Ukraine yesterday said it had launched artillery barrages that destroyed a Russian arms depot and carried out a “special operation” to free military captives in the Moscow-controlled Kherson region, a territory it eyes to retake in a counter-offensive.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday extending a simplified Russian naturalisation process to all citizens of Ukraine, a document published on the government's website showed.

A major gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was shutting down for annual maintenance on Monday amid German concern that Russia may not resume the flow of gas as scheduled.

A Russian missile struck an apartment building in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least 15 people as Moscow's forces sought to consolidate their control over the Donbas region.

Mufti Sheikh Said Ismahilov, one of the Muslim spiritual leaders of Ukraine, said they would pray for victory and the liberation of the occupied territories.

Western officials yesterday tried to coax Russia into allowing Ukraine to ship its grain out to the world as the four-month-old war threatened to bring hunger to countries far away from the battlefields.

A Moscow district councillor was jailed for seven years on Friday for criticising Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in what a Kremlin-critical lawyer said was the first case of anyone going to prison under a new law on "fake information".

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had barely got started in Ukraine and dared the West to try to defeat it on the battlefield, while insisting that Moscow was still open to the idea of peace talks.

Russian forces yesterday consolidated gains in eastern Ukraine and probed the defences of potential new targets, as Ukrainian forces raised their national flag on a recaptured Black Sea island in a symbol of defiance against Moscow.

Ukraine has so far thwarted an attempted Russian advance into the north of its Donetsk region, but the city of Sloviansk and other civilian areas there were being heavily shelled, Ukrainian officials said yesterday.

Ukraine has so far thwarted an attempted Russian advance into the north of its Donetsk region, but the city of Sloviansk and other civilian areas there were being heavily shelled, Ukrainian officials said yesterday.

Russia yesterday said it was investigating the torture of Russian soldiers held prisoner in Ukraine and recently released as part of a prisoner swap with Kyiv in late June.

Fighting raged in and around Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region yesterday as Russian troops tried to build on recent battlefield gains, while Nato pressed ahead with Finland and Sweden’s momentous membership bids.

Russia yesterday claimed that some of the weapons the West is sending to Ukraine are spreading across the Middle East and ending up on the black market.

Ukrainian forces were taking up new defensive lines in the east yesterday, preparing for a hard new phase in the war as President Vladimir Putin proclaimed Russia’s victory in the months-long battle of Luhansk.

The cost of rebuilding Ukraine following Russia’s invasion could reach $750 billion and rich Russians should help to meet the cost, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said yesterday.

Turkish customs authorities have detained a Russian cargo ship carrying grain which Ukraine says is stolen, Ukraine's ambassador to Turkey said on Sunday.

Russia yesterday claimed to have captured the strategic Ukrainian city of Lysychansk and the entire frontline Lugansk region which would mark a decisive breakthrough for Moscow’s forces seeking control of the country’s east. 

Russia’s defense minister said Russian forces took control Sunday of the last major Ukrainian-held city in Ukraine’s Luhansk province, bringing Moscow closer to its stated goal of seizing all of Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Missiles rained down on Ukraine killing many civilians and wounding dozens in built up areas as the weekend began, prompting President Volodymyr Zelensky to accuse Russia of state “terror”.