Photo: Collected
Russia on Sunday said its forces had advanced in eastern Ukraine as Kyiv reported deadly air attacks and urged the West to allow it to carry out more retaliatory strikes inside Russia.
Russian attack drones flying towards Ukraine also breached the airspace of NATO members Romania and Latvia, the countries said Sunday, triggering calls for a robust response from the military alliance.
Moscow has stepped up its aerial attacks in recent weeks, but it is also trying to fight off a major Ukrainian cross-border offensive into its western Kursk region, which has reshaped the course of the two-and-a-half-year war.
Kyiv launched its Kursk offensive on August 6 hoping to force Russia to redeploy troops pressing forward in the east of the country. But Moscow has appeared to intensify its attacks there, chalking up its most significant territorial gains in almost two years over the month of August.
And on Sunday, its military claimed to have captured another small village on the route towards the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region.
Russia's defence ministry said its troops had "liberated the settlement of Novohrodivka", which lies around 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Pokrovsk.
The town is one of Russia's larger territorial conquests of recent weeks, home to more than 14,000 inhabitants before Moscow launched its full-scale offensive in February 2022.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week his main aim in Ukraine after 30 months of fighting was to capture the eastern Donbas area, which includes Donetsk.
He claimed that Ukraine's Kursk counter-offensive had made that easier.
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