Russia-Ukraine war: Russia claims to have thwarted Ukrainian raid on Belgorod as Russian presidential vote begins – live

Suspilne, Ukraine's state broadcaster, is reporting an explosion in Odesa. Regional governor Oleg Kiper has warned residents via Telegram to take shelter.

More details soon …

Lisa O’Carroll is the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent

Europe could be at a 1942 moment where leaders realise that it is really imperative that Ukraine wins the war and do something to achieve that, the head of Estonian’s ministry of defence, Kusti Salm has said.

At a briefing with reporters in Brussels he said that the initiative of Emmanuel Macron, who is today meeting Olaf Scholz and Donald Tusk, could have a transformational effect on the war in Ukraine.

Referring to a meeting of 21 leaders in Paris two weeks ago after which Macron, unilaterally said sending troops to Ukraine should not be ruled out, Salm said:

It was first time when such a large group said that Ukraine needs to win the war. The European Council [of 27 EU member states] has never said it. But the change starts from the vision statement. And at some point, we get where this needs to be articulated. If we roll back history a little bit, then the change during the Second World War happened in 1942 when the UK and the US spelled out that Germany needed to be defeated.”

He said that was the pivotal moment when the allies went from ambiguity to a position of strength, a juncture Europe is now at.

He said the EU now needs not just to stand on the sidelines cheering for Ukraine but needs to develop a strategy and military plan to get Ukraine to victory.

The verbal support is there but that is not enough, he said.

“There is not a defence minister who hasn’t taken a selfie with Zelenskiy and said how crucial and how historical and all this is. Now it’s time to back these words with actual figures … big generational changes,” he added.

“We need to speak about it more about the realities. It doesn’t mean that Ukraine is going to lose, but it means the probability is getting uncomfortably high,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter how we cast the room with all sorts of political arguments. The fact of the matter is that if Russia walks away with the understanding that they get what they want, then they’re not going to stop there.”

Reuters notes that more than 114 million Russians are eligible to vote, including in what Moscow prefers to call its “new territories” – the four regions of Ukraine that it has claimed to annexed but which its forces only partly control. Ukraine says the staging of elections there is illegal.

As a reminder, Vladimir Putin is not the only candidate. He is running against Communist Nikolai Kharitonov, Leonid Slutsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, and Vladislav Davankov of the New People party.

Two anti-war candidates, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova were barred from running by the electoral commission. Supporters of the late Alexei Navalny have called on people across Russia to protest by turning out to vote all at the same time at noon on Sunday in each of the country’s 11 time zones.

They have presented the “Noon against Putin” action as a way for people to express opposition without the risk of arrest, as they will be queueing up to vote legally. The Kremlin has warned people against taking part in unauthorised gatherings.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Friday that a Russian national had been detained in Moscow on suspicion of treason and had confessed to assembling and launching drones on behalf of Ukraine.

Reuters reports that in a statement, the FSB said that the man, whom it did not name, had “assembled and launched unmanned aerial vehicles to create false targets in the immediate vicinity of Russian defence ministry facilities.”

The Interfax news agency cited a video released by the FSB as saying that the man had worked for the Freedom of Russia Legion, a group of armed pro-Ukrainian Russian exiles.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, has posted to the Telegram messaging app within the last twenty minutes to warn of an air alert. He wrote:

A missile warning siren has been launched in Belgorod and the Belgorod region. If you are at home, do not go near the windows. Take shelter in rooms without windows with solid walls. If you are outside, go to a shelter or other safe place.

Countering Russia’s claim to have thwarted cross-border attacks from Ukraine, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s GUR intelligence agency has said that Kursk and Belgorod regions inside Russia are “active combat zones”.

Andriy Yusov said on Ukrainian television:

Kursk and Belgorod regions are now an area of active combat actions. This is what we confirm. And as stated by the volunteers and rebels, we are talking about Russian citizens who, having no other options, are defending their civil right with arms against the Putin regime.

Ella Pamfilova, chairman of the central election commission of the Russian Federation, has said more than 2.6 million people have voted early in Russia’s election, which will almost undoubtedly see president Vladimir Putin returned with a large share of the vote.

She said early voters included those in the four regions of Ukraine which the Russian Federation has claimed to annex – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday that its forces had thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to launch a cross-border attack on Russia’s Belgorod region on Thursday.

Reuters reports that in a statement, the ministry said that Ukraine had attempted to land forces by helicopters in Belgorod region, a frontier province that has come under regular attack in recent months.

The attempted incursions come as Russia votes in its presidential election over three days, with president Vladimir Putin almost certainly guaranteed to win.

It has just gone 10am in Kyiv and 11am in Moscow. Russia begins its election today with Ukraine attempting to cause disruption ands confusion with cross-border raids. Here are the headlines …

• Three pro-Ukrainian battalions made up of recruits from Russia have launched a fresh incursion into southern Russia in a cross-border raid meant to sow chaos before President Vladimir Putin’s widely expected re-election this weekend. The three armed groups of Russian exiled fighters, who operate closely with Ukraine’s military, said they had crossed the border into the southern Kursk and Belgorod regions. Russia said on Friday it had thwarted attempts to land troops by helicopter in Belgorod.

• Russia is believed to have jammed the satellite signal on an aircraft used by the British defence minister, Grant Shapps, to travel from Poland back to the UK, a government source and journalists travelling with him said on Thursday. The GPS signal was interfered with for about 30 minutes while the plane flew close to Russia’s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, they said. There was no danger to Shapps on the travelling aircraft, UK Defence sources said.

• Russia and Ukraine downed enemy drones and rockets overnight to Friday as polling stations opened across Russia on the first day of voting in the presidential election. Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 27 Iranian-style drones – all of which it said it downed – as well as eight missiles at its territory overnight. Russia’s defence ministry said it intercepted five Ukrainian drones and two rockets over the Belgorod border region and the Kaluga region, south-west of Moscow. Local officials said earlier that two people were killed and 12 wounded in Ukrainian missiles strikes over the Belgorod region.

• Russia’s defence ministry claimed its troops killed 195 Ukrainian soldiers and destroyed five tanks and four armoured infantry vehicles, two days after saying it killed 234 Ukrainian troops in another border assault. The claims were not independently verified.

• Ukrainian drones attacked several oil refineries hundreds of kilometres from the frontline in Russian regions including Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Leningrad. The continuing strikes are part of a strategy to cause economic damage.