Ukraine-Russia war latest: No 10 denies spying claims against UK diplomat as Kyiv recalls faulty shells
Foreign Office calls Russia’s latest espionage allegations ‘malicious and baseless’
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Your support makes all the difference.Downing Street has rejected Russia’s “baseless” allegations that an expelled British diplomat in Moscow was a spy.
The Russian FSB security service named the diplomat, whose photo was splashed across TV news bulletins, as Edward Wilkes and alleged he had intentionally provided false information when he entered Russia – a claim disputed by the UKForeign Office as “malicious and baseless”.
“To be clear, we refute these allegations. They’re baseless. We’re now considering our response,” a No 10 spokesperson said. According to the FSB, the British diplomat was a replacement for one of six UK diplomats expelled in August, also on espionage charges.
On the war front, Ukraine is withdrawing around 100,000 faulty 120mm mortar shells from the frontline after multiple reports of them misfiring. The supply of defective shells is being investigated by an interdepartmental commission, Ukraine’s defence ministry said.
Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers said.
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Russia advances in Ukraine at fastest monthly pace since start of war, analysts say
Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers say.
The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase after Moscow's forces made some of their biggest territorial gains and the United States allowed Kyiv to strike back with US missiles.
"Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine," independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.
The Russian army captured almost 235 sq km (91 sq miles) in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, it said.
Russian forces had taken 600 sq km (232 sq miles) in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, a group with close links to the Ukrainian army that studies combat footage and provides front line maps.
Russia began advancing faster in eastern Ukraine in July just as Ukrainian forces carved out a sliver of its western region of Kursk. Since then, the Russian advance has accelerated, according to open source maps.
Russia currently controls 18 per cent of Ukraine including all of Crimea, just over 80 per cent of Donbas, which comprises of Luhansk and Donetsk, and more than 70 per cent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well just under 3 per cent of the Kharkiv region, according to open source maps.
Neither side publishes accurate data on their own losses though Western intelligence estimates to casualties to number hundreds of thousands killed or injured, while swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine have turned into wastelands.
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