Russian drones target Ukraine’s ports and troops intensify attacks in Donetsk region

Russia has fired another salvo of attack drones at southern Ukraine and intensified ground assaults on towns in the eastern Donetsk region, as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy held talks in Romania on arms supplies, Black Sea trade and training on F-16 fighter jets for his country’s pilots.

“From 06:00, there was massive shelling from tanks, artillery and Grad [multiple rocket launchers]. Heavy fighting is going on north of the town,” Vitaliy Barabash, head of the administration in the town of Avdiivka, said on Tuesday. “For over a year, there has been the danger that [Avdiivka] can be occupied, but now the situation has worsened rapidly.”

Bohdan Krotevych, chief of staff for the Azov brigade of Ukraine’s national guard, said on social media: “Along the whole eastern front, the enemy has switched to active offensive operations, [so] now your support is especially needed by Ukrainian soldiers.”

Russian military bloggers who often have close contacts with their country’s armed forces claimed they had made at least one breakthrough near Avdiivka and were trying to surround Ukrainian troops in the area; Kyiv said several attacks had been repelled.

Putin seems ‘very happy’ but Russia’s advantage in Ukraine is narrowing

---

‘It’s an eye-opener’: The Irish medics training Ukrainian lawyers, vets and photographers to help the war effort

---

Russian attacks target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as Kyiv launches drones over Krasnodar

---

US to provide new Patriot missiles for Ukraine as part of additional $6bn aid package

---

Ukraine has made slow progress in the Donetsk province and southeastern Zaporizhzhia region during a four-month counteroffensive and faces renewed Russian attempts to occupy parts of the northeastern Kharkiv region that were liberated a year ago.

Ukrainian air defence systems shot down 27 of 36 explosive strike drones fired by Russia in the early hours of Tuesday, in its latest attack on the shipping infrastructure and grain warehouses of Ukraine’s Black Sea and Danube river ports. Officials in the major southern port of Odesa said an unspecified “logistics” facility was damaged in the air raid.

Debris from intercepted Russian attack drones has fallen on the territory of Romania, which sits across the Danube from Ukraine, and Mr Zelenskiy held talks in Bucharest on Tuesday with Klaus Iohannis, president of the Nato and EU member state.

Mr Zelenskiy said there would be “very good news about artillery and air defence” as a result of the talks, and confirmed that Ukrainian pilots would be in the “first wave” of those training on US-built F-16 fighter jets at a centre that will be established in Romania.

Ukraine is now sending a large portion of its grain exports overland through Romania and via a new shipping corridor that hugs the country’s Black Sea coastline, avoiding waters further east where it is easier for the Russian navy to disrupt or block civilian marine traffic.

“We must do everything possible to prevent Russia from turning any part of the Black Sea and the Danube region into a dead zone for normal navigation,” Mr Zelenskiy said.

Russia failed in a bid to return to the United Nations human rights council on Tuesday, when Albania and Bulgaria secured more votes in the UN general assembly for two places available to countries in eastern Europe. Russia was suspended from the council last year after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.