Ukraine updates: Russia launches drone attack on Kyiv

Russia plans to ramp up its defense spending by almost 30% in 2025, figures published on Monday showed.

The latest planned increase in spending will take next year's defense budget to 13.5 trillion rubles ($145 billion, €130 billion), a document published on the parliamentary website showed, up from 10.4 trillion in 2024. 

Russia had already increased military spending to levels not seen since the Soviet Union era, producing missiles and drones for use in Ukraine, while paying for its hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting on the front lines.

Defense spending will account for 32% of government spending in 2025, according to the figures. And the figures in Monday's release do not include some other resources being directed to the military campaign, such as spending that Russia describes as "domestic security" and some expenditure classified as top secret.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that the needs of what the Kremlin calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine and support for the military would remain the budget priority for 2025.

Russian forces have captured the village of Nelipivka in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

There has been no confirmation of the capture from Ukraine. 

Russian forces have accelerated their advance in the Donetsk region in recent weeks, capturing a number of towns and villages.

US citizen Stephen James Hubbard pleaded guilty in a Moscow court to charges of mercenary activity, the Russian state news agency RIA reported.

"Yes, I agree with the indictment," RIA quoted him as saying.

RIA, citing a prosecutor in court, said 72-year-old Hubbard had signed a contract with a Ukrainian territorial defense unit in the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium at the start of the Russian full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The prosecution said he was promised $1,000 (€890) a month and provided with training, weapons and ammunition. The American was detained by Russian soldiers on April 2 of that year, according to the prosecutor.

Hubbard was placed in pre-trial detention last week for six months. He faces a sentence of seven to 15 years if convicted.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed that Moscow will achieve all the goals it has set for itself in Ukraine, in the third year of its full-scale invasion.

"The truth is on our side. All goals set will be achieved," Putin said in a video message released to mark the second anniversary of what Russia calls the "reunification day," when Moscow illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions.

In his speech, Putin repeated his justification for sending troops into neighboring Ukraine as protecting Russian speakers from a "neo-Nazi dictatorship" that aims to "cut them off forever from Russia, their historic homeland."

After invading Ukraine in February 2022, Russia annexed the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. However, it does not fully control all of the territory in these regions.

The annexation was widely condemned by the international community as illegal and illegitimate.

Russia launched several waves of drones targeting Kyiv early on Monday.

All the drones that Russia launched at the Ukrainian capital were either destroyed by defense systems or neutralized by electronic warfare, Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv's military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app.

According to preliminary information, no casualties or damage have been reported, he added.

Kyiv, its surrounding region and all of the eastern part of Ukraine were under an air raid alert for more than five hours early Monday, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.

The air force said it had shot down 67 of the 73 drones and one of the three missiles fired by Russia during the attack.

dh/nm (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)