Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky says Patriot missiles could ‘close our skies’ but are just gathering dust

Russian troops destroyed or captured several Ukrainian positions near the eastern city of Pokrovsk, Kyiv’s military has said, as Moscow bears down on the strategic logistics hub that is home to a unique Ukrainian coking mine.

After months of accelerating advances towards Pokrovsk, Moscow’s forces are now as close as 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) from the southern outskirts of the city, according to Ukraine‘s DeepState, which maps the front lines using open sources.

“As a result of prolonged clashes, two of our positions were destroyed, one was lost. Currently, measures are being taken to restore positions,” Nazar Voloshyn, Ukraine‘s military spokesman for the eastern front, said in televised comments.

Pokrovsk, situated about 18 kilometres (11 miles) from the boundary of Ukraine‘s Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, has for months been the area of the fiercest battles in Russia’s 33-month-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In October and November, the Russian military advanced towards the city at its fastest rate since the early months of the war, analysts said. Ukraine, which has been on the back foot since its failed 2023 counteroffensive, says Russia has been sustaining some of its heaviest losses of the war to date.

Russia could launch another experimental hypersonic ballistic missile in Ukraine in coming days, but Washington does not consider the Oreshnik weapon a game changer in the war, a US official has said.

“We assess that the Oreshnik is not a game-changer on the battlefield, but rather just another attempt by Russia to terrorize Ukraine, which will fail,” the official told Reuters. Russia previously used the new weapon on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, according to two senior Ukrainian government sources.

Ukraine‘s course of European integration is irreversible, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said, adding Russian President Vladimir Putin had not achieved a single war goal.

Speaking at a German-Ukrainian economic forum, Scholz also said a lot of private investment was needed in Ukraine‘s energy sector.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that Moscow was not ready to make concessions when it came to Ukraine and that President Vladimir Putin's own proposals on how to end the conflict needed to be implemented.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova made her comments after being asked about a call on Sunday by US President-elect Donald Trump for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end "the madness."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has been pushing hard for his country to be invited to join the Nato military alliance, responded to Trump's comments by saying Kyiv needed effective security guarantees.

Zakharova said that anyone who thought Russia would make concessions on Ukraine had either a short memory or not enough knowledge of the subject.

Putin's proposals for peace needed to be implemented, she said.

The Kremlin chief has said that Ukraine must not join NATO and that Russia needs the entire territory of the four Ukrainian regions he has said are now part of Russia if there is to be peace.

Rescue crews working through the night pulled two women from rubble more than seven hours after a Russian missile struck a private medical clinic in a southern Ukraine city, killing six people and wounding 22 others, authorities have said.

The women called rescue services on their cellphones to say they were buried under the rubble after the attack late Tuesday in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s Emergency Services said.

Deadly Russian strikes on civilian areas have been a feature of the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s Western allies are sending more aid to help it keep fighting Russia’s invasion, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Zaporizhzhia strike showed that his country still needs more air defence systems.

Read the full report below:

Russia has said that relations with the United States were so confrontational that Russian citizens should not travel to the United States, Canada and some EU countries because they were at risk of being "hunted" by US authorities.

Maria Zakharova, foreign ministry spokeswoman, said that relations with the United States were teetering on the verge of rupture.

“In the context of the increasing confrontation in Russian-American relations, which are teetering on the verge of rupture due to the fault of Washington, trips to the United States of America privately or out of official necessity are fraught with serious risks,” Zakharova told a news briefing.

“We urge you to continue to refrain from trips to the United States of America and its allied satellite states, including, first of all, Canada and, with a few exceptions, European Union countries, during these holidays,” she said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in Ukraine in a phone call with Hungarian President Viktor Orban, the Kremlin has said.

Putin told Orban that Kyiv’s policy continues to exclude the possibility of a peaceful settlement of the conflict, according to the statement which did not say when the call took place.

They also discussed bilateral trade and economic cooperation, as well as the further promotion of joint energy projects, the report said.

The Kremlin has played down the damage to Russian influence in the Middle East from the fall of Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad, saying that its focus was Ukraine and that Moscow was in contact with the new rulers of Syria.

When Russia intervened in the Syrian Civil War in 2015, it helped tip the balance in Assad’s favour, so his fall from power dealt a serious setback to both Russia, which is fighting a major land war in Ukraine, and to Iran, which is battling US-backed Israel across the Middle East.

“You know, of course, that we are in contact with those who are currently in control of the situation in Syria,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Asked how much the fall of Assad had weakened Russia’s influence in the region, Peskov said that Moscow maintained contacts with all countries in the region and would continue to do so.

Moscow’s priority, Peskov said, was the war in Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation”.

Moscow has supported Syria since the early days of the Cold War, recognising its independence in 1944 as Damascus sought to throw off French colonial rule. The West saw Syria as a Soviet satellite.

President Joe Biden is pushing US national security agencies ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration to devise new strategies to tackle the risky, deepening ties among Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, according to US officials.

In exchange for Iran's help with the Russian war effort in Ukraine, Moscow is giving its ally fighter aircraft, missile defence and space technology, Biden concluded in a national security memorandum issued on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is giving North Korea fuel, money and technology, and is recognizing it as a de facto nuclear state. Russia is conducting joint patrols with China in the Arctic, the administration said.

The classified document was described in general terms to reporters. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have disputed similar assessments in the past and accused Washington of destabilizing behaviour.

Biden's new document orders various arms of the U.S. government to restructure groups currently organized by region to better focus on issues linking the four countries that span Europe and Asia.

The document's strategies and policy suggestions could be implemented - or rejected altogether - by President-elect Trump, a Republican who takes office on 20 January.