Russia Ukraine war latest: Kyiv troops retreat from key eastern town as Moscow conducts nuclear drills

Russia‘s Federal Security Service said it had prevented an attack on a defence facility in the Samara region in southwest Russia, the RIA state news agency reported on Friday.

Chasiv Yar is a short distance west of Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia last year after a bitter 10-month battle. For months, Russian forces have focused on capturing Chasiv Yar, a town which occupies an elevated location. Its fall would put nearby cities in jeopardy and compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes.

The Ukrainian army retreated from a northeastern neighborhood in the town, Nazar Voloshyn, the spokesperson for the Khortytsia ground forces formation, told The Associated Press in a written message Thursday.

A six-year-old girl died in hospital after a Ukranian drone attack on the town of Primorsko-Akhtarsk in Russia’s Krasnodar region, Veniamin Kondratyev, the regional governor, said on Friday.

He said six people were hospitalised after the attack. Ukraine has not commented on the incident so far.

A Russian military court has placed the commander of the country’s 83rd Guards Air Assault Brigade in pre-trial detention for two months on charges of large-scale fraud, the Tass state news agency reported.

In 2022, The New York Times reported that Colonel Artyom Gorodilov was in command of Russia’s 234th Air Assault Regiment which Ukraine and the West say killed Ukrainian civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha in March that year.

Vladimir Putin has dismissed the Bucha allegations as “a provocation” and said the Russian army had nothing to do with the killings which Russian officials have suggested were staged for propaganda purposes.

Gorodilov, who was promoted for his exploits in what Russia calls its special military operation in Ukraine, is the latest in a series of high-ranking Russian military officers and senior defence officials to be arrested on charges of corruption in recent months.

The Ukrainian air force said it downed all 32 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack. Three drones were shot down over the southern region of Mykolaiv, its governor said.

Three more were downed over Dnipropetrovsk region, according to the governor.

The Kyiv region governor reported that the air defence was at work to shoot down the drones in the early hours today.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow today, Radio Free Europe and the Financial Times reported.

Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as neither confirming nor denying the visit. State news agency RIA cited Peskov as saying that Putin had a “busy schedule” on Friday about which the Kremlin would inform reporters later.

It would be the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that Putin and Orban have met inside Russia.

Orban, who has maintained a closer relationship to Moscow than other EU nations since the invasion, visited Russia in 2022 without meeting Putin and has met him in other countries.

From the start of this month, Hungary has taken over the rotating presidency of the European Union, a largely ceremonial role tasked with agenda-setting and brokering agreements in legislative affairs.

Earlier this week, Orban visited Kyiv where he urged Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to consider a ceasefire to accelerate an end to the war with Russia.

“The EU rotating presidency has no mandate to engage with Russia on behalf of the EU,” Charles Michel, president of the Council of European Union leaders, said on X.

“No discussions about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine,” he said, reacting to Orban‘s visit to Moscow. Hungary, a member of the EU and Nato, has refused to send weapons to Ukraine and vocally criticised EU sanctions against Russia, while stopping short of using its veto power to block them.

Donald Trump has been presented with a plan to bring an end to the war in Ukraine by two key advisers that would require Kyiv to sit down for peace talks with Russia or receive no further US weapons:

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi will visit Russia next Monday and Tuesday and hold talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said yesterday. The visit was first announced by Russian officials last month, but the dates have not been previously disclosed.

Russia has had strong ties with India since the Cold War and New Delhi’s importance as a key trading partner for Moscow has grown since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China and India have become key buyers of Russian oil following sanctions imposed by the US and its allies that shut most Western markets for Russian exports.

Under Modi’s leadership, India has avoided condemning Russia’s action in Ukraine while emphasizing the need for a peaceful settlement.

The partnership between Moscow and New Delhi has become fraught, however, since Russia started developing closer ties with India’s main rival, China, because of the hostilities in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s army has retreated from a neighbourhood in the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important town in the eastern Donetsk region that has been reduced to rubble during a months-long Russian assault, a military spokesperson said yesterday.

Chasiv Yar is a short distance west of Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia last year after a bitter 10-month battle.

The Ukrainian army retreated from a northeastern neighbourhood of the town, Nazar Voloshyn, the spokesperson for the Khortytsia ground forces formation said yesterday.

Ukraine’s defensive positions in the town were “destroyed”, he said, adding that there was a threat of serious casualties if troops remained in the area and that Russia did not leave “a single intact building”.

Months of relentless Russian artillery strikes have devastated Chasiv Yar, with homes and municipal offices charred, and a town that once had a population of 12,000 has been left deserted.

Oleh Shyriaiev, commander of the 255th assault battalion which has been based in the area for six months, said after Russian troops captured the neighbourhood, they burned every building not already destroyed by shelling.

Shyriaiev said Russia is using scorched-earth tactics in an attempt to destroy anything which could be used as a military position in a bid to force Ukranian troops to retreat. “I regret that we are gradually losing territory,” he said, speaking by phone from the Chasiv Yar area, but added, “we cannot hold what is ruined”.

For months, Russian forces have focused on capturing Chasiv Yar, a town which occupies an elevated location. Its fall would put nearby cities in jeopardy, compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes and bring Russia closer to its stated aim of seizing the entire Donetsk region.