Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin ‘won’t accept any Trump peace deal’ as he is ‘obsessed’ with crushing Ukraine

Russian air defence systems destroyed 22 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s defence ministry said this morning.

Of these, 10 of the drones were destroyed over the territory of the southern Rostov region, while the rest were in the Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Bryansk, and Smolensk regions, the ministry said on Telegram.

Dozens of British soldiers have been drafted in to help the US find out who is responsible for flying more mystery drones over three air bases in England.

A small number of drones were spotted overnight flying over RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and RAF Feltwell in Norfolk, United States Air Force (USAF) confirmed on Tuesday.

Sources told the PA news agency around 60 troops have been deployed to help USAF in its investigation of the incident.

Nato members reaffirmed their support for Ukraine during talks with the country’s officials yesterday, held in response to Russia’s launch of an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile.

“The chief of the defence intelligence of Ukraine and acting commander of the air force joined the meeting online and briefed the allies on the details of the attack and its possible consequences,” Nataliia Galibarenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Nato, said in a statement.

Ambassadors representing Nato’s 32 member countries were briefed by senior Ukrainian officials after Kyiv called a meeting of the Nato-Ukraine Council, a forum for cooperation.

“They emphasised to the partners that this outrageous attack was a blatant demonstration of force by Russia and a fruitless attempt to intimidate the allies,” she added.

Vladimir Putin said Moscow struck a Ukrainian military facility with a new intermediate-range, hypersonic ballistic missile in response to the US and UK’s allowing Kyiv to strike Russian territory with advanced Western weapons.

Locals in Kyiv go about their days, shortly after Russia launched 188 drones against most regions of Ukraine in a nighttime blitz.

The Ukrainian air force said it was a record number of drones deployed in a single attack. Many of the drones were intercepted, according to the air force, but apartment buildings and critical infrastructure such as the national power grid were damaged.

No casualties were immediately reported in the 17 targeted regions.

A Russian drone attack on Kyiv wounded three people, two of whom were hospitalised, officials in the Ukrainian capital said today.

Falling debris from a destroyed drone damaged a non-residential building in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi district, mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said that air defence units were operating in the city after midnight.

The scale of the attack was not immediately clear. The strikes come after Russia launched a record number of drones targeting Ukraine yesterday, cutting power to much of the western region of Ternopil and damaging residential buildings in the Kyiv region.

Ukraine is withdrawing faulty 120mm mortar shells from the frontline after multiple reports of them misfiring, officials said.

The supply of defective shells is being investigated by an interdepartmental commission, Ukraine’s defence ministry said, which said around 100,000 Ukraine-made 120mm rounds had to be recalled from the battlefield.

Several complaints and videos shared on social media showed the mortar shells not exploding or failing to hit their targets. Ukraine’s defence ministry confirmed the withdrawal of the batches of ammunition and said it will now provide Ukrainian forces with imported shells.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian soldiers said the rounds did not explode, remained stuck in the launcher or fell off target.

Russia has expelled a British diplomat for spying in an accusation denied by London as a fresh row erupts in the latest blow to relations between the two countries.

The Russian FSB security service named the diplomat, whose photo was splashed across TV news bulletins, as Edward Wilkes and alleged he had intentionally provided false information when he entered Russia – a claim disputed by the UK Foreign Office as “malicious and baseless”.

In a statement issued yesterday, the FSB said: “During counterintelligence work, the Russian Federal Security Service has discovered an undeclared British intelligence presence under the cover of the national embassy in Moscow.

A new ballistic missile fired by Russia at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro last week carried multiple warheads but no explosives, two senior Ukrainian government sources said. The deadly missiles caused little damage upon hitting targets in Ukraine’s east, they said.

Vladimir Putin said the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile strike was a successful test and that it reached its target – a missile and defence enterprise in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Their comments appeared to confirm the Kremlin’s own description of the weapon’s use last Thursday as a warning to the West after the United States and Britain allowed Ukraine to fire their missiles into Russia.

The two sources provided more details about the new weapon as Western experts try to learn more about what US officials say was an experimental intermediate-range missile.

Intermediate-range ballistic missiles are typically meant to be used for long-range nuclear strikes on targets thousands of kilometres away. One of the sources said the missile was carrying dummy warheads and described the damage caused as “quite small”.

The second source said: “In this case, (the missile) was without explosives... There were no types of explosions like we expected. There was something, but it was not huge.”

Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers said.

Russian troops swept through swathes of Ukraine in early 2022 before being pushed back to its east and south. The 1,000km (620-mile) frontline has been largely static for two years, until the latest, smaller-scale advances that began in July.

“Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine,” independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.

The Russian army captured almost 235 sq km (91 sq miles) in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, it said.

Russian forces had taken 600 sq km (232 sq miles) in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, which studies combat footage and provides front line maps.

The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase, with Russia reported to be using North Korean troops in Ukraine and Kyiv now using Western-supplied missiles to strike back inside Russia.

Moscow, which like North Korea has not confirmed or denied the presence of the troops, used a hypersonic intermediate-range missile on Ukraine last week and Ukraine reported the biggest Russian drone attack on its territory so far yesterday.

The thrust of the advance has been in Donetsk region, with Russian forces pushing towards the town of Pokrovsk and into the town of Kurakhove. Russia has increasingly encircled territory and then pummelled Ukrainian forces with artillery and glide bombs, according to Russian analysts.

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said yesterday that Russia held the complete strategic initiative on the battlefield.

Neither side publishes accurate data on their own losses though Western intelligence estimates casualties to number hundreds of thousands killed or injured, while swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine have turned into wastelands.