The China Mail - Russian forces claim first foothold in new Ukraine region

Moscow launched a fresh large-scale drone and missile barrage before the announcement, including on Ukraine's army recruitment centres, as part of an escalating series of attacks that come as ceasefire talks led by the United States stall.

The Russian defence ministry said its forces captured the village of Dachne in the Dnipropetrovsk region, an important industrial mining territory that has also come under mounting Russian air attacks.

Russian forces appear to have made crossing the border a key strategic objective over recent months, and deeper advances into the region could pose logistics and economic problems for Kyiv.

Kyiv has so far denied any Russian foothold in Dnipropetrovsk.

Moscow first said last month its forces had crossed the border, more than three years since launching its invasion and pushing through the neighbouring Donetsk region.

Earlier Monday, Ukraine's army said its forces "repelled" attacks in Dnipropetrovsk, including "in the vicinity" of Dachne.

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

- Sheltering in basements -

Russia used its main city of Dnipro as a testing ground for its "experimental" Oreshnik missile in late 2024, claiming to have struck an aeronautics production facility.

An AFP reporter in the eastern city of Kharkiv saw civilians with their belongings being evacuated from a residential building damaged during Russia's overnight attacks, and others sheltering with pets in a basement.

At least four people were killed and dozens wounded across Ukraine, mostly in the Kharkiv region bordering Russia and in a late-morning attack on the industrial city of Zaphorizhzhia.

"Air defence remains the top priority for protecting lives," President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media after the attacks, as fears mount over the continuing deliveries of US military aid.

Zelensky said Ukraine was "strongly counting on our partners to fully deliver on what we have agreed".

The air force said Moscow had launched 101 drones across the country and four missiles. Seventy-five of the drones were downed, it added.

Attacks on Monday targeted two recruitment centres in separate cities wounding four people, the Ukrainian army said, in what appears to be a new trend following similar strikes over the weekend and last week.

"These strikes are part of a comprehensive enemy operation aimed at disrupting mobilisation in Ukraine," Ukraine's Centre for Strategic Communications, a government-funded body, wrote on social media.

It added that Russia had attacked recruitment centres last week in the cities of Kremenchuk, Kryvyi Rig, and Poltava.

In Russia, the defence ministry said that it had shot down 91 Ukrainian drones overnight, including eight in the Moscow region, with the majority of the rest in regions bordering Ukraine.

F.Brown--ThChM