Drone attack at Snake Island results in apparent destruction of landing craft as counter-offensive in north gathers pace

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

The Ukrainian port city of Odesa was hit by renewed Russian missile strikes on Saturday, as military authorities in Kyiv claimed one of their drones had sunk a second Russian ship in the Black Sea.

A counter-offensive against Russia also appeared to be gathering pace in the north, where analysts said that Ukraine’s military may be able to push Russian forces out of artillery range of the country’s second city of Kharkiv in the coming days.

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Russia’s defence ministry said that its missiles destroyed a large ammunition depot in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk.

Reuters reports it also said its air defences shot down two Ukrainian warplanes, an Su-25 and a MiG-29, in the eastern Luhansk region.

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Russia’s RIA news agency is carrying additional details from Moldova’s unrecognised breakaway Transnistria region, which claimed earlier this week to have foiled a drone attack it says originated within Ukraine. Transnistria borders Ukraine to the west.

The report quotes Transnistria’s foreign minister Vitaly Ignatiev saying:

The red increased terrorist threat code remains. We managed to neutralise the drone that flew with explosives in the direction of the Mayak radio and television centre. We minimised this threat, but the danger of terrorist attacks remains

The drone that was neutralized, we were able to track the tracking of its movements, and everything suggests that it was launched from the territory of Ukraine , six kilometres from the border of Transnistria

Leader of Ukrainian forces says they are engaged in ‘difficult bloody battles’ against Russian troops, as another 344 civilians are evacuated

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

Fierce fighting has continued inside Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks, the commander of Ukrainian forces in the plant said, as more civilians fled the city on evacuation buses following weeks of brutal bombardment that have reduced much of it to rubble.

Ukrainian forces were fighting “difficult bloody battles” against Russian troops for a second day, Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov regiment, said in a brief video released on Telegram late on Wednesday.

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Daniel Boffey reports for us from Brussels on the contents of Ursula von der Leyen’s speech to the European parliament:

The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has been detailing her proposal to the member states on the sixth package of sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, which includes a total ban on oil imports.

She has listed the main themes of the proposal.

This will be a complete import ban on all Russian oil, seaborne and pipeline, crude and refined. We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion, in a way that allows us and our partners to secure alternative supply routes and minimises the impact on global markets. This is why we will phase out Russian supply of crude oil within six months and refined products by the end of the year.