Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin’s forces gain foothold in strategic town as drones target Moscow

Ukraine sent drones towards Moscow for the third consecutive night, disrupting air traffic around the Russian capital, Russian authorities said late last night.

The Russian defence ministry said in a statement that its air defence units destroyed 57 Ukrainian drones within three hours, starting at 1700 GMT yesterday, including four over the Moscow region and eight over neighbouring regions.

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the emergency services had been sent to the site where a drone bound for Moscow came down.

Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsiya said two of Moscow’s four airports, the Domodedovo airport and the smaller Zhukovsky airport, were briefly closed for safety reasons.

There were no immediate reports of damage. Russia typically gives limited details about the effects of Ukrainian strikes on its territory unless civilians or civilian infrastructure are hit.

Over the previous two nights, Russia’s units destroyed 35 Ukrainian drones over the Moscow region, the Russian defence ministry said. There was no damage reported.

Kyiv has kept up long-range drone strikes on Moscow and other Russian regions in recent months, saying it seeks to hit military and industrial assets, sap Russia’s war economy and show Russians the conflict is no longer distant.

Ukraine launched several drones targeting the Budyonnovsk industrial zone in Russia’s Stavropol region, the region’s governor Vladimir Vladimirov said this morning.

The attack caused no significant damage, and there were no casualties, Vladimirov said on his Telegram channel.

This is the third night in a row Russia has been attacked by Ukrainian drones.

Russian soldiers have gained a foothold in the strategic eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk, Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian president said Russia had devoted vast numbers of troops to capturing the town, which is a key part of Kyiv’s defensive lines in Donetsk, but that it had so far failed to do so.

He said Vladimir Putin’s forces outnumbered Ukrainians there by eight to one. “Imagine how many Russian forces are there. But at the same time, they have not achieved the planned result,” he said.

Russia controls about 75 per cent of the Donetsk region. About 6,600 sq km (2,548 square miles) is still under Ukraine’s control.

The Ukrainian open-source mapping project Deep State in the past week has reduced the area to the southwest of Pokrovsk that it considers under Ukrainian control, increasing the area “requiring clarification” to around one-fifth of the city. The city was a key Ukrainian logistics hub before the war.

In the past one year, Russian forces have gradually advanced toward Pokrovsk after capturing the long-time Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka, which lies around 25 miles to the southeast.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukrainian and European officials will meet at the end of the week to discuss details of a ceasefire plan.

“It is not a plan to end the war. First of all, a ceasefire is needed,” Mr Zelensky said.

“This is a plan to begin diplomacy… Our advisers will meet in the coming days, we agreed on Friday or Saturday. They will discuss the details of this plan.”

On Tuesday, he spoke to the Finnish president, the Dutch foreign minister and the Lithuanian Speaker.

He said he would work on a plan for a ceasefire “in the coming 10 days”.

Belarus will deploy Russia’s new Oreshnik intermediate-range hypersonic missile system in December, Russian state-run Tass news agency reports.

Natalya Eismont, spokesperson for Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, said preparations for the deployment were nearing completion.

Mr Lukashenko said the deployment was a response to what he called Western escalation.

The Oreshnik missiles featured in joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises last month.

Permanent year-round military conscription is set to be introduced in Russia after politicians endorsed a bill mandating it as authorities seek to fill the ranks.

At the moment conscription is done in spring and autumn.

The bill will allow conscription offices to summon draftees for medical exams and other procedures at any time of the year but it still stipulates that conscripts will enter military service only during spring and summer months as before.

All Russian men aged 18-30 are obliged to serve in the military for one year, although many avoid the draft by using deferments granted to students, declaring chronic illnesses and other reasons.

Russian authorities say the military does not use draftees in Ukraine, relying on volunteers and reservists mobilised for action. But human-rights activists and media reports have said the military has encouraged or coerced many draftees into signing contracts as volunteers.

Last year, Mr Putin ordered the number of active troops to be increased by 180,000, to 1.5 million. He said last month that over 700,000 troops were fighting in Ukraine.

Putin has created several initiatives to encourage childbirth, such as one-time payments for pregnant teens, writes Katie Marie Davies: