Ukraine-Russia war live: Putin warns of retaliation if Ukraine strikes with Western long-range weapons

Ukraine’s air defence units were in operation early this morning trying to repel a wave of Russian drones headings towards Kyiv, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said.

“Stay in shelters,” Vitali Klitschko, the mayor, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russian forces have advanced further into several eastern Ukrainian towns, bringing them closer to capturing the strategic city of Pokrovsk, Russian and Ukrainian bloggers said.

“The enemy advanced in Selydove,” DeepState, a group with close links to the Ukrainian army that analyses combat footage, wrote on the Telegram messaging app late yesterday. It posted a map indicating Russian troops in the town’s southeast.

Russian forces have been storming the coal mining town of Selydove in Ukraine’s Donetsk region for the past week. Capturing it would pave the way for a Russian advance on the logistical hub of Pokrovsk 20km (12 miles) northwest.

The Russian news outlet Shot said on Telegram that Moscow’s troops control 80 per cent of Selydove.

The Russian-installed head of Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, said Russian forces had hoisted their unit’s flag on the roof of one of the buildings in the town of Hirnyk, some 14km south of Selydove, Russia’s state news agency RIA reported.

Russian military bloggers also reported that Russian forces were close to taking over the town of Kurakhove, just southwest of Hirnyk. Reuters could not independently verify the reports. Ukraine has not commented on them.

Russia’s air defence destroyed at least 30 Ukrainian drones overnight, the defence ministry said early this morning.

The drones were destroyed over Russia’s southern regions of Voronezh, Bryansk, Oryol, Lipetsk and Belgorod, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

One woman was moderately injured as a result of the drone attack in the border region of Belgorod, the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram. He added that a few cars were also damaged.

Maxim Yegorov, governor of the Tambov region, some 450km southeast of Moscow, said a Ukrainian drone fell in the Michurinsky district of the region, sparking a short-lived fire but causing no injuries or material damage.

The Russian defence ministry reports only how many drones its units destroy, not how many Ukraine launches. Russian officials also rarely disclose the full scale of damage inflicted by the attacks, especially when they involve military or energy infrastructure.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Kyiv has often said that its attacks inside Russia target infrastructure key to Russian war efforts and are in response to Moscow’s continued strikes on Ukrainian territory.

Former diplomats tell Tom Watling that Vladimir Putin’s deepening ties with North Korea risks damaging relations with China

The US has joined Ukraine and South Korea in confirming reports of North Korea dispatching troops, estimated to be in the thousands, to aid Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

“We are no longer in a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia, North Korea and Ukraine,” said Marie Dumoulin of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

But analysts said it was unclear how North Korean troops will be used adding the North Korean forces do not have combat experience.

“I don’t think that sending a few thousand North Korean troops, whose level of training we don’t know, will make much difference on the battlefield in operational terms,” said Dumoulin.

“In any case, 10,000 soldiers is not that many,” added Isabelle Facon from the France-based Foundation of Strategic Research.

The Kremlin has denied a Wall Street Journal report about regular contacts between Elon Musk and President Vladimir Putin.

“No, this is not true,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Peskov said that Putin had one contact with Musk - the world’s richest man - and it was before 2022.

The Journal said Musk had been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022. Peskov said the report was absolutely false.

The US has joined Ukraine and South Korea in confirming reports of North Korea dispatching troops, estimated to be in the thousands, to aid Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff said that a full withdrawal of Russian troops, and not just peace talks, were essential to ending his country’s more than 2-1/2-year-old war against Moscow.

The chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, was addressing an international meeting devoted to implementing a peace plan, one of several gatherings staged as a follow-up to last June’s world “peace summit” hosted by Switzerland.

“Don’t expect this war to end when the warring sides begin to talk to each other,” Yermak told the gathering, according to the president’s website.

“Don’t be deceived. This war will end when the last soldier of the occupying army returns home.”

One Russian soldier was killed after a planned ambush on a convoy, according to Russian state media.

“Unknown people attacked a military convoy in the Grozny suburbs,” reported Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

“One serviceman was killed and a second was wounded. Measures are being taken to find and detain the attackers,” the statement added.

A local resident described the attack as being “rapid and well-coordinated” with the attackers fleeing shortly after.

The witness was unable to describe the gunmen but indicated that there was more than one attacker.