Ukraine-Russia war latest: Major fire at Crimea’s largest oil depot forces Russia to declare emergency

There is no prospect for negotiation “anytime soon” over the war in Ukraine, western officials have said.

They added that Ukraine was unlikely to reverse recent gains by Russia with “relative stability on the front line” expected.

Russia captured the tactically significant town of Vuhledar on Wednesday, as officials said Moscow would now “seek to exploit opportunities in villages and towns in its vicinity in the coming weeks”.

However, they added that Russia would not be able to “fundamentally capitalise on these gains”.

Western officials said: “We’re not going to suddenly see a breakthrough and a rapid advance of Russia westwards.

“It will just continue to be this slow grind.”

Former Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg has said he regrets the alliance did not provide military support to Ukraine earlier.

“If there’s anything I in a way regret and see much more clearly now is that we should have provided Ukraine with much more military support much earlier,” he told the Financial Times.

“I think we all have to admit, we should have given them more weapons pre-invasion. And we should have given them more advanced weapons, faster, after the invasion. I take my part of the responsibility.”

Mr Stoltenberg also said Nato had called Putin’s “bluff” after “crossing all those so-called red lines” the Russian President had put up.

Putin has constantly threatened Nato and Ukraine’s Western allies to not interfere with Russia’s invasion, often with nuclear threats.

Vladimir Putin’s offensive in eastern Ukraine is likely to culminate in the coming months, a US-based think tank has said.

“Russian forces do not have the available manpower and materiel to continue intensified offensive efforts indefinitely, however, and current Russian offensive operations in eastern Ukraine will likely culminate in the coming months, if not weeks, as Ukrainian officials and ISW have previously assessed,” the Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment.

Ukrainian forces, it said, also face serious operational challenges and constraints, which are providing Russian forces with opportunities to pursue tactically significant gains.

But the current Russian offensive, which was started in autumn last year, has not yielded operationally significant gains for Russian forces and only offered gradual tactical gains in specific sectors of the front, the ISW said.

Ukraine’s “effective defence in depth along the frontline” has caused Russia significant losses and prevent Mr Putin’s troops from making more rapid gains on the battlefield, it said.

A Ukrainian aircraft fired British-French cruise missiles at Russian troops attempting to advance towards a city in Ukraine, Sky news has reported.

A Ukrainian security source shared drone footage with the broadcaster that reportedly shows strikes on Russian troops advancing towards Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces used Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles, gifted by Western nations,” the source said.

The Independent could not confirm the assertions or the drone footage.

Ukrainian forces reported the downing of a Russian warplane in eastern Ukraine.

The bomber was shot down near Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region, according to Serhiy Horbunov, head of the local military administration, as cited by Ukraine’s public broadcaster, Suspilne.

Images revealed the charred wreckage of the aircraft after it crashed into a house, igniting a fire.

Russia’s envoy to the US, a Kremlin hard-liner, has returned to Moscow, state media reported, with the end of his term coming at a time of the most hostile relations between the two nations in decades.

“Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Ivanovich Antonov is concluding his Washington assignment and heading to Moscow,” TASS state news agency cited the foreign ministry as saying.

The Siberia-born Antonov, 69, a career diplomat, was seen as a hawk who was still capable of striking compromises. Head of the Russian mission in Washington since 2017, he said in July his assignment was coming to an end.

There was no mention of who would replace the envoy, considered a military-style negotiator. His stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown stalwart support of President Vladimir Putin’s actions.