Ukraine-Russia war latest: Nato jets scrambled to shoot down foreign drone after it enters Latvian airspace

A suspected Russian plot to assassinate a Ukrainian-American in Warsaw was foiled by Polish authorities, according to Polish prime minister Donald Tusk.

The suspect, allegedly recruited by Russia’s secret services, was arrested on 7 August.

Police said that he will be in custody for an initial three months.

Tusk said it was the first known attempt by “someone on the orders of Russia” to target a US citizen on the territory of another Nato country.

The target was reportedly a US citizen of Ukrainian origin who was considered “uncomfortable for Putin’s regime”, Tusk said during a press conference.

The operation involved US and Polish intelligence cooperation, Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s minister overseeing intelligence services, said.

Ukraine has reportedly offered Russia a mutual deal to stop attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea, aimed at restoring the vital grain export route, Reuters reported.

The move comes as Ukraine’s harvest season begins and its grain exports are severely disrupted.

It also follows US pressure on Zelensky to stop attacks on Russian oil shipments and the port of Novorossiysk, according to The Financial Times.

Kyiv has reportedly made the proposal through a third party, Reuters said, but Russia has not yet responded.

A previous UN-Turkey-backed Black Sea grain deal ran from 2022-23 but collapsed after Russia refused to renew it.

Russian president Vladimir Putin visited Etorofu, one of the four Kuril Islands disputed between Russia and Japan, prompting a strong reaction from Tokyo.

Japan said the visit makes improving already strained relations with Moscow more difficult.

Prime minister Sanae Takaichi said it “hurts the feelings of the Japanese people and is absolutely unacceptable”, adding: “We hope that the Russian side will take the seriousness of this ⁠matter fully to heart.”

The island – known as Iturup in Russia and in Japan as Etorofu – was seized by Soviet forces in 1945 after Japan’s surrender in World War II.

Japan continues to claim the four islands and has made their return a condition for signing a formal peace treaty with Russia.

Relations have deteriorated further since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Japan joining Western sanctions against Moscow.

Putin’s visit also comes amid Russia’s broader efforts to assert historical territorial claims.

Ukrainian drones targeted a logistics hub owned by Russia’s largest online retailer, Wildberries and sparked a fire at one of the country’s major oil refineries in Bashkortostan on Thursday, according to regional officials.

Bashkortostan head Radiy Khabirov said 16 drones were shot down over Salavat and another five over the nearby Chishminsky district, according to The Moscow Times.

The areas are about 1,200km east of Moscow and more than 1,300km from Ukraine.

“Two people were injured” in the attacks and were receiving treatment in hospital, Khabirov said on Telegram.

He said falling drone debris caused a fire in an “industrial area”.

Exiled outlet Astra identified the site as the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat refinery, which accounts for about 2.7 per cent of Russia’s total refining capacity.

The refinery halted operations after being damaged in a drone attack last month.

Wildberries said a fire also broke out in an “industrial zone” housing one of its facilities.

The company said staff had been evacuated beforehand and that no retail goods were stored at the site.

Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga was damaged in a drone attack, the Leningrad region’s governor said, without immediately providing details on the extent of the damage or any casualties.

Two people were killed in Russia’s drone attack on a passenger train in Odesa region, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday.

“Today in the Odesa region, the Russians once again destroyed an ordinary passenger train locomotive with a jet-powered drone. There were 340 people on the train,” he said.

“Whoever was operating that drone certainly could not have been unaware that the target was entirely civilian,” he added.

The two dead were the train’s engineer and assistant engineer, according to officials.

Fighter jets on a Nato air defence mission shot down a drone that entered Latvian airspace early on Friday, Latvia’s armed forces said on X.

The armed forces later lifted an air threat alert in regions near Russia.

Finland, another Nato and EU member that shares a border with Russia, also temporarily restricted aviation and maritime traffic in parts of the eastern Gulf of Finland as a precaution against possible drones, its defence forces said on X.

Latvia’s armed forces did not immediately provide details about the drone or where it came from.

Countries bordering Russia and Ukraine periodically issue air threat alerts and intercept drones as Moscow and Kyiv continue to exchange attacks more than four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine’s military struck an oil refinery and petrochemical complex in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, causing a fire, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Thursday.

We earlier reported that Russian authorities said Ukraine had attacked an industrial area in Russia’s Bashkortostan region.

It said on the Telegram app that the complex was located about 1,300 km (808 miles) from the Ukrainian border and was involved in supplying fuel to the Russian troops.

Wildberries, the online retailer that Kyiv has been targeted in a drone campaign which aims at “bringing the war home” to ordinary Russians, also confirmed that one if its facilities in the region was set on fire by the attack.

Ukrainian forces launched a massive overnight attack on Russia’s Novorossiysk naval base using drones, missiles, and unmanned boats, president Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed.

Here’s all you need to know in just five bullet points with The Independent’s Bulletin.

Ukraine needs five per cent of US Patriot interceptor stocks to get through the winter and 10 per cent to destroy all Russian ballistic missiles, Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN.

He said Ukraine had “two and a half times less interceptors than we had in 2025”, while Russia was firing twice as many ballistic missiles each month.

Zelensky said he was asking the US to sell Ukraine 5 per cent of its interceptor stocks.

Zelensky said Ukraine was currently receiving only “1 per cent” of what the US makes.

“From 1 per cent to 5 per cent… I have some months and millions [of] phone calls and anything else. I do some things which I can’t even share. It doesn’t mean that it’s out of the law. But I can’t speak about it