- Two US peace negotiators will visit Ukraine on Sunday after visiting Moscow, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday. Ukraine’s president said Kyiv would guarantee the safety of Russian airspace during the visit of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow, after which they are expected to travel on to Kyiv.

He called on Russia to also halt its air attacks on Ukraine during the negotiators’ visit. Donald Trump, the US president, said: “We have an idea for peace … I sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, two great negotiators.” The New York Times reported that Washington has asked both sides for a ceasefire during the envoys’ visit.

Kushner is Trump’s son-in-law and Witkoff deals in real estate. - The headquarters of Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency took a direct hit from a Russian drone on Friday, Amy Hawkins reports from Kyiv. Zelenskyy said he had instructed the SBU to deliver an “appropriate, tangible response” to the strike, while the foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, described it as a “major escalation”.

Zelenskyy said: “The drone was aimed directly at the office of the head of the security service in that building.” At least nine people were injured in Friday’s strike, according to Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko. - Air Tanzania said it was suspending flights from Dar es Salaam to Moscow from Friday, becoming the first airline to do so after Zelenskyy warned this week that the skies over Russia were unsafe because of Ukraine’s retaliatory drone attacks.

The airline said on Facebook that it took the step after “a routine risk assessment of the operating environment along the route”. Vladimir Putin on Thursday falsely claimed that Ukraine was threatening to attack civilian aircraft. Moscow has protested to the UN’s aviation agency after Ukraine asked it to have member countries keep their airlines out of Russian airspace.

“Ukraine does not threaten civilian aviation as such – not a single civilian aircraft,” Zelenskyy said during the week. “There will simply be drones in Russia’s skies on a scale that has to be taken into account.” - A “massive” overnight Russian attack on the Odesa region killed one person and injured at least five others, including a child, regional head Oleh Kiper said on Friday.

The attacks damaged multiple residential buildings, including two multistorey blocks. Strikes elsewhere in Ukraine killed two police officers in Dnipro, officials said, while a drone attack in Kyiv wounded three people after hitting a residential building.

- In Russia, a large-scale Ukrainian drone strike hit the Black Sea resort city of Sochi and the nearby district of Sirius, regional officials said on Friday. They said the attack sparked a blaze at an oil depot. Russian media outlets reported two oil depots were hit, with one fire in Sochi and another in Sirius.

- Finnish authorities said they were investigating how a Russian-made drone ended up on the shore in the Pellinge archipelago east of Helsinki. Finland’s border guard said it appeared to be a Geoscan 701 drone, manufactured by a Russian company. “The device model in question is used by both state and civilian operators, and it is not possible at this stage to determine its intended use or identify the country or entity operating it.

” - A World Health Organization warehouse storing humanitarian medical supplies was struck during an air attack on the Kyiv region, continuing what the WHO said was a pattern of such attacks across Ukraine. In 2026, at least 20 attacks have affected depots storing humanitarian goods including healthcare supplies, said a WHO spokesperson in Geneva.

- A vice-president in the far-right party of French presidential contender Marine Le Pen has sparked a furore by saying France would “turn off the tap” to Ukraine if National Rally (RN) came to power. Louis Aliot claimed the RN “condemned the Russian aggression” but said the war had “weakened Europe”.

One of Le Pen’s leading rivals in the elections, centre-right politician Edouard Philippe, who served as Macron’s first prime minister, retorted that “turning off the tap to Ukraine is serving Russia”. “Weakening Ukraine, as Marine Le Pen wishes, is threatening the security of Europe and France.

I will do everything to prevent it.” Le Pen herself entered the fray, claiming that her party was pushing for a “diplomatic resolution of this abominable war”. - The head of Memorial, Russia’s Nobel peace prize-winning rights group, has told AFP she fears a fresh crackdown after September’s legislative elections, with more people arrested and sent to fight in Ukraine.

Elena Zhemkova also vowed to keep up the fight for human rights in Russia, despite her group being declared illegal and herself forced into exile. “Unfortunately, I think that now everything is getting worse, but not so fast,” the 65-year-old said. “But after the elections, there will be a very sharp deterioration.

” Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy calls air truce as Kushner and Witkoff head for Kyiv via Moscow Direct hit on SBU headquarters in Kyiv targeted intelligence chief; airline suspends Moscow flights after Zelenskyy warning.

Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office, Trump defended the months-long US military campaign against the Islamic Republic, saying its primary objective was to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. "We're in five months now. And you know what we did in five months?

They're not going to have a nuclear weapon; that's what we did," Trump said. Also read: Trump calls Iran conflict 'small potatoes' and defends Vance's position that it's not a 'war' "Iran will not have a nuclear weapon because if they did, you probably wouldn't be standing here very long," he added.

Trump then warned that Pickaxe Mountain could be targeted if the US detects activity there. "We may hit Pickaxe very soon because if there was anything going on with Pickaxe," Trump said, adding that US intelligence was closely monitoring activity at the site.

"We know everybody that's moving at Pickaxe; we know everybody that's moving everywhere all over Iran. And if anything goes bad, we hit them; we hit them hard," Trump said. Pickaxe Mountain is located near Iran's heavily damaged Natanz uranium-enrichment facility and is described as a heavily fortified underground complex containing two deeply buried tunnel systems.

The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that Israeli intelligence believes Iran has relocated thousands of centrifuges to the deeply buried facility. The underground construction of the site is believed to make it substantially more resistant to conventional aerial bombardment, making any potential US decision to strike it a significant escalation in the campaign against Iran's nuclear infrastructure.

Trump also argued that US military intervention had prevented a wider regional conflict, saying that without American action, Israel and the broader Middle East would have faced a potentially more serious threat. "If we didn't go in there, you wouldn't have Israel right now, you wouldn't have the Middle East, and they probably would go at European cities and our cities next," Trump said.

"But we stopped them from having a nuclear weapon in five months," he added. The remarks came days after the US Central Command said American forces had completed a wave of strikes against Iranian military targets. According to CENTCOM, the operations targeted facilities associated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps last week, including air-defence installations, radar systems, maritime assets, mine-laying capabilities and communications sites.

CENTCOM said the strikes followed what it described as recent "attempted attacks" by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against US service members. Trump also spoke about the recent US strikes on Iranian radar systems, claiming American forces had destroyed sophisticated radar installations on two occasions.

"There had been no shooting for days before the hit that we gave them the other night to wipe out the radar they had," Trump said. "They had very sophisticated radar - they brought in radar because we knocked it out once, and now we knocked it out twice.

Now we don't notice any activity," he added. Trump suggested Iran had become reluctant to continue deploying radar systems because of repeated US attacks. "I think they're tired of putting it in and getting blown up," he said. Iran had strongly condemned the latest American strikes, accusing Washington of violating Iranian sovereignty and targeting non-military infrastructure and civilian sites across several provinces.

Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Iranian armed forces had responded with what it described as "crushing defensive strikes" against US military bases in West Asia that Tehran said served as the origin, support and staging points for American attacks.

Following the resumption of US strikes on Iranian targets in early September, President Trump characterized the six-month-old confrontation as "small potatoes," noting that 18 US service members have been killed since operations began in February. While Trump asserted that US forces have significantly secured the Strait of Hormuz and that current attacks are intermittent, Central Command reported recent strikes on Iranian air-defense and maritime assets.

Vice President JD Vance declined to use the term "war" to describe the U.S. military engagement with Iran, asserting that there is no active shooting despite recent exchanges of heavy fire. While the administration maintains that the operation is limited, the conflict has now continued for over six months, raising questions about its duration ahead of the November midterm elections.