Russian troops are inching towards the city of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, trying ​to establish a foothold close to a heavily defended area, ‌Ukraine’s top army official said on Saturday (May 2, 2026).

Kostiantynivka, ​along with other cities, forms a so-called fortress ⁠belt in the country’s east – an area well fortified by the Ukrainian military.

All four international airports of the Russian capital were closed due to safety concerns on Sunday (February 22, 2026) afternoon until further notice, as air defence forces shot down 11 Ukrainian drones within an hour.

The Russian civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia said in a press release that air traffic restrictions have been imposed at all four international airports — Domodedovo, Vnukovo, Zhukovsky and Sheremetyevo — due to safety concerns.

“Air defences have intercepted another UAV flying towards Moscow,” Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said on his Max channel.

“Thus, the total number of downed drones has reached 11,” Sobyanin wrote in his latest social media post at 4 p.m. (local time).

As the war with its neighbour nears four years anniversary, Russia claims that Ukrainian drones regularly attack its different regions, including Moscow. Russia too attacks Ukraine with a barrage of missiles and drones.

Two people were killed, and several were wounded as a result of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian border regions, local authorities said Wednesday (January 14, 2026).

In the city of Rostov-on-Don, a drone attack sparked a fire in a residential building, and the body of a man was found in the charred remains of one of the apartments, the local governor, Yuri Sliussar, wrote on Telegram.

Four other people, including a four-year-old, were wounded in strikes elsewhere in the Rostov region, which sparked fires in several industrial areas.

In the border region of Belgorod, a woman was killed and a man wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a vehicle, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and in recent months has been pummelling the country nightly with hundreds of drones and missiles.

Ukraine launches dozens of drones at Russia every night in retaliation, saying it aims to target the energy industry, which is helping the Kremlin finance its invasion.

Russia’s top diplomat accused NATO and the European Union of using Ukraine to declare a “real war” against his country in a speech at the United Nations on Thursday (September 25, 2025) that Britain dismissed as “false fantasy world distortions.”

He spoke at a G20 meeting of Foreign Ministers at the U.N. two days after U.S. President Donald Trump signalled a harsher stance on Moscow, praising Ukraine’s war effort and saying NATO allies should shoot down Russian jets that enter their airspace.

Also Read | Trump ‘incredibly impatient’ with Russia on Ukraine, Vance says

Tensions have mounted along Europe’s eastern flank where Estonia has accused Moscow of sending three fighter jets into its airspace, a week after NATO jets shot down Russian drones in Polish airspace.

“Another clear example is the crisis in Ukraine provoked by the West, through which NATO and the EU have … already declared a real war on my country and are directly involved in it,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Lavrov, foreign minister for more than two decades, has made similar remarks in the past, but their echo within the walls of the United Nations building — delivered in front of fellow G20 foreign ministers — underscored the gravity of the moment.

He made no reference to Trump’s comments earlier this week, instead repeating Russia’s position that it was the West’s actions that provoked the war in Ukraine, which began when Moscow’s forces launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.

’False Fantasy World Distortions’

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper called out Mr. Lavrov as he made to leave when she began her speech and condemned Russia’s “unprovoked war of aggression” against Ukraine.

“No amount of false fantasy world distortions, misinformation and propaganda from the Russian representative about the causes of the war will convince anyone,” she said.

Russian forces occupy around 20% of Ukraine and the fighting rages in the east of the country more than 3-1/2 years since the full-scale invasion.

Europe’s Foreign Policy Chief, Kaja Kallas, called on world powers to exert international pressure on the Kremlin.

“There are no signs that Russia’s goal of subjugating Ukraine has changed,” she said.

Ukraine and Europe publicly welcomed Trump’s rhetorical U-turn on the war in Ukraine on Tuesday, in which he mocked the Russian military’s slow progress, saying he believed Kyiv could turn the tables on Russia and retake its occupied land.

But some European diplomats have cautioned Mr. Trump’s statements may indicate he is moving to leave Europe to carry the burden of supporting Ukraine.

Despite concerted lobbying by Europe and Ukraine, Mr. Trump has not imposed heavy new sanctions on Russia. Instead, he has imposed tariffs on products from India for buying Russian oil and discussed the possibility of similar action against China.

Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office on Thursday, Mr. Trump’s tone remained largely unchanged on Russia. He voiced disappointment with President Vladimir Putin’s actions and said Moscow was doing poorly in the war in Ukraine.

Mr. Lavrov held talks with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday. He is due to address the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday.

Russia on Saturday (September 13, 2025) said it had captured a new village in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, which Moscow’s forces say they reached at the beginning of July.

The Defence Ministry said its troops had seized the village of Novomykolaivka near the border with the Donetsk region — the epicentre of fighting on the front.

AFP was unable to confirm this claim.

DeepState, an online battlefield map run by Ukrainian military analysts, said the village was still under Kyiv’s control.

Russian forces are better equipped and vastly outnumber Ukrainian troops. They have been carrying out offensives in Ukraine for months and gaining ground across the eastern front.

At the end of August, Ukraine had for the first time acknowledged that Russian soldiers had entered the Dnipropetrovsk region, where Moscow had claimed advances at the start of the month.

The Russian army currently controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory.

The Kremlin is demanding that Ukraine withdraw from its eastern Donbas region as a precondition for halting hostilities, something that Kyiv has rejected.

The Dnipropetrovsk region is not one of the five Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea — that Moscow has publicly claimed as Russian territory.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, wanted to “occupy all of Ukraine” and would not stop until his goal was achieved, even if Kyiv agreed to cede territory.

For its part, the Kremlin noted on Friday that peace negotiations with Kyiv were on “pause,” following the failure of several attempts in recent months to diplomatically resolve the conflict triggered by Russia’s full-scale offensive in February 2022.

A Russian shelling attack on the town of Kostyantynivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region killed three people earlier Saturday, regional prosecutors said.

Russian forces launched more than 500 drones and missiles at Ukraine in a large-scale combined attack that mainly targeted the west of the country, Kyiv said on Wednesday (September 3, 2025).

The Ukrainian air force said Moscow had fired 502 drones and 24 missiles, while regional officials in the west of the country said several people were wounded and residential homes and civilian infrastructure were damaged.

“Three missiles and 69 strike drones hit in 14 locations, and the debris of downed projectiles fell in 14 locations,” the air force added.

This is a developing story. Please visit later for more information

The Russian army said Wednesday (August 20, 2025) it had captured three villages in eastern Ukraine, claiming fresh territorial gains despite U.S.-led peace efforts and a flurry of diplomacy to end the conflict.

Also Read | Russian attack on Poltava shows Putin does not want peace, Ukraine says

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Telegram its troops had “continued to advance deep into the enemy defences” in the embattled Donetsk region, taking the villages of Sukhetske and Pankivka.

They are near a section of the front where the Russian army broke through Ukrainian defences last week, between the logistics hub of Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka.

In the neighbouring central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region the Russian army said it had captured the village of Novogeorgiivka.

Moscow’s troops first entered the region — previously spared from fighting — in July.

These latest advances come amid accelerated efforts by the U.S. and European leaders to broker a peace deal that would end the offensive, now in its fourth year.

U.S. President Donald Trump said his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had agreed to meet the Ukrainian leader and accept some Western security guarantees for Kyiv.

These promises were met with caution in European capitals.

According to three sources familiar with a Monday call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, the Russian leader proposed holding the summit with Volodymyr Zelensky in Moscow — an idea rejected by the Ukrainian President.