russian-backed mayor, Ivan Prikhodko, said.

Russia labelled the exiled writer Boris Akunin, who has spoken out against Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, as a foreign agent. The Kremlin has intensified its crackdown on dissent since launching its offensive in Ukraine in February 2022 and targeted the arts, with books by authors critical of Moscow disappearing from bookshops. Akunin is the pen name of Georgian-born writer Grigory Chkhartishvili.

Moldova’s pro-Russian separatist Transdniestria region accused central authorities in the ex-Soviet state of training Ukrainian soldiers to launch attacks on the rebel area’s institutions and leaders. Moldova’s pro-European government, which denounces Russia’s war in Ukraine, immediately denied the allegation.