Ukraine war live: Kyiv ‘destroys’ Russian submarine in Black Sea

Former president Donald Trump has congratulated Russian president Vladimir Putin for the biggest prisoner swap between the Kremlin and the West since the Cold War.

“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal,” the Republican presidential candidate said at a campaign rally in Atlanta yesterday. “They released some of the greatest killers anywhere in the world,” he said.

“Some of the most evil killers they got. And we got our people back, but boy, we made some horrible, horrible deals. And it’s nice to say we got them back, but does that set a bad precedent,” he asked.

The US and Russia on Thursday completed their largest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history, a deal involving 24 people, many months of negotiations and concessions from other European countries.

The 24 people — some prominent, some not — included a collection of journalists and political dissidents, suspected spies, a computer hacker and a fraudster. Even a man convicted of murder.

Russia released 16 people.

Ukraine’s military said it had sunk a submarine in Russian-controlled Sevastopool, attacked a southern Russian airfield and hit oil depots and fuel and lubricant storage facilities in Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions.

“A Russian submarine went to the bottom of the Black Sea,” the defence ministry said in a post on X, naming the vessel as the B-237 Rostov-on-Don attack submarine.

The military’s general staff said the attack on Sevastopol port also significantly damaged four launchers of the S-400 anti-aircraft “Triumf” defence system.

Ukraine’s human rights commissioner urged the UN and the Red Cross to investigate an image widely shared online that he said likely showed a Ukrainian prisoner-of-war killed and dismembered by Russian forces.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general said separately that an urgent investigation had been launched into information being spread on social networks about the murder and dismemberment of a Ukrainian war prisoner.

“A photograph, probably of a Ukrainian prisoner whose head and limbs were cut off by the Russians, has appeared online,” Dmytro Lubinets, the country’s leading human rights official, said on Telegram.

“In view of these horrific images, I have urgently appealed to the Red Cross and the UN to record yet another human rights violation by the terrorist country,” Mr Lubinets wrote.

Andriy Kostin, the prosecutor general, said an urgent investigation had been launched. “Russia consistently repeats the crimes of the Nazis, defiantly showing utter contempt for all norms of the civilised world,” he wrote on Telegram.

Russia denies torture or other forms of maltreatment of prisoners of war.

Ukraine launched more long-range drone attacks than Russia in July for the first time since the war began.

According to figures published by the Ukrainian army, Russia launched 426 Shahed-type drones into Ukraine and Kyiv hit back with over 520 drones.

It comes as Russia has faced destructive attacks on its oil refineries and other targets in recent months appearing less effective in shooting down the Ukrainian weapons.

The Ukrainian drone attacks were considerably more than 200 attacks in each of the previous two months.

A Russian drone attack overnight damaged “critical infrastructure” in the central Ukrainian region of Vinnytsia, a local official said.

The Ukrainian air force said it shot down 24 out of 29 Shahed-type drones launched by Russia in the overnight attack over nine regions.

Russian forces also launched two S-300 anti-aircraft guided missiles and two Kh-31 missiles, the air force said.

Earlier this week, Ukraine said it repelled one of Russia’s largest long-range drone attacks since February 2022, shooting down all 89 drones which included a ‘significant’ number of decoys trying to deplete Ukraine’s air defences.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Russia has used more than 600 guided aerial bombs to attack his country in the past week.

“Russian combat aviation must be destroyed wherever it is, by all effective means. It is also quite fair to strike at Russian airfields. And we need this joint solution with our partners – a security solution,” Zelenskiy said in a social media post.

The Ukrainian military said earlier on Saturday that it had attacked Russia’s Morozovsk airfield overnight, hitting an ammunition depot which stored guided aerial bombs among other equipment.