Ukraine-Russia war live: Five-hour air raid sirens in the east after Kyiv downs warplane in Donetsk

Russia has knocked out around 80 per cent of critical infrastructure in the town of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in Ukraine‘s east, as Moscow’s troops inched forward, a local official said.

Serhiy Dobriak, Pokrovsk’s military administration head, said Russian forces were at about 4 miles from the town, which is at an intersection of roads and a railway that makes it an important logistics point for the military and for civilians in the eastern Donetsk region.

Russia forces have focused some of their heaviest assaults in recent weeks on Pokrovsk, which could allow it to consolidate and advance the front line in the region.

“The enemy is leaving us without power, without water, without gas. Prepares us for the winter, so to say,” Dobriak said on national television.

Some 13,050 residents remain in the town and Ukrainian officials are pressing on with an evacuation plan that has been going on for some weeks. Just a month and a half ago, the town hosted more than 48,000 people, he said.

Russia continued to pummel the town on Thursday, launching a total of nine glide bombs and injuring four people in two attacks which damaged infrastructure, Dobriak said.

He said the daily attacks targeted energy facilities and other vital infrastructure. Almost half of Pokrovsk, 10 nearby villages and one smaller town were without power, he said, adding the energy infrastructure was “almost impossible to repair”.

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.”

Poland will start building the first elements of enhanced defence lines on its borders with Russia and Belarus by the end of 2024, a deputy defence minister has said.

Spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Warsaw laid out plans in May to spend 10 billion zlotys (£1.97 billion) to beef up its northern and eastern borders with fortifications, surveillance, reconnaissance and anti-drone systems by the end of 2028 to deter adversaries or help repel a potential attack.

“In the next three weeks, we will be able to carry out the first tests of the East Shield elements on Polish military training grounds, and this year we will start building the first elements ... on the northern and eastern borders,” Cezary Tomczyk told a press conference.

He said the project would be developed in cooperation with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as with British and American forces.

The war in Ukraine has spurred Poland to boost defence spending to 4.2% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024 and a planned 4.7% in 2025.

Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz was asked at the same event about defence spending beyond 2025, and said the upward trend should be maintained.

If you are joining now, here is a roundup of the events that happened yesterday:

• Russia attacks Ukraine’s critical infrastructure with 19 drones overnight

• Ukraine’s military says it hit fuel storage facility in Russia’s Voronezh region

• Huge Russian fuel depot blaze put out

  • Firefighters put out a huge blaze at a fuel depot in Russia’s Ural mountains, and a series of drone strikes were reported in areas close to the Ukrainian border, one of which also started a small fire at a fuel depot.

• More than 140 clashes on the frontline in past day, Ukraine says

  • Putins forces conducted 67 airstrikes, including dropping of 135 guided aerial bombs, according to a situation update from the Ukrainian army

• Russia knocked out most infrastructure in Ukraine’s Pokrovsk, local official says

  • Russia has knocked out around 80 per cent of critical infrastructure in the town of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in Ukraine‘s east

There were 142 clashes on the frontlines in Ukraine, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The General Staff also said Russian forces launched three missile strikes on Ukrainian positions and settlements, using three missiles.

Putins forces conducted 67 airstrikes, including dropping of 135 guided aerial bombs, according to the situation update.

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

“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 its latest 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.

Russia attacked Ukraine’s critical infrastructure with 19 drones overnight, the country’s air force said.

Air defences shot down nine drones with seven more likely impacted by electronic jamming, the Ukrainian air force said on Telegram, without saying what happened to the remaining three.