Russia-Ukraine war: Russian troops reach outskirts of key city – with ‘fighting at every entrance’

We won’t have live updates today – but every Monday we publish an overview of the major events from the past seven days.

Here’s everything you need to know as the war in Ukraine enters a new week.

This is the latest situation on the battlefield:

And a closer look at how Ukraine’s campaign in the Russian Kursk region is going…

‘Defences strengthened’ in Donetsk after major Ukrainian losses 

Moscow’s forces have been inching forwards in eastern Ukraine despite Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August, which Kyiv had hoped would slow advances.

On Wednesday last week, Ukraine announced it had pulled out of Vuhledar, a town that’s been contested fiercely for two years. 

Satellite images captured by Planet Labs showed the level of destruction in the town. 

The first shows what it looked like in 2019, three years before the war, and the second was taken yesterday. 

As a result, the country’s armed forces commander has ordered defences to be strengthened elsewhere in the Donetsk region.

The general said he is working on “one of the hottest front sectors” in a social media post.

Allies’ missiles used in Russian territory

In another development, the Ukrainian military said it used US-provided ballistic missiles to strike inside Russia. 

One attack was on a radar station, intended to reduce Moscow’s ability “to detect, track and intercept aerodynamic and ballistic targets”.

“The destruction of the Nebo-M radar will create a favourable ‘air corridor’ for the effective use of Storm Shadow and SCALP-EG cruise missiles,” the military said.

Ukraine also used British-French cruise missiles against Russian troops, though this was inside Ukraine. 

The attack took place at 11am on Friday in the town of Avdiivka, which was captured by Russian forces in February.

Read more about that here. 

Ukraine ramps up weapons production

Ukraine is quickly ramping up its own weapons production, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The Ukrainian president said his country was already in the process of producing 1.5 million drones this year, with the capability to create four million drones annually. 

“In extremely difficult conditions of the full-scale war under constant Russian strikes, Ukrainians were able to build a virtually new defence industry,” he said.  

New NATO head takes over

Finally, last week Mark Rutte, the former Dutch prime minister, officially took over as secretary general of NATO, replacing Jens Stoltenberg.

In his handover speech, Mr Rutte set out his determination to prepare the alliance for future challenges and said it must deliver on promises to support Ukraine in the fight against Russia.

The conflict was not just contained to the frontlines, he said.