Russia Ukraine war live: Russian drone debris found in Romania as Nato rules out ‘intentional attack’

Debris from what is believed to be a Russian drone landed in Romania, the country’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday.

It is the latest apparent incident of drone wreckage from the war in neighboring Ukraine falling onto the NATO member’s soil.

Ukraine is blackmailing Hungary and Slovakia with a halt to oil deliveries, an aide to the Hungarian prime minister said on Friday, after the countries stopped receiving oil from Russian group Lukoil.

“Ukraine is blackmailing the two countries that are standing for peace and ceasefire,” Gergely Gulyas told a news conference. “If the situation is not resolved, there will be a fuel shortage… a solution must be found by September.”

Speaking to The Independent from his country’s embassy in west London, he is under no illusion about the role the UK has played.

It also disallows the transmission of any information that could be used to identify any Russian troops or their location.

Russia overnight attacked Ukrainian energy facilities in two regions with drones, disrupting electricity supplies, Ukraine‘s national power grid operator said on Friday.

Power supplies have, however, been already restored to most consumers in the northern Chernihiv and Zhytomyr regions, Ukrenergo said.

Ukrainian air defences destroyed 20 out of the 22 Russian attack drones launched overnight, Ukraine‘s air force chief said. Most of the drones were shot down in the Kherson, Sumy, Zhytomyr and Chernihiv regions.

The governor of the Chernihiv region said that some infrastructure and a dormitory were damaged during the attack on the town of Nizhyn, without giving further details.

Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine‘s energy sector have intensified since the spring, resulting in blackouts in many regions and forcing Kyiv to start large-scale electricity imports from the European Union.

In a video released by RIA, which had been edited in places to remove certain references, Yevgeny Serebyrakov said he had been recruited by Ukrainian intelligence last year and asked to kill “an officer.”

He said in the video that he had gathered the components to make a homemade bomb at his Ukrainian handler’s request and placed it beneath the unnamed officer’s vehicle.

He was promised Ukrainian citizenship and $10,000-20,000 dollars as a reward for his work, he said.

Russia‘s RIA state news agency on Friday broadcast a video in which a Russian citizen said he had blown up a military officer in his car in Moscow earlier this week at the behest of the SBU Ukrainian security service.

Reuters could not independently verify the handcuffed man’s assertions and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

The Kommersant newspaper reported on Wednesday that a car bomb had injured an officer from Russia‘s military intelligence agency in northern Moscow. Other media said the injured man was a regular military officer.

Russia‘s interior ministry said at the time that two people had been injured in the blast and that a criminal case had been opened. CCTV footage showed a Toyota Land Cruiser parked outside what looked like a residential complex exploding into a fireball.

Turkish authorities said late on Wednesday they had arrested a Russian citizen suspected of the attack in Bodrum after he had flown in from Moscow.

On Friday, Russia‘s FSB security service said in a statement that the man, whom it named as Yevgeny Serebyrakov, had been brought to Russia from Turkey and handed over to investigators.

The Pentagon has found $2bn worth of additional errors in its calculations for ammunition, missiles and other equipment sent to Ukraine, increasing the improperly valued material to a total of $8.2bn, a US government report has revealed.

Last year’s calculations by the Pentagon revealed a $6.2 billion error after the staff used “replacement value” instead of “depreciated value” to tabulate the billions in materials sent to Ukraine. The error created a path for billions more to be given to Ukraine.

The US Department of Defence has faced challenges in accurately valuing defence articles sent to Ukraine due to unclear accounting definitions, a new Government Accountability Office report showed.

The Pentagon told the GAO that since then, $2bn more in overstatements have been found. As a result, an additional $2bn worth of arms can be sent to Ukraine to cover the amount of aid approved by the Biden administration.

In one example cited in the GAO report, 10 vehicles were valued at $7,050,000 when the supporting documentation showed they should have been valued at zero, their net book value.

The GAO has recommended that Congress clarify the definition of value in the context of defence articles under Presidential Drawdown Authority.