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Zelenskiy said on Saturday that the situation on the front lines in the east of the country was getting tougher and Russia was throwing more and more troops into battle. Russian forces are slowly gaining ground in the Donbas region, encircling the city of Bakhmut north of Donetsk and battling to take control of a nearby road which is a major supply route for Ukrainian forces. They are also trying to capture Vuhledar, southwest of Donetsk.

President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed Friday that Ukrainians will fight “for as long as we can” to hold the key eastern city of Bakhmut, as Moscow ramps up pressure in the eastern region of Ukraine. “Nobody will give away Bakhmut,” Zelensky said during a meeting with European Union leaders. “We will fight for as long as we can. We consider Bakhmut our fortress.” “If weapon (supplies) are accelerated, specifically long-range weapons, not only will we not abandon Bakhmut but we will also begin to remove the occupiers from the Donbas, which was occupied since 2014,” he president added. Moscow says its...

Kovaliov said the situation in Bakhmut was under control, and Ukrainian forces were fighting back the invaders. “As long as there are basements in Bakhmut and the ability to hold this territory, the fighters will stay there,” Kovaliov said. He added that invading Russian forces had obliterated the nearby town of Soledar, so the Ukrainian military had taken the decision to leave it. Serhiy Cherevatyi, the spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, announced on Jan. 25 that Ukrainian troops had withdrawn from Soledar to save lives, as the main task there had been accomplished. According to...

Thousands of Russian troops have already died in the continued battle of Bakhmut, according to a Ukrainian close to the action. Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, said Monday on his Telegram page that the city under the Ukrainian flag has become a new military home for Russian paratroopers who were transferred from Kherson and are now fighting in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Mobilized troops who trained for two months in the Russian Federation "can only slightly halt the offensive of the [Ukraine] Armed Forces," he added, saying "they will not change the general picture." "It is...

Blasts were heard at Russia's Engels air base, hundreds of kilometres (miles) from the frontlines in Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian media outlets reported early on Monday. There was no immediate official confirmation of the blasts and Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports. The RBC-Ukraine news agency reported that two explosions took place. The Russian news outlet Baza reported, citing local residents, that air raid sirens were wailing and an explosion was heard. The air base, near the city of Saratov, about 730 km (450 miles) southeast of Moscow, was hit on Dec. 5 in what Russia said...

A major Russian shipyard that specialises in building non-nuclear submarines said its general director had died suddenly on Saturday after 11 years in the job, but gave no details. Admiralty Shipyards, based in the western port of St Petersburg, announced the death of Alexander Buzakov in a statement. He had been in the job since August 2012. -snip- Tass news agency said the shipyard is building improved Kilo-class diesel-powered submarines capable of launching Kalibr cruise missiles. In April, Moscow said it had used a diesel submarine in the Black Sea to strike Ukrainian military targets with Kalibrs.

Russia’s only aircraft carrier caught fire on Thursday, only a matter of months before it was meant to return to sea after lengthy repairs.The Admiral Kuznetsov was close to being released back to the Russian navy after years of repairs when it caught fire, Alexei Rakhmanov, head of the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.“There has been a little problem during repairs,” Mr Rakhmanov said. “The blaze has been put out. All fire alarms worked normally. There are no casualties or damage.”About 20 people were evacuated from the ship that caught fire at the drydock...

A fire broke out on the flagship of the Russian Navy, according to local media reports. The blaze started on the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia's only aircraft carrier, while it was docked at the Zvyozdochka shipyard in the Barents Sea port city of Murmansk, located in the far north-west of Russia, news agency Tass said. An emergency services source told the agency on Thursday morning that 20 people had been evacuated, the fire was extinguished and that "there were no casualties."

Russia's oil exports have plunged amid the latest round of western sanctions. According to data from Kpler, Russian seaborne oil shipments fell 16% on Tuesday. Russia's central bank has called the sanctions "new economic shocks" that could derail the economy. Russia's oil exports have plunged amid the European Union's price cap on Russian crude and the latest round of sanctions, squeezing revenues for Moscow's wartime economy. According to data from the analytics firm Kpler, Russia's seaborne oil shipments fell by 16%, or about half a million barrels per day on Tuesday this week. TankerTrackers.com, another analytics site, recorded an even...

The Kremlin has poo-pooed a report that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin recently fell down a flight of stairs and defecated on himself. The denial comes after the Telegram channel “General SVR,” which purports to be run by a former Kremlin spy, claimed the 70-year-old leader took an a fecal fall at his residence on Nov. 30. Putin was reported to have landed on his tailbone, causing him to “involuntarily defecate” due to “cancer affecting his stomach and bowels.” The tyrant’s press team has since been trying to clean up after the embarrassing report. “Regarding your request, we can say that...

A drone has struck an airfield in the Russian region of Kursk bordering Ukraine, setting fire to an oil storage tank, the regional governor said on Tuesday. "There were no casualties. The fire is localised. All emergency services are working at the site," Governor Roman Starovoyt said on the Telegram messaging app. He later said that the region had held a meeting of its "anti-terrorist commission". He did not say who was responsible for the incident. Firefighters are currently working to tackle the blaze, which spans 500 square meters, the RIA news agency reported. The city of Kursk is about...

Vladimir Makei, the foreign minister of Belarus, has died at age 64, Belarusian state news agency Belta reported Saturday. No cause of death was stated, but Belta said he passed away "suddenly." Makei had been the foreign minister of the authoritarian country since 2012 and was one of longtime ruler Alexander Lukashenko's close allies. Before his time as a minister, he was Lukashenko's chief of staff. Makei was also considered a possible successor to Lukashenko, who has ruled with an iron fist since 1994. Born in 1958 in the western Grodno region, Makei studied in Minsk and Austria before serving...

Russian-installed occupation officials on the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea have rejected social-media reports claiming that civilians were being evacuated from the city of Armyansk, near where the peninsula connects to the mainland. " The situation in the city is stable," wrote Armyansk occupation chief Vasyl Telizhenko, adding that the evacuation reports were "all fake information." Earlier, it was reported that Russian troops had begun digging emplacements in northern Crimea in apparent anticipation of a Ukrainian attack.

Russia's leading war hawks rallied behind the humiliating decision for Moscow's forces to retreat from the Ukrainian city of Kherson this month, but the commander who argued in favour of the move is now under growing pressure to prove it was worth it. Sergei Surovikin, nicknamed "General Armageddon" by the Russian media for his reputed ruthlessness, on Nov. 9 recommended Moscow's forces quit Kherson and the west bank of the River Dnipro where they were dangerously exposed. Surovikin, a 56-year-old veteran of wars in Chechnya and Syria who has been decorated by President Vladimir Putin, argued the withdrawal, completed two...

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday ordered his troops to withdraw from the occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson and take up defensive lines on the opposite bank of the River Dnipro. The announcement marked one of Russia's most significant retreats and a potential turning point in the war, now nearing the end of its ninth month. In televised comments, General Sergei Surovikin, in overall command of the war, said it was no longer possible to keep Kherson city supplied. -snip- The announcement had been anticipated by Russia's influential war bloggers, who described it as a bitter blow. "Apparently we...

Russia to withdraw troops from key Ukrainian city Kherson, the only regional centre they had captured since invasion began.This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

The Russian-installed deputy governor of Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, has been killed, Russian state media say. They quoted the regional governor's press service as saying he died in a car crash. Mr Stremousov, 45, was appointed to his job two months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

High-ranking unit in the Russian navy is reeling after experiencing significant losses in a recent offensive. The 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade was involved in Wednesday attack on a Ukrainian military garrison in Pavlivka, a town southwest of the recently annexed Donetsk region, according to The Moscow Times on Monday. The offensive intended to give Russian forces access to a key supply line in the area. In the wake of the offensive, the elite naval unit is reportedly pointing the finger at "baffling" leadership decisions that led to the loss of roughly 300 men. These complaints were made in a...

Videos show desperate Russian troops fleeing from their burning tanks and a group of soldiers being blown up by Ukrainian missiles during a disastrous assault on a town in eastern Ukraine that saw 300 soldiers reportedly killed or wounded. Footage shows Russian marines from the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade driving a burning T-80BVM tank, along a road in the largely destroyed town of Pavlivka, as flames and black smoke erupted from the vehicle following a Ukrainian strike. A group of Russian soldiers can be seen climbing on top of the tank and jumping down before they ran away from the...

President Vladimir Putin has called for the evacuation of civilians from Russian-occupied Kherson, his first acknowledgment that Ukraine’s bid to recapture the city was gaining ground. “The people who live in Kherson need to be taken out of the zone of the most dangerous [combat] operations, because the civilian population shouldn’t suffer,” Putin told a group of volunteers in Red Square on Friday. -snip- In a video posted after Putin’s comments, Kirill Stremousov, the region’s Russia-appointed deputy governor, said a 24-hour curfew was being introduced to “defend the city”. This would “give the military the chance to do their job...