Russian air defences shot down a drone over the Kaluga region on Friday, the region’s governor has claimed.

Earlier, the Russian defence ministry said a modified S-200 missile had also been shot down over the Kaluga region, which borders the Moscow region. The city of Kaluga is less than 200 km 124 miles from Moscow.

The Kremlin has insisted that Western suggestions Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”.

In a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said an investigation into the plane crash on Wednesday evening was ongoing.

Vladimir Putin had not met Prigozhin recently, Mr Peskov added.

Serhiy Kruk, the head of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, has been dismissed, Ukraine’s interior minister Ihor Klymenko has said.

He gave no reasons for Mr Kruk’s dismissal, but said it followed an internal inspection of the service and that Mr Kruk’s deputy would serve as its acting head.

Here are more details about Joe Biden’s remarks following reports of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, which have angered Moscow.

“I don’t know for a fact what happened but I’m not surprised,” the US president told reporters on Wednesday, in response to the news shortly after being briefed.

When asked if he thought Vladimir Putin was behind it, Mr Biden replied: “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind. But I don’t know enough to know the answer. I’ve been working out for the last hour and a half.”

The commander of Ukraine’s armed forces is reported to have likened Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the south to the Second World War battle of Kursk, as he staved off Western criticism of the frontline push.

“You don’t understand the nature of this conflict,” a US official recounted General Valery Zaluzhny as saying in one recent interaction, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“This is not counterinsurgency. This is Kursk.”

Kursk was a major battle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1943, which lasted for weeks and marked the largest tank battle in history, after which Adolf Hitler’s forces were slowly pushed back to Berlin, albeit at great human cost to the Soviet Union.

Joe Biden’s comments about Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s suspected death in a plane crash near Moscow were unacceptable, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov has said, according to Russian state media.

The US president had he was not surprised by the reports of Mr Prigozhin’s death, adding that not much happens in Russia that president Vladimir Putin is not behind.

Heineken has completed its exit from Russia, 18 months after the invasion of Ukraine, with the brewing giant estimating to have taken a hit of around £250m in doing so.

The Dutch firm, which also makes Amstel and Birra Moretti beers, said it has secured the sale of the business, which includes seven breweries, to Russian company Arnest Group – for the cost of €1.

Bosses at the brewer admitted it “took much longer than we had hoped”, after it faced criticism for the slow pace of its exit in the wake of the outbreak of war. Heineken had insisted it was seeking to look after its local employees in Russia.

Dolf van den Brink, Heineken’s chief executive and chairman, said: “We have now completed our exit from Russia. Recent developments demonstrate the significant challenges faced by large manufacturing companies in exiting Russia.

“While it took much longer than we had hoped, this transaction secures the livelihoods of our employees and allows us to exit the country in a responsible manner.”

Heineken said new owner Arnest has guaranteed the employment of Heineken’s 1,800 local staff for three years.

The Russian embassy in Helsinki has been informed of the detention of a Russian citizen in Finland on Ukraine’s request, Russian state news has reported.

RIA reported that the embassy was taking steps to offer consular assistance to the individual.

Ukraine’s troops advanced closer to Russia’s second line of defence on Thursday near Robotyne, a village in the Zaporizhzhia region, Western analysts have suggested.

In what marks Ukraine’s first major breakthrough of Russia’s heavily fortified frontline, Kyiv’s forces further widened this breach on Thursday, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Geolocated footage showed they advanced further towards the Russian defensive lines west of Verbove into southern Robotyne, the think-tank said, pointing to remarks by a prominent Russian military blogger who expressed concern that the breach represented a critical moment on the battlefield.