Brittney Griner, 32, has finally been freed from Russian prison after US officials negotiated a prisoner swap with Moscow for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout.

The WNBA star has spent the last 10 months in prison in Russia after she was detained at an airport back in February for allegedly carrying illegal cannibas oil in her luggage.

US officials revealed on Thursday that, following weeks of negotiations, a one-for-one swap had been carried out, exchanging the 32-year-old American basketball star for Bout.

Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, while Ukraine‘s military reported missile, rocket and air strikes in multiple parts of the country.

The latest battles of Russia’s nine-and-a-half-month war in Ukraine have centred on four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally claimed to have annexed in late September.

The fighting indicates Moscow’s struggle to establish control of the regions and Ukraine‘s determination to reclaim them.

Mr Zelensky said the situation “remains very difficult” in several frontline cities in eastern Ukraine‘s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

Together, the provinces make up the Donbas, an expansive industrial region bordering Russia that Mr Putin identified as a focus from the war’s outset, where Moscow-backed separatists have fought since 2014.

“Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. For a long time, there is no living place left on the land of these areas that have not been damaged by shells and fire,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

“The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbas city that the Russian army turned into burnt ruins.”

He did not specify what he meant by “destroyed”, and some buildings remained standing and residents were seen in city streets.

Russia wants to turn Ukraine into a “dependent dictatorship” like Belarus, the wife of jailed Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Byalyatski said on Saturday upon receiving the prize on his behalf, speaking his words.

Byalyatski, Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine‘s Center for Civil Liberties won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize in October, amid the war in Ukraine that followed Russia’s invasion of its neighbour.

Receiving the award on behalf of her husband at Oslo City Hall, Natallia Pinchuk said Byalyatski dedicated the prize to “millions of Belarusian citizens who stood up and took action in the streets and online to defend their civil rights”.

“It highlights the dramatic situation and struggle for human rights in the country,” she said, adding she was speaking her husband’s words.

Pinchuk has met her husband once since he was named a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in prison, behind a glass wall, she told a news conference on Friday.

“I know exactly what kind of Ukraine would suit Russia and Putin, a dependent dictatorship. The same as today’s Belarus, where the voice of the oppressed people is ignored and disregarded,” Pinchuk said on Saturday, quoting her husband.

Belarusian security police detained Byalyatski, 60, and others in July last year in a crackdown on opponents of the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko.

The Kyiv Independent is reporting that an overnight drone attack in the Odesa region has left most residents without power today.

Boris Johnson has urged western countries to “look urgently” at what more they can do to support Ukraine in the hopes of ending the war against Russia as soon as next year.

The former prime minister, who was hailed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a key ally in the country’s fight against Russia, used an article in the Wall Street Journal to argue that ending the war as soon as possible is “in everyone’s interest, including Russia”.

He said that while the significant financial commitment to Ukraine is “painful” during a period of budgetary constraints, “time is money, and the longer this goes on the more we will all end up paying in military support”.

The former prime minister wrote: “There is no land-for-peace deal to be done, even if Mr Putin were offering it and even if he were to be trusted, which he is not.

“Since the war can end only one way, the question is how fast we get to the inevitable conclusion.

“It’s in everyone’s interest, including Russia’s, that the curtain comes down as soon as possible on Mr Putin’s misadventure. Not in 2025, not in 2024, but in 2023.”

Mr Johnson warns that next winter could prove even more difficult than this one, as gas supplies run low for countries once reliant on Russian fuel.

“The longer Mr Putin continues with his senseless attacks, the longer the global economic haemorrhage will continue as well.

“Are we really going to wait and let this thing drift until Mr Putin has regained some of his leverage?

“It is time to look urgently at what more the West can do to help the Ukrainians achieve their military objectives, or at least to kick the Russians out of all the territories invaded this year.”

Over the grinding wail of a chainsaw pruning trees, Oleh Braharnyk recalls how his crew sprang into action in Kyiv a week earlier to repair power lines downed by Russian missiles and keep electricity flowing to his beleaguered fellow Ukrainians.

Braharnyk, an electric company foreman, knows the stakes: Like many others in Ukraine, his family has dealt with daily power outages caused by Russian strikes.

“We, too, sit in the dark,” he says, acknowledging that his home gets power for only about half of each day.

Belarus told the United Nations on Friday that it would allow, without preconditions, the transit of grain from Ukraine through its territory for export from Lithuanian ports, a UN spokesperson said.

Belarus said in June that it would let Ukrainian grain go via the country to Baltic Sea ports, if Belarus was allowed to ship its goods from the ports as well. Ukraine did not agree to the proposal.

Belarus Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Ambrazevich met with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York on Friday to tell him that there are no preconditions to the transit of Ukraine grain, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Ambrazevich also “reiterated the requests from his government to be able export its own fertilizer products, which are currently subject to sanctions,” Dujarric said in a statement after the meeting.

Belarus, a major global potash producer, has been hit by harsh Western sanctions in 2021-2022 which disrupted its exports of the fertiliser via the Baltic Sea ports.

In July the United Nations and Turkey brokered a deal with Russia and Ukraine to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea shipments of grain – stalled since the start of the war – and to facilitate Russia’s food and fertilizer shipments.

The United Nations is still working to resume Russian ammonia exports, a key fertilizer ingredient, via a pipeline to a Black Sea port in Ukraine.

The head of Nato expressed worry that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a war between Russia and Nato, according to an interview released Friday.

“If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in remarks to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

“It is a terrible war in Ukraine. It is also a war that can become a full-fledged war that spreads into a major war between Nato and Russia,” he said. “We are working on that every day to avoid that.”

Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, said in the interview that “there is no doubt that a full-fledged war is a possibility,” adding that it was important to avoid a conflict “that involves more countries in Europe and becomes a full-fledged war in Europe.”

Vladimir Putin has attempted to justify attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure by claiming Kyiv “started it” when the Crimea bridge was bombed.

Addressing a group of Russian serviceman as part of a lavish reception at the Kremlin, the Russian president said: “There is a lot of noise now about our strikes on the energy infrastructure [of Ukraine]. Yes, we are doing it.

“But who started it? Who struck the Crimean bridge?” he said, before taking a sip from a glass of champagne.