Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin’s forces close in on key strategic city as ‘last battles’ rage – UK Times

Russian forces are trying to press forward around the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s military said on Monday, hoping to conclude a months-long campaign to seize the strategic hub as Moscow seeks to capture the whole of the Donetsk region.

Ukraine has struggled to halt slow Russian advances around Pokrovsk and elsewhere along the 1,200-km (746-mile) front line while it comes under U.S. pressure to reach a peace deal to end the four-year war in ongoing talks.

Kyiv’s General Staff said on Monday its forces still held the northern part of Pokrovsk, a city with a pre-war population of 60,000, and were also defending the smaller city of Myrnohrad nearby.

Pokrovsk, a railway nexus, has been the site of fierce fighting since last year. Its fall would mark Russia’s biggest battlefield victory since it seized the eastern city of Avdiivka in early 2024.

Moscow claimed late last year to have captured Pokrovsk, which Kyiv denied.

Ukraine and France will start joint weapons production, Kyiv’s defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov said yesterday after a meeting with French armed forces minister Catherine Vautrin.

“Met with a French MoD delegation led by @CaVautrin. Visited Ukrainian air-defense positions against the backdrop of the latest Russian missile and drone attacks. Demonstrated how Ukraine protects its skies every day. Grateful to France for the strong support that saves lives,” Fedorov said.

In a message on Telegram, he added: “We are moving from supplies to joint production and long-term solutions that systematically strengthen our defence.”

Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych trained wearing a helmet brandished with images of compatriots killed during the war in his homeland, delivering on a promise to use the Winter Olympics to keep attention on the conflict.

Visible on the helmet are teenage weightlifter Alina Perehudova, boxer Pavlo Ischenko, ice hockey player Oleksiy Loginov, actor and athlete Ivan Kononenko, diving athlete and coach Mykyta Kozubenko, shooter Oleksiy Habarov and dancer Daria Kurdel.

“Some of them were my friends,” Heraskevych, who is his country’s flag bearer, told Reuters of the portraits after his training session at the Cortina sliding centre.

An agreement to settle the nearly four-year-old conflict between Russia and Ukraine must also take into consideration security guarantees for Russia, a senior Russian diplomat was quoted as saying.

“We recognise that a peace settlement in Ukraine must take account of Ukraine’s security interests, but a key factor, of course, is Russia’s security interests,” deputy Russian foreign minister Alexander Grushko told the Izvestia media outlet.

“If you look carefully and study the statements made by the leaders of the European Union, no one talks about security guarantees for Russia. This is a key element of a peace accord. Without it, an agreement is impossible.”

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators have held two rounds of talks in recent weeks with US representatives in the United Arab Emirates. No peace deal has emerged, but the two sides agreed at their latest meeting last week on the first exchange of prisoners of war in five months.

Security guarantees for Ukraine have been a focal point of discussions, along with the extent of Russia’s control of Ukrainian territory and plans for post-war recovery in Kyiv.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that documents on security guarantees for Ukraine were ready.

Media outlet Izvestia said Mr Grushko listed elements of what might be contained in such guarantees.

In the midst of Russia’s war against Ukraine, one idea has gained remarkable traction: that fully autonomous drones represent the future of defence. Fewer humans, more machines, faster outcomes. Autonomy, in this narrative, is treated as a proxy for progress and often even for intelligence.

This is a dangerous misconception.

Ukraine’s ongoing resistance against Russia has shown the world, in the starkest possible terms, how profoundly modern warfare has changed. Large, expensive and slow-to-adapt systems are no longer the decisive factor. Instead, smaller, software-defined unmanned systems dominate the battlefield because they are fast to adapt, cost-efficient and integrated into a broader information ecosystem.

Russian forces are trying to press forward around the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s military said on Monday, hoping to conclude a months-long campaign to seize the strategic hub as Moscow seeks to capture the whole of the Donetsk region.

Ukraine has struggled to halt slow Russian advances around Pokrovsk and elsewhere along the 1,200-km (746-mile) front line while it comes under U.S. pressure to reach a peace deal to end the four-year war in ongoing talks.

Kyiv’s General Staff said on Monday its forces still held the northern part of Pokrovsk, a city with a pre-war population of 60,000, and were also defending the smaller city of Myrnohrad nearby.

Pokrovsk, a railway nexus, has been the site of fierce fighting since last year. Its fall would mark Russia’s biggest battlefield victory since it seized the eastern city of Avdiivka in early 2024.

Moscow claimed late last year to have captured Pokrovsk, which Kyiv denied.

Russian attacks damaged production sites of Ukraine’s state-run oil and gas company Naftogaz in the Poltava and Sumy regions, the company’s CEO said on Monday.

The facilities in the Poltava region came under attack for a second day in a row, Sergii Koretskyi said on Facebook, adding it was the 20th attack on the company’s infrastructure since the start of the year.