Russia-Ukraine War Live Updates: 88 towns and villages recaptured in Kherson region, says Ukraine

Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu held a phone call with US counterpart Lloyd Austin, the defence ministry said Friday, in rare talks between Moscow and Washington since the start of the Ukraine conflict.

The European Union is drawing up plans to provide Ukraine with 1.5 billion euros ($1.46 billion) in economic aid per month next year, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said Friday.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin urged his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu on Friday to keep "lines of communication" open on the war in Ukraine, a spokesman said. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/pentagon-chief-urges-russia-counterpart-to-maintain-communications-on-ukraine/articleshow/95016619.cms

Ukraine is taking down 85% of Iranian-made "kamikaze" drones fired by Russia but needs its allies' support to prevent Tehran selling Moscow ballistic missiles, an air force spokesperson said on Friday.

One journalist was killed and 10 others were wounded in a nighttime Ukrainian strike on a bridge in Russian-occupied Kherson, a Russian official said Friday.

The Ukrainian presidency said Friday that 88 towns and villages had been recaptured in the southern Kherson region where Ukrainian forces have been advancing in recent weeks.

The Kremlin on Friday condemned the arrests of two Russians -- including the son of a senior official -- on a US request in Europe for alleged sanctions evasion and illegal sale of US technology to Russian arms companies. "We are categorically against this and we condemn the practice of these kinds of arrests of Russian citizens," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding that Moscow will do "everything possible" to defend them.

Murals often serve as public platforms for ultranationalists across much of the Balkans, where war veterans, political slogans and football clubs are glorified and threatening messages against perceived enemies are aired. (AFP photo)

On the city's southern and Albanian side, the US flag is ubiquitous and official buildings often bear the symbols associated with NATO and the European Union.

But since the beginning of the war, the government in the capital in Pristina has joined sanctions against Russia, welcomed Ukranians fleeing the war, trained demining teams and even hosted a film festival usually held in the Black Sea port of Odessa.

The bridge that divides the communities has been the regular scene of clashes following the 1999 war between Serbian forces and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, which left 13,000 dead and ended after a NATO bombing campaign led by Washington.

That long history and the shared hatred of the NATO alliance -- which bombed Serbian forces during the war in Kosovo in the late 1990s -- has made the choice to side with Russia a natural one.

In the deeply divided Kosovo city of Mitrovica, the fighting in Ukraine has added another wedge between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, where the conflict has stirred bitter memories of their own war. North of the Ibar River where the city's 20,000 Serbs live, a smattering of pro-Russian murals have appeared in recent months, trumpeting the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine.

Known then only to the Yugoslav president, four generals and a handful of soldiers who guarded it, the Konjic site was turned in 2010 into a modern art gallery.

Bomb shelters were a key element in the former Yugoslavia’s preparedness doctrine against a nuclear attack.

Finland, which borders Russia, along with Sweden and Denmark, have maintained their shelters in order. Finland, for instance, maintains shelters in cities and other densely populated areas capable of accommodating around two-thirds of population. A few of them are designed to withstand detonation of a 100-kiloton nuclear bomb.

There has been a rush elsewhere in Europe on potassium iodide — which protects the thyroid gland in the neck in case of radiation exposure — including in Finland where the government urged the population to buy them.

After the Polish government order, firefighters visited the steel plant's shelter last week and listed it in their registry. Warsaw’s leaders said the city's subway and other underground shelters could hold all its 1.8 million residents and more in the case of an attack with conventional weapons.

Until now, nobody had seriously considered that the rooms built in the 1950s — and now maintained as a “historical curiosity” by the ArcelorMittal Warszawa plant, according to spokeswoman Ewa Karpinska — might one day be used as a shelter again. But as Russia pounds Ukraine, with shelling around a nuclear power plant and repeated Russian threats to use a nuclear weapon, the Polish government ordered an inventory this month of the 62,000 air raid shelters in the country.