Latest war between Ukraine and Russia: Putin's troops thwart another cross-border attack as he warns about long-range weapons

Ukraine's drones targeted an ethanol plant in Russia's Voronezh region last night, Russian news channel Telegram reported.

According to the region's governor, the attack sparked a fire at an unspecified industrial facility and injured one person.

Rescue workers were sent to the fire, said Alexander Gusev, governor of the Voronezh region in southern Russia, on his Telegram channel.

He said about 10 Ukrainian drones were destroyed or intercepted over the region yesterday, with debris falling on an industrial plant and starting a fire.

News channel Baza News Telegram, which is close to the Russian security services, and several other Russian news channels Telegram reported that two explosions were heard near the Ethanol Spirit plant in the village of Krasnoye.

Although Kiev has not commented on the reported attacks, it has often said that its drone strikes inside Russia target infrastructure critical to Russia's war effort and that they are a response to Moscow's ongoing attacks on Ukraine's territory .

Russia's air defense units destroyed 21 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry said this morning.

Of these, 13 drones were destroyed over the border region of Belgorod, six over the Bryansk region, which also borders Ukraine, while the remaining two were destroyed over the Voronezh and Kursk regions each, the ministry said.

After the BRICS summit in Kazan on Thursday (October 24), the Russian president said: “This is something that has been constantly discussed for more than a year.”

“At one point we were accused of this, and Trump himself, of somehow being connected to Russia. As a result of an investigation in the United States itself, everyone, including Congress, as far as I know, came to the conclusion that this was complete nonsense, that nothing like this had ever happened before.

“That didn’t happen before, and it won’t happen now.”

Volodymyr Zelensky said that cooperation within the framework of the “Ukraine plus Northern Europe” format was gaining momentum and that further steps could be expected in the coming week that could increase pressure on Russia.

“You understand that it is necessary to create problems for the aggressor so that Russia misses the opportunity to ruin the life of the world,” Mr. Zelensky said in his evening address last night.

“We will talk to the Nordics (next week) about new fundamental steps that can increase pressure on Russia for this war and in the interests of honest diplomacy,” he said.

The five Nordic countries – Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland – are now all NATO countries and have all been staunch supporters of Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.

Russia lost nearly 200 soldiers, with 80 confirmed fatalities in eastern Ukraine where a fierce battle is raging, officials said.

Russian forces made 27 attempts to break through Ukrainian defenses on the Pokrovsk Front near Myroliubivka, Promin, Krutyi Yar, Vyshneve and Selydove, but encountered strong resistance, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.

About 189 Russian soldiers on that front were killed or injured, adding to Russia's losses, military officials said in a nightly update.

There were 142 battles on the front in the last 24 hours. The most intense fighting was reported on the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove fronts, with additional activity by Russian troops on the Kupiansk, Lyman and Vremivka fronts, military officials said.

Russian forces have blocked another cross-border incursion by Ukrainian troops into southwest Russia, a local official claimed.

An “armed group” tried to breach the border between Ukraine and Russia's Bryansk region yesterday but was repulsed, local governor Aleksandr Bogomaz said.

The Russian official on the scene did not say whether Ukrainian soldiers carried out the attack, but claimed the situation was “stable and under control” by Russian forces in the evening.

Responsibility for previous incursions into Russia's Belgorod and Bryansk regions were claimed by two shadowy groups: the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Russian Freedom Legion.

The Bryansk region borders Kursk province, where Ukraine launched a surprise attack on August 6 that rocked the Kremlin and marked the largest attack on Russia since World War II.

A high-level delegation from South Korea will inform the North Atlantic Council today about North Korea's deployment of troops in Russia, NATO said, after the United States expressed grave concerns about the possible use of troops against Ukraine.

“Ambassadors from NATO’s Indo-Pacific partners – including Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea – have been invited to attend,” the military alliance added. The North Atlantic Council is NATO's most important decision-making body.

Ukrainian military intelligence said on Thursday that about 12,000 North Korean troops, including 500 officers and three generals, were already in Russia and exercises were being conducted at five military bases.

On the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not deny that North Korean troops were in Russia. But he said it was up to Moscow to implement a deal with Pyongyang that included a mutual defense clause to support each other against external aggression.

Several people were injured in Russia's multi-stage airstrikes on Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region overnight, Ukrainian military officials said early this morning.

Two people were hospitalized late yesterday after Russia hit the city of Kharkiv – the administrative center of the wider Kharkiv region – with precision-guided bombs, damaging several residential buildings, the city's mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

There were further attacks on the city later that night, Terekhov said, in which several buildings were partially damaged.

At least four more people suffered various injuries later in the night in the Kharkiv region after Russia launched more attacks, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram.

A residential building was damaged in an attack on the town of Chuhuiv, Syniehubov said. He added that there were no injuries in this attack.

Donald Trump told podcaster Joe Rogan he could negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine if elected.

When asked how he would avoid the course of World War III, he said: “I know both very well. If I told you exactly what I would do, I would never be able to close the deal.” “I believe that as president-elect I would ensure that this war ends quickly.

“We have enormous power in the United States. I have stopped other wars through the use of tariffs alone.”