Ukraine said on Monday its hard-pressed military was battling 50,000 troops in Russia's Kursk region to its north, while also scrambling to reinforce two besieged fronts in the east and bracing to meet an infantry assault in the south.

Vladimir Putin’s much-anticipated second counteroffensive against the three-month-old Ukrainian occupation of Russia’s Kursk region appears to be underway in a much larger fashion than the one launched in September.

At least seven people were injured in a Russian missile attack on a multi-storey residential building in the city of Kryvyi Rih in south-eastern Ukraine. "Russia only seeks a continuation of the war,