Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russians told not to travel to West as Putin could use new missile in ‘coming days’

Ukrainian military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has visited the area of Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine, amid fears that Russian forces are pushing towards its outskirts.

The city of Pokrovsk is a linchpin of the wider Donetsk region’s defences and Russian troops have spent months pushing towards it, taking almost 400 square miles since the fall of the key city of Avdiivka to the southeast in February. This attack accelerated over the summer, though at great cost in personnel to the Russians.

DeepState, a Ukrainian war tracker, puts Russian forces now within just two miles of the city.

Mr Syrskryi described the battles in Pokrovsk as “extremely tough”, adding that Russian forces were “prevailing”.

“The Russian occupiers are throwing forward all available forces, trying to break through the defence of our troops,” he wrote on the Telegram messenger.

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.

President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia would develop artificial intelligence with BRICS partners and other countries, a bid to challenge the dominance of the United States in one of the most disruptive technologies of the 21st Century.

“I am confident that the international alliance of national associations and development institutes in the field of AI of BRICS countries and other interested states will give a significant boost to such cooperation,” Putin told an AI conference in Moscow.

“We will launch this alliance today,” he said.

Russia’s largest lender Sberbank said that the new AI Alliance Network would include national AI associations from China, ranked as one of the world’s top two AI powers, along with Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa, in a partnership.

Russia has asked its citizens to not visit the United States, Canada and some EU countries in coming weeks over increasingly “confrontational” ties.

Russians abroad risk being “hunted” down by US authorities, officials in Moscow claimed yesterday.

“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,” Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, 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.

Both Moscow and Washington say their citizens have been wrongfully imprisoned and their diplomats harassed increasingly as relations soured, though they both defend convictions by their own justice systems.

Russian and US diplomats say the bilateral relationship is worse than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to nuclear war.

Volodymyr Zelensky has said an invitation to join Nato should be issued for all of Ukraine but the alliance’s norms – such as mutually assured protections from attack – could initially apply only to government-controlled territory, with subsequent extensions to other areas if they are eventually recovered from Russia.

Talking to the US network CBN News, Mr Zelensky said that the invitation, which Ukraine has urged Nato to extend as soon as possible, should be formally “issued for all Ukraine - its internationally recognised borders”.

After months of accelerating advances towards Ukraine’s eastern city of Pokrovsk, Moscow’s forces are now as close as 3km from its outskirts in the south, the latest battlefield reports show.

Senior Ukrainian military officials said the battles being fought in the region were “exceptionally fierce”.

Pokrovsk, situated about 18km (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.

But why is Russia aiming to capture this territory in Ukraine’s east?

The fall of Pokrovsk, an important logistics centre for the Ukrainian military, would amount to the biggest military setback for Kyiv in months. The city also hosts a mine which is Ukraine’s only domestic coking coal supplier for its once-giant steel industry.

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.