#Hasten slowly update#

'The enemy has prepared very thoroughly for these events,' he said. Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's Security Council, said Russian forces had ample time in months of occupation to prepare defences and lay extensive minefields. The Institute for the Study of War has also reported Ukrainian troops have made progress in three areas near Bakhmut.

Kyiv also says it has retaken areas near Bakhmut, an eastern city seized by Russian forces in May after months of battles. Much of the Russian military activity has focused on air attacks including the strike that damaged grain infrastructure in Ukraine's Danube port of Izmail.

#Hasten slowly update#

Russian forces have made no headway along the frontlines, but are entrenched in heavily mined areas they control, making it difficult for Ukrainian troops to move east and south, Ukrainian officials said late on Wednesday night in an update on its military progress.

Russia's ministry of defence reallocated weapons and vehicles to forces in the Belgorod and Kursk regions, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Six Ukrainian drones were downed in the Kaluga region, about 90 miles (150km) south of Moscow, according to the Russian ministry of defence.

Ukraine said it is investigating Russian attacks on grain infrastructure as potential war crimes.

A Russian commander appeared in a video claiming at least 8,500 members of Moscow's Airborne Forces had been wounded since the war began - but the footage was taken down just hours later.

Here are all the other major updates from the past 24 hours: Ukrainian sea drones also attacked a Russian navy base near the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk and were destroyed by warships, it said. Overnight, Russia's defence ministry claimed to have downed 10 Ukrainian drones over the annexed peninsula of Crimea - which has been targeted several times in recent weeks. Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. 'Russia likely considers them as acceptably accurate and they have much smaller warheads than cruise missiles.' the ministry said. However, there is a chance that Russia has selected the weapons in the belief they are 'less likely to risk escalation than cruise missiles'. The weapons have struck targets as close as 200 metres from the Romanian border, which the ministry said suggests Moscow has 'evolved its risk appetite for conducting strikes near NATO territory'. 'It is highly likely attempting to coerce international shipping into stopping trading via the ports,' it said in its latest intelligence updates. The attacks on the Danube hubs have been carried out by Iranian-produced one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles, according to the UK's Ministry of Defence, and are probably an attempt to halt trading. The wave of strikes began after Moscow pulled out the key grain deal, which had enabled goods to be exported safely and provided some protection to ports. Over the last two weeks, Russia has conducted several attacks against Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea and along the Danube River.