Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin’s forces capture Donetsk village as eight wounded in drone attack
Putin says he is open to talks with Donald Trump, saying ‘we will have things to discuss’
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Your support makes all the difference.Putin’s forces have captured the village of Kostiantynopolske in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, just six miles from the city of Kurakhove, which they have stormed and are threatening to encircle.
Russia also launched 113 overnight drones into Ukraine, wounding eight people just hours after at least one person was killed in the capital of Kyiv in a missile attack.
According to Ukraine’s Air Force, 57 drones were shot down during the attacks while further 56 drones were “lost”, likely having been electronically jammed.
On Friday, missiles hit Kyiv at around 7am local time, while a high-rise building was badly damaged. The capital’s St Nicholas Church was also damaged.
Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin has said he should have invaded Ukraine earlier as he used an end-of-year press conference to double down on his decision to start the war.
Despite the toll his war has taken on Russia’s finances and the lives of its young men, Putin claimed that sending troops into Ukraine in 2022 has boosted his country’s military and economic power.
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A Russian general assassinated by Ukraine was buried with full military honours on Friday as Moscow launched an apparent revenge attack on what it said was a Ukrainian intelligence service command centre in Kyiv.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who was chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, was the most senior Russian officer to be killed inside Russia by Ukraine.
He was killed outside his Moscow apartment building on Tuesday along with his assistant when a bomb attached to an electric scooter went off in an attack for which Ukraine‘s SBU security service took responsibility.
State news agency RIA said Kirillov was buried in a ceremony outside Moscow attended by Defence Minister Andrei Belousov and Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council.
It said the ceremony had taken place at a Defence Ministry memorial complex called the Pantheon of the Defenders of the Fatherland.
Video footage of the funeral showed an honour guard carrying a coffin draped in the national flag and Kirillov’s cap on top of it as solemn music played. The honour guard then fired shots into the air in a snow-covered cemetery as the national anthem played and mourners looked on.
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