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Plumes of black smoke were seen on Tuesday at a Russian military airbase near the settlement of Gvardeyskoye in the centre of Russian-controlled Crimea, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported. Earlier on Tuesday, Russia’s Defence Ministry separately blamed a series of explosions around Dzhankoi in northern Crimea on “sabotage”, state-owned news agency RIA reported. Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in a recent series of blasts in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

Explosions shook an ammunition depot in Russian-annexed Crimea on Tuesday, the latest such incident in a region used by Moscow as a staging post for its war in Ukraine.

Russia has abandoned 20,000 troops near Kherson in the face of a Ukrainian counter-attack, the regional governor has claimed. Vitaly Kim said Russia is relocating command posts on the west bank of the Dnipro River to the east, leaving 'stupid orcs' - his term for Kremlin soldiers - behind. Ukraine has already blown up all three bridges under Russian control connecting the two banks, meaning its soldiers on the west side have no easy way of resupplying, reinforcing, or retreating as Kyiv's men continue their advance. Kim, the governor of Mykolaiv which sits on the west bank, said Monday that...

The staggeringly high rate of Russian casualties in Ukraine means that President Vladimir V. Putin may not be able to achieve one of his key war objectives: seizing the entire eastern region of the country this year, officials in the Biden administration and military experts say. With 500 Russian troops killed or wounded every day, according to the latest estimate by American intelligence and military officials, Russia’s war effort has decelerated to a grinding slog, the officials said.