Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russian strikes kill 12 as Kyiv unveils new long-range ‘rocket-drone’

Russian forces have increased the pace at which they are taking territory in eastern Ukraine, as Kyiv’s troops struggle to hold back a much larger and more heavily armed military.

Along the 1,000 km frontline, Moscow has focused its attacks on towns and villages around the transport hub of Pokrovsk, the seizure of which could severely disrupt Ukraine’s ability to supply its forces.

Pasi Paroinen, an analyst from the Finland-based Black Bird Group, which studies footage and satellite images from the frontline, told Reuters that Russian gains in Ukraine had accelerated in recent months.

He estimated the following monthly territorial gains by Russia:

In Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion in August, Kyiv now holds approximately 500 sq km of territory, Paroinen estimated, down from a maximum of around 1,200 sq km.

US President-elect Donald Trump will hold three-way talks in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday, the Elysee said.

Devastating human and material losses continue to mount, leaving Ukraine more vulnerable than at any time since the early days of the war.

As of 31 August, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine had documented at least 11,743 civilians killed and 24,614 wounded in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Ukrainian prosecutors have said 589 Ukrainian children had been killed by 15 November.

Western countries believe Russia has suffered far worse casualties than Ukraine, sometimes losing more than 1,000 soldiers killed per day during periods of intense fighting in the east.

But it is Ukraine, with around a third of Russia’s population, that is likely to be facing the more severe manpower shortages arising from battles of attrition.

Russia now occupies and claims to have annexed around a fifth of Ukraine, an area around the size of Greece.

The draft 2025 budget envisages that about 26% of Ukraine’s GDP, or 2.2 trillion hryvnias ($53.3 billion), would go on defence. Ukraine has already received more than $100 billion from its Western partners in financial aid.

There are several variants of Army Tactical Missile Systems, a long-range missile system that often carries varying amounts of cluster bomblets.

Ukrainian forces used the US-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles for the first time in October 2023, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy saying the weapons had “proven themselves.”

Ukraine likely has what are known as M39A1 Block IA ATACMS that are guided in part by Global Positioning System and have a range of 40 to 190 miles. They can carry a payload of 300 bomblets. The M39 Block IA were used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to Army documents, and were added to the US arsenal in 1997.

Vladimir Putin said Russia had struck Ukraine with a new hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile in response to Kyiv’s use of US and British missiles against Russia.

On 21 November, he said Russia had launched an “Oreshnik”, one of its newest intermediate-range missiles, at a defence enterprise in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Putin said it travelled at 10 times the speed of sound and could not be intercepted. It has a range of around 3,100 miles allowing Russia to strike most of Europe, according to experts.

It appears to have multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles: separate warheads able to hit different targets.

Anatoly Matviychuk, a Russian military expert, said it could carry six to eight conventional or nuclear warheads, and was probably already in service.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said a second batch of F-16 fighter jets had arrived in Ukraine from Denmark.

“The second batch of F-16s from Denmark has arrived in Ukraine. This is an example of leadership in defending lives that sets Denmark apart,” Zelenskiy said in a post on X.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said he is confident he will be able to agree with US President-elect Donald Trump on a joint strategy for Ukraine after speaking to him on the phone.

“I am confident that we can develop a joint strategy for Ukraine. My guiding principle remains that nothing can be decided without giving the Ukrainian people a say,” he told the Funke group of newspapers in an interview.

He added he had spoken with the future US president “in detail” and that his team was in a direct exchange with Trump’s security advisers.

Ukraine is shaping up as a major issue in campaigning for Germany’s snap election in February, which follows the collapse last month of Scholz’s three-party governing coalition in Berlin.

Friedrich Merz, the conservative opposition leader who is on course to unseat Scholz, has said Germany should send Taurus cruise missiles. Scholz has opposed such a move, saying it could escalate the war.

Scholz on Monday announced new military aid for Ukraine during a rare visit to Kyiv that he said sent a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that Berlin would stand by Kyiv for as long as needed in the war.

President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia could deploy its new Oreshnik intermediate-range hypersonic missile on the territory of its ally Belarus in the second half of next year.

Putin was responding to a request from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at a summit in Minsk, where the two leaders signed a mutual defence pact.

“… since we have today signed an agreement on security guarantees using all available forces and means, I consider the deployment of such systems as the Oreshnik on the territory of the Republic of Belarus to be feasible,” Putin said.

“I think this will become possible in the second half of next year, as serial production of these systems in Russia increases and as these missile systems enter service with the Russian strategic forces,” he added in televised comments.

Russia first fired the Oreshnik at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on 21 November, in what Putin cast as a response to Ukraine’s first use of US ATACMs ballistic missiles and British Storm Shadows to strike Russian territory with Western permission.