Moscow declared a state of emergency in two regions after a major Ukrainian drone strike caused large explosions at a military airfield and Kyiv pursued its most ambitious incursion into Russian territory in a decade of war.

The unexpected offensive, which raged into a fourth day on Friday, is the largest attack by Kyiv’s forces on Russian soil, not only since President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but at least since the Kremlin’s covert invasion of Crimea and the Donbas 10 years ago.

The assault aims to divert Russia’s troops from the east, expose its weaknesses and strengthen Kyiv’s position in future negotiations with Moscow, said an adviser to the government, after months of Russian gains on the more than 1,000km-long front of the grinding war within Ukraine.

A state of emergency was declared in the Russian regions of Kursk and Lipetsk, where Ukrainian forces were engaged in fierce fighting on Friday.

Friday’s drone assault added a complicated new dimension to the incursion, which dwarfs several previous cross-border raids conducted by anti-Moscow Russian volunteer fighters and a far-right militia operating under the command of Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate.

Some military analysts have questioned the timing of the Kursk operation and the redeployment of some of its elite units at a time when Ukraine’s army is already struggling to defend the frontline in the Donetsk region.

Elements of at least four Ukrainian mechanised and airborne brigades have taken part in the operation so far. In videos verified by the Financial Times and military analysts, they have been seen using US Stryker and German Marder fighting vehicles provided to Kyiv as part of military assistance packages worth billions of dollars.

US and German officials said the armoured vehicles inside Russia had not violated the conditions of their use, despite previous objections by Washington and other western governments to such weaponry being used within Russia over concerns that Moscow might escalate the war.

Gas prices in Russia rose sharply. Kursk contains a crucial transit corridor for gas supply to Europe.

As Kyiv pressed on with its incursion, Russia responded with an attack on a busy supermarket and post office in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka on Friday, which killed at least 12 civilians and injured 44 more, said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and local authorities.

Officials published videos showing black smoke billowing from a destroyed store and first responders working to save shoppers trapped under debris. Another video showed badly wounded people sprawled on the pavement.

The overnight drone attack on Russia was carried out by Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, with the military and special forces early on Friday, a Ukrainian official with knowledge of operations inside Russia told the Financial Times.

The official said the Lipetsk air base — about 300km from the international border and just east of the latest fighting — was targeted “to destroy Russian aviation logistics so that the enemy does not have the opportunity to bomb Ukrainian cities with anti-aircraft missiles”.

Several warehouses filled with ammunition were detonated, the official said. Videos published on social media and geolocated by the Financial Times showed huge explosions reaching into the night sky.

The Ukrainian official claimed that up to 700 glide bombs stored in the warehouses were damaged or destroyed. Several dozen fighter jets, including Su-34, Su-35 and MiG-31 aircraft, along with military helicopters, were also at the air base, said the general staff of Ukraine’s army.

“Most of the planes stationed at the military airfield . . . did not have time to take off,” the Ukrainian official claimed. 

The FT could not immediately verify whether the bombs and aircraft had been damaged or destroyed. Russian military bloggers reported that no aircraft were damaged.

Videos shared on Russian Telegram channels showed lines of civilian vehicles stretching several kilometres fleeing east from the Lipetsk and Kursk regions.

The Ukrainian official said the Lipetsk attack was a follow-up to a Monday assault on the Morozovsk military base in Russia’s Rostov region that had destroyed anti-aircraft missiles and jet fighters. 

Ukraine’s general staff said its forces had also attacked Russian anti-aircraft missile divisions in the occupied territory of eastern Donetsk.

Those attacks came as Ukrainian forces pressed forward with their assault in the neighbouring Kursk region, where the Kremlin has lost control of roughly 350 sq km of territory, according to calculations by the FT and military analysts. 

Alexei Smirnov, the Kursk region’s acting governor, said the situation remained “difficult”. He said his government had declared a state of emergency, was still evacuating residents and was assisting those displaced.

Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters in Washington on Thursday that Ukraine was “taking action to protect themselves” and that the Biden administration did not see the incursion as escalatory.

Video and photo evidence suggested that Ukraine’s army has moved as deep as 35km into Russia from the international border, down a highway heading north-west. 

A video circulating on social media that the FT geolocated to a highway in Rylsk showed a destroyed column of Russian military vehicles transporting soldiers that stretched for hundreds of metres. The bodies of several troops are seen in the gruesome video.

A person with knowledge of the operation shared a video with the FT purporting to show a first-person-view (FPV) camera-equipped drone armed with an explosive as it crashed into the tail rotor of a Russian military helicopter.

The person said the SBU was behind the strike — the second Ukrainian FPV drone attack on a Russian helicopter this week. The person said both helicopters crashed as a result of the strikes, but the FT was unable to independently corroborate the claims.

On Friday afternoon, Russian state media aired footage of large convoys of military trucks transporting heavy weaponry towards the fight in Kursk.

Zelenskyy has not explicitly commented on the incursion, but thanked Ukrainian troops on Friday for “destroying the Russian occupiers, holding the frontline, and ensuring that Ukraine remains on the world map”.

“We are doing our best to provide our warriors with as many opportunities as possible to end this war as soon as possible with a just and lasting peace,” he said.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defence minister who advises the government, told the FT that Kyiv had planned the operation long in advance.

Zagorodnyuk said its aims included diverting Russian troops fighting elsewhere in Ukraine, as well as bringing the war home to Russians and discouraging them from supporting the war effort.

It also aimed to expose Russia’s weaknesses, including that it was incapable of protecting its own border, and to try to seize the initiative on the battlefield a year after an unsuccessful counteroffensive, and following months of Russian gains.

⁠Zagorodnyuk said the Ukrainian military was proving its ability to conduct “new tactics of combined arms operation” taught by western military trainers.

He said the aim was not to capture and hold Russian territory “for long”. “We don’t need Russian land,” he said. “We want them to fail on ours.”

Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst at Rochan Consulting, a Poland-based security group, said the Ukrainian operation could help its position in the war if it forced Russia to divert resources from eastern Donetsk and allowed Kyiv to maintain a presence in Russia’s Kursk region.

That presence might offer a better negotiating position in future, he said.

“If Ukrainian troops, however, are pushed back from the Russian territory without any tangible results with high losses and if Russians continue moving towards Pokrovsk [in Donetsk],” he said, then Ukraine’s top military leadership would be seen as having lost a huge gamble.

“There is no middle ground here. The operation is daring,” he said.

Ukraine separately claimed on Friday to have landed on the Kinburn Spit, a long strip of land jutting into the Black Sea that has been occupied by Russia since March 2022.

Video footage posted by Ukraine’s military intelligence showed troops landing by jet ski. “The Kinburn spit will be free, like all other temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine,” read an official post on Telegram. 

Additional reporting by Max Seddon in Riga, Anastasia Stognei in Tbilisi and Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv

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Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK investment platform that pioneered selling stocks and funds directly to retail investors, has agreed to a £5.4bn takeover by a group of private equity firms.

The consortium, which is made up of CVC Capital Partners, Nordic Capital and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, has agreed to pay £11.40 in cash for each Hargreaves Lansdown share.

The price includes a final dividend of 30p for the last financial year. The deal has an “alternative” option for shareholders who want to stay invested in Hargreaves Lansdown, by allowing them to roll over their stake into the unlisted company.

The FTSE 100 business was founded in 1981 by Peter Hargreaves from his spare bedroom with Stephen Lansdown. The company, which floated in 2007, grew rapidly by offering individuals low-cost access to funds, as well as stocks and shares.

Hargreaves, who owns almost 20 per cent of the company, supports the deal and will sell 50 per cent of his stake while also keeping the rest in the business under its new owners. Hargreaves will receive £534mn from his share sale, according to people close to the process. Hargreaves declined to comment.

Lansdown has opted to sell his entire near-6 per cent holding. He told the Financial Times: “As with all such deals there is plenty of work to do, but I am pleased that we now have certainty and everyone can get on with their lives.

“[It’s] a bittersweet moment for me personally but I feel it is the right time to part company with Hargreaves Lansdown and concentrate on other projects.”

The option for shareholders to keep a portion of their stakes under the new owners has drawn criticism from some large shareholders because it would exclude investors who are unable to have holdings in unlisted companies.

The deal makes Hargreaves Lansdown the latest company to delist from the London market, adding to a stream of businesses picked off by private equity firms and other acquirers that view UK companies as relatively cheap.

The board “believes that the cash offer represents an attractive opportunity for HL Shareholders . . . which may not be achievable until the execution of the strategy is delivered over the medium to longer term”, said Alison Platt, chair of Hargreaves Lansdown.

The private equity groups said Hargreaves Lansdown “now requires substantial investment in an extensive technology-led transformation” to improve its “proposition and resilience” and to drive “the next phase” of growth and development.

Shares in the company have fallen from a peak of £24 in 2019 following criticism over the cost of its technology overhaul under previous management. Under Dan Olley, who became chief executive a year ago, Hargreaves Lansdown has refocused its efforts to improve its technology. The shares climbed 2 per cent to about £11 in early trading on Friday.

Hargreaves Lansdown made its name by selling investments directly to customers — rather than through financial advisers — and offering tax-efficient products such as Individual Savings Accounts and self-invested personal pensions. It oversees about £155bn of customer money and has amassed 1.9mn customers.

However, it came under fire for backing investment manager Neil Woodford, even as his fund started to come unstuck.

Analysts at Jefferies said although the offer represented a sizeable premium, they believed “there [was] greater value” in Hargreaves Lansdown over the medium term and expected shareholders to support the deal.

One analyst said that under private ownership, it would be easier for Hargreaves Lansdown to cut fees charged to customers, noting that the investment platform is more expensive than rivals in some cases. “Under public ownership, it’s hard to cut fees; under private, you can do that more easily,” he said.

Nordic Capital, a member of the consortium, previously invested in Nordnet, a similar digital investment site. Nordic Capital took the business private in 2016 and then relisted it in 2020.

BUTLER, Pa. — A local Pennsylvania police officer says he told the Secret Service to secure the building where former President Trump’s would-be assassin fired off his rifle, newly released body cam footage suggests.

The footage, recorded from the bodycam of a Butler Township police officer, also suggests that shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks may have used a wooden pallet to scale the building before he allegedly tried to assassinate the Republican presidential nominee at a campaign rally last month.

About 13 minutes after Crooks was taken out by a sniper, the officer walks around the side of the AGR building and fumes to another officer that the Secret Service did not have agents on the structure.

“I f—ing told them they need to post the f—ing guys over here … the Secret Service,” the officer says. “I told them that f—ing Tuesday. I told them to f—ing post guys over here.”

“I f—ing told them they need to post the f—ing guys over here … the Secret Service. I told them that f—ing Tuesday. I told them to f—ing post guys over here.”

TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: PENNSYLVANIA POLICE RELEASE BODYCAM FROM DEADLY BUTLER RALLY

“I thought you guys were on the roof,” another police officer, believed to be from the Butler City Police Department, can be heard saying.

“No, we were inside,” the Butler Township Police Department officer says.

The exchange appears to highlight the disorganized nature of the security in place for the rally that day, which has sparked various finger-pointing among the various agencies involved.

“I wasn’t even concerned about it because I thought someone was on the roof,” the Butler City Police Department officer can be heard saying. “Like, how the hell can you lose a guy walking back here if someone’s on the roof.”

“They were inside,” the officer responds. The video footage later shows two Secret Service agents inside the building.

TRUMP SHOOTING: TIMELINE OF ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW GUNMAN EVADED SECURITY

Crooks may have used a pallet to get on the roof. (Butler Township Police Department)

Speaking to another officer, he says, “I talked to the Secret Service guys, and they were like, ‘Yeah, no problem, we’re going to post guys over here.’”

A few minutes later, the Butler Township police officer speaks to a countersniper and reiterates his claims that he told the Secret Service to have agents at the venue.

“I told the Secret Service, post a f—ing guy over here. I told them that f—ing at the meeting on Tuesday.”

The footage also shows the officer arriving on the scene at around 18:12 p.m., about a minute after Crooks was shot dead by a countersniper. The officer is desperately looking to scale the building and asks a fellow officer if there was a ladder he could climb. 

“No, he used that board right there probably,” the other officer says, with the video showing a stack of wooden pallets resting against the side of the building. It’s not clear if Crooks used those pallets to climb on top of the building. Previous reports revealed that Crooks had purchased a ladder at a local Home Depot, but no ladder was found at the scene.

The video also reveals the difficulty and frantic efforts police had trying to get onto the building.

The officer manages to hoist two countersnipers onto the roof by helping them onto a large storage shed, and they then use a pallet on the roof of the shed to access the roof. The pallet had initially been resting against the building next to the storage shed and could also have been used by Crooks.

The bodycam footage is one of several videos obtained by Fox News Digital on Thursday through a records request. In another video, one police officer scales the building but is confronted by Crooks and then falls to the ground.

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Crooks may have used this pallet to get on the roof. (Butler Township Police Department)

Officials say Crooks then got off his shots, grazing Trump’s ear and killing spectator Corey Comperatore.

The gunfire also wounded audience members David Dutch and James Copenhaver. They have both since returned home, with Dutch on Wednesday providing Fox News with an exclusive statement on the deadly incident.

“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of and reviewing the bodycam footage from July 13 that was recently released by local law enforcement,” the agency said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“The U.S. Secret Service appreciates our local law enforcement partners, who acted courageously as they worked to locate the shooter that day. The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a U.S. Secret Service failure, and we are reviewing and updating our protective policies and procedures in order to ensure a tragedy like this never occurs again.”

Fox News’ Brooke Curto contributed to this report.