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

Over the past 24 hours, roughly half of the clashes along the about 600-mile (1,000km) frontline occurred near Pokrovsk and Kurakhove in the Donetsk region, Ukraine’s General Staff said on Tuesday.

Ukraine has a critical manpower problem on the front line and, though the Russian army's gains have been incremental, its momentum is adding up as the Ukrainians yield ground.

The Russian advance is threatening important supply routes in Donetsk, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said late on Monday.

Ukrainian defences in Donetsk are not in danger of being overrun, however, the think tank said.

It also noted that Russia would need to capture more than 3,000 square mile (8,000 sq km) of territory to achieve the Kremlin's goal of seizing the whole of Donetsk.

Russian forces have captured the village of Kopanky in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, the Interfax news agency cited Russia's defence ministry as saying on Tuesday.

The ministry also said Russian forces had downed three Ukrainian drones near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine.

Lieutenant General Alexander Sanchik has been appointed acting commander of Russia's "South" group of forces, the RBC news outlet cited anonymous sources as saying on Tuesday.

The move follows the dismissal of the previous commander of the group, one of the large army units involved in Russia's campaign in Ukraine.

Russia opposes simply freezing the conflict in Ukraine because Moscow needs a "solid and long-term peace" that resolves the core reasons for the crisis, President Vladimir Putin's foreign intelligence chief said on Tuesday.

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), said that Russia had the initiative on the battlefield.

Naryshkin said Russia was categorically opposed to the "freezing of the conflict", adding that Russia wanted a long-term peace. Russia is open for talks, Naryshkin said.

Discussion in the West about arming Ukraine with nuclear weapons is "absolutely irresponsible", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested that US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons, though there were fears such a step would have serious implications.

Peskov said the comments were only attributed to anonymous sources, and those making them do not feel "a shred of responsibility". The West should listen carefully to Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said.

Earlier, senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.

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 say.

The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase after Moscow's forces made some of their biggest territorial gains and the United States allowed Kyiv to strike back with US missiles.

"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, a group with close links to the Ukrainian army that studies combat footage and provides front line maps.

Russia began advancing faster in eastern Ukraine in July just as Ukrainian forces carved out a sliver of its western region of Kursk. Since then, the Russian advance has accelerated, according to open source maps.

Russia currently controls 18 per cent of Ukraine including all of Crimea, just over 80 per cent of Donbas, which comprises of Luhansk and Donetsk, and more than 70 per cent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well just under 3 per cent of the Kharkiv region, according to open source maps.

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

Josep Borrell has said “you cannot approve the court when it goes against Putin and oppose it when it goes against Netanyahu”, referring to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The comments from the Vice President of the EU Commission comes after some countries rejected the court’s warrant for the Israeli prime minister’s arrest.