Russia Ukraine war live: Putin’s troops advancing after fall of Avdiivka as Iran sends missiles to Moscow

Russian troops are reportedly pressing on toward towns and villages near Avdiivka after they took the key eastern city.

Russian forces secured Avdiivka after months of bombardment reduced the town to rubble. It was Russia’s biggest battlefield victory since its forces captured Bakhmut in May 2023.

Ukrainian soldiers said Putin’s troops are continuing to assault their positions.

“It doesn’t end with them taking Avdiivka. They continue assaulting (our positions),” said Andriy, a Ukrainian drone pilot of the 47th Mechanised Brigade, sitting quietly in a darkened area.

“After Avdiivka, the villages nearby are next. And then, Myrnohrad and Pokrovsk, the nearest larger towns.”

The UN’s humanitarian appeal to meet needs in Ukraine is only 10% funded for 2024, the country’s resident coordinator has said, putting in jeopardy crucial assistance needed to reach those in need across frontline areas.

Denise Brown, the UN’s top representative in Ukraine, said an estimated 8.5million Ukrainians living in dire conditions near combat zones risk going without basic humanitarian deliveries, including food and water. The UN’s annual appeal for Ukraine is $3.1billion.

“If we don’t receive that money, I don’t know where that money is going to come from,” Brown said.

Without the funds, “we won’t be able to sustain the high number of colleagues that we have here who are absolutely dedicated to humanitarian support.”

As the future of military aid to Ukraine hangs in the balance, Brown is lobbying the international community and private sector to remember that humanitarian needs are also high.

International Monetary Fund officials are negotiating with Ukrainian officials in Warsaw, Poland, this week about a follow-on disbursement of $890million from the country’s $15.6billion loan, a source familiar with the process has said.

Negotiations are ongoing, the source said, noting the IMF mission, which began on Saturday, ends on Thursday.

Movement on fresh IMF funds comes as the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives continues to hold up some $61billion in aid for Ukraine.

The Senate in a bipartisan vote earlier this month passed a $95billion aid package that includes funds for Ukraine, but the measure is stalled in the House, which Republicans control by a narrow 219-212 margin.

Ukraine’s ministry of defence has revealed extraordinary footage of a soldier apparently playing the violin while standing on top of a military vehicle in Donbas.

The seizure of frozen Russian central bank assets to aid Ukraine would be lawful given Russia’s “ongoing breach of the most fundamental rules of international law”, according to a letter signed by international legal experts, it’s been reported.

Western countries immobilised around $300 billion of the Russian Central Bank’s assets at the start of the full-scale invasion. According to the World Bank, the estimated cost of Ukraine’s post-war recovery and reconstruction is $486 billion.

The letter, obtained by Bloomberg, was signed by 10 legal experts from the US, UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.

European Union countries on Wednesday agreed on a new package of sanctions against Russia to target individuals and businesses suspected of assisting Moscow in its war against Ukraine, including Chinese companies.

Ukraine‘s Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday called on Poland’s leaders and European Union officials to come to the Polish-Ukrainian border for talks over repeated blockades by Polish farmers angry at what they say is unfair competition from Kyiv.

Polish Farmers staged a major day of protest on Tuesday, blocking almost all traffic on the border with Ukraine, angering Kyiv, in an escalation from previous demonstrations.

Warsaw has been a staunch supporter of Kyiv in its fight to repel a full-scale Russian invasion launched in 2022, but protests from farmers complaining of unfair competition have strained ties.

“We have had enough misunderstanding. We should not humiliate each other, we should not humiliate either Ukrainian or Polish farmers. We need unity. We need solutions between us, Ukraine and Poland, and at the level of the whole of Europe,” Zelensky said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from the offices of Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk or President Andrzej Duda.

Zelensky added Ukraine could not accept the appearance of slogans supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin at the protests, after one such banner was displayed on Tuesday.

Weapons manufacturer BAE Systems saw its order backlog soar to a record of nearly £70 billion as countries around the world continued to try to build up their military capacity last year.

Amid wars in Ukraine, Armenia and Gaza the business said it had taken in £37.7 billion in new orders, meaning it now had £69.8 billion worth of vehicles, missiles, submarines and other equipment to deliver in the years to come.

The business said it now had “a high level of visibility of our revenues for many years to come”, with some of the programmes running “well into the next decade”.

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