Russia-Ukraine war: Putin’s forces make advances around key city Avdiivka – live

Russian troops have made confirmed gains around a key Ukrainian city in the east, geolocated footage has shown.

Footage provided by Ukrainian first-person-view drone pilots showed Russian troops had advanced around seven kilometres northwest of Avdiivka.

Polish farmers striking on the border to Ukraine have led to delays in trucks getting to the country, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Over 2,100 trucks are stuck at the Polish border according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Infrastructure.

The crossing which is the site of Ukraine’s largest cargo deliveries, usually lets in 680 trucks a day. This has been reduced to a trickle of a few dozen due to the blocking of the crossing.

The Polish truckers have been protesting since 6 November against the loosening of EU transport rules for Ukrainian trucks.

In response to Russia’s mass attacks using Iranian-made Shahed drones on Saturday, Ukraine’s Pravda has reported that Ukraine’s military struck back with 35 drones targeting Russian military targets on Sunday.

It comes after Kyiv was hit by its biggest drone attack since the war began.

According to Pravda’s military intelligence source, the operation was to signal that Russia’s strikes against civilians would be met with consequences.

“The war must be fought with the military in the war zones. Strikes on civilians and outside the war zone will not go unanswered,” source said as cited by the media.

“We have got to keep the world’s attention focused on Ukraine because they are involved in a fight with Russia that has got huge implications for all of us as well.”

He added: “We cannot allow the Ukraine conflict to go down the attention span. That suits Vladimir Putin and nobody else.”

In audio intercepts from the front lines in Ukraine, Russian soldiers speak in shorthand of 200s to mean dead, 300s to mean wounded. The urge to flee has become common enough that they also talk of 500s — people who refuse to fight.

As the war grinds into its second winter, a growing number of Russian soldiers want out, as suggested in secret recordings obtained by The Associated Press of Russian soldiers calling home from the battlefields of the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.

The calls offer a rare glimpse of the war as it looked through Russian eyes — a point of view that seldom makes its way into Western media, largely because Russia has made it a crime to speak honestly about the conflict in Ukraine. They also show clearly how the war has progressed, from the professional soldiers who initially powered Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion to men from all walks of life compelled to serve in grueling conditions.

Heavy snowfall has started to fall in southern Ukraine, with other areas set to be affected across the country.

Oleg Kiper, head of the Odessa Regional State Administration, posted footage of the situation in the southern region to Telegram this morning. A video posted below shows the extreme conditions.

He wrote: “In view of the bad weather, I am asking you: please do not go out on the roads. Wait out adverse weather conditions at home.

“Currently, the roads are slippery, there are snowdrifts, impassable places, traffic jams, and road accidents.”

Oleksiy Kuleba, deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said they “expect snow, freezing rain and strong wind in most regions” in Ukraine from this evening.

While these conditions will prove difficult for civilians across the country, they will be especially felt by soldiers along the 600-mile frontline.

Slovakia’s new prime minister, Robert Fico, said on Friday he considers the war between Ukraine and Russia a frozen conflict that cannot be solved by sending arms to the Ukrainian armed forces.

Fico ended his country’s military aid for Ukraine after his new government was sworn in on Oct. 25.

After meeting his Czech counterpart, Petr Fiala, in Prague on Friday, he said he would prefer the Russian and Ukrainian sides sit at a negotiation table. He didn’t say how to achieve that.

Russia has “likely moved” air defence systems from the exclave of Kaliningrad to “backfill recent losses” on the mainland and in occupied Ukraine, the British Ministry of Defence has said.

Russia has put Meta Platforms’ spokesperson Andy Stone on a wanted list on unspecified charges, state-run TASS news agency reported on Sunday.

TASS said the Russian Interior Ministry had opened a criminal investigation against Stone but that the ministry had not disclosed the details of the investigation or charges.

Meta’s main social platforms – Facebook and Instagram – were both banned in Russia shortly after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year.

In March 2022 the Russian investigative committee said it has opened criminal investigation against the “illegal actions of Meta’s employees” and mentioned Stone, saying he had “lifted a ban on calls for violence against the Russian military on its platforms” and was thus inciting extremist activity.

Meta’s press office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request seeking comment from Stone and Meta out of normal business hours.

One of the men, Denis Gorin, was recruited into a private military company after signing a contract with the Russian ministry of defence but is known to have been convicted thrice for murdering at least four people between 2003 and 2022.

He was also convicted of eating the remains of his victims along with his brother, reported Sibir Realii, a news outlet aligned with Radio Free Europe.