‘Battles for the region are heating up’ as Russian forces are located in Donetsk

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Russian forces are attempting to tie down Ukrainian forces with fighting in the eastern Donbas region as Moscow assembles additional troops there for an expected offensive in the coming weeks, perhaps targeting the Luhansk region, Ukraine has said.

Weeks of intense fighting continued to rage around the city of Bakhmut and the nearby towns of Soledar and Vuhledar, Ukraine’s presidential office said.

Announcement from Ukrainian president’s office follows Russian statement on 63 of its own soldiers

The head of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, Andriy Yermak, has said that Ukraine has got 116 soldiers back as part of a prisoner of war swap.

Earlier on Saturday, Russia said it had got 63 PoWs back in an exchange.

Information follows the Ukrainian army’s withdrawal from the nearby city of Soledar last week

Battlefield tanks are only half the battle. Beyond military might on the ground in Ukraine, the other critical confrontation in which the Kremlin has a superiority that must be challenged. The information war.

Russia’s media space has reverted to a grotesque parody of the Soviet-era model. (In fact, it’s far worse, as in the latter Soviet years at least when most people knew they were being fed lies.) Television and the domestic press is utterly captured. Millions are fed a daily diet of Ukrainian “fascists”, western pederasts, and nuclear revenge on Anglo-Saxon civilisation.

A new barrage of Russian shelling killed at least 10 Ukrainian civilians and wounded 20 others in a day, the Ukrainian president’s office has said. Towns and villages in the east and in the south that were within reach of the Russian artillery suffered most, regional officials said. Six people died in the Donetsk region, two in Kherson and two in the Kharkiv region, Associated Press quoted the officials as saying on Friday.

A day earlier, Russian-fired missiles and self-propelled drones were reported to have hit deeper into Ukrainian territory, killing at least 11 people.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has described the situation on the frontline as “extremely acute”, particularly in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russia is stepping up its offensive. “The occupiers are not just storming our positions – they are deliberately and methodically destroying these towns and villages around them,” the Ukrainian president said, reporting major battles for Vuhledar and Bakhmut. Local Ukrainian officials reported heavy shelling in the north, north-east and east.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, will hold a meeting with Lynne Tracy, the new US ambassador to Moscow, early next week, the RIA news agency reported today.

Ukrainian troops were locked in “fierce” fighting with Russian forces for control of Vuhledar, a town south-west of Donetsk, on Friday. Both sides claimed success in the small administrative centre, a short distance from the strategic prize of the village of Pavlivka, Agence France-Presse reported. The Donetsk region’s Moscow-appointed leader, Denis Pushilin, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying Vuhledar may soon become a “very important success for us”, while Kyiv said the town remained contested.

Ukraine’s army claims to have killed 109 Russian soldiers and wounded another 188 in one day during fighting around Vuhledar. Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson in the Ukrainian armed forces, said the death toll was recorded on Thursday, adding that “fierce fighting is ongoing”.

Poland will send an additional 60 tanks to Ukraine on top of the 14 German-made Leopard 2 tanks it has already pledged, the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has told CTV News.

A total of 321 heavy tanks have been promised to Ukraine by several countries, Ukraine’s ambassador to France said on Friday. Vadym Omelchenko told French TV station BFM that “delivery terms vary for each case and we need this help as soon as possible”, while not specifying the number of tanks per country.

Belgium announced an additional €94m ($102m/£82.5m) package in military aid for Ukraine in what the Belgian prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said was – including previous spending – the largest of its kind Belgium had ever given another country.

Ukraine said it is setting up drone assault companies within its armed forces that will be equipped with Starlink satellite communications, as it presses ahead with an idea to build up an “army of drones”, Reuters reported. The army’s commander-in-chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, signed off on the creation of the units in a project that would involve several ministries and agencies, the general staff said.

Ten regions of Ukraine are instituting emergency power outages due to a power shortage in the network after Thursday’s Russian attacks, Ukraine’s state broadcaster has reported. Repairs to damaged facilities are continuing.

The European Union wants swift accountability for “horrific” crimes in Ukraine, EU justice ministers have said while meeting in Stockholm. But the member states differ over how to bring prosecutions, seek evidence or fund war damage repairs.

At least 20 dead and fate of 40 remains unknown with scores left homeless says governor

• What we know on day 326 of the invasion

From doctors to cocktail bar staff, in this article by Guardian journalists Emma Graham-Harrison and Artem Mazhulin, the people of the Ukrainian capital speak of their everyday acts of resistance and determination to do much more than simply survive.

Images of the rescue efforts at the destroyed block of flats in Dnipro are filtering through.

Donetsk governor says 559 civilians could not be evacuated, while Ukraine claims troops are ‘holding on’ to city

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Hundreds of civilians remain trapped in Soledar, Ukraine has said, as bloody fighting continues over control of the largely destroyed salt mining town in eastern Ukraine.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk, told Ukrainian state TV that 559 civilians remained in Soledar, including 15 children, and could not be evacuated.

Valery Gerasimov to replace Sergei Surovikin, who was appointed in October, as Zelenskiy mocks claims of Russian victory in Soledar

Russia has appointed Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, as its overall commander for the war in Ukraine, in the latest of several major shake-ups of Moscow’s military leadership during the stumbling invasion of its neighbour.

In a statement on Wednesday, the defence ministry said that Gerasimov’s appointment constituted a “raising of the status of the leadership” of the military force in Ukraine and was implemented to “improve the quality … and effectiveness of the management of Russian forces”.

Russia’s mercenary firm Wagner claims it has taken control of eastern salt mining town of Soledar

Bakhmut and Soledar under intense attack after Russian forces regroup and change tactics, Ukraine deputy defence minister says. This live blog is now closed

• What we know on day 320 of the invasion

Here are the latest photos to come out of Ukraine:

This OpEd ran in the Washington Post over the weekend. Condoleezza Rice – former secretary of state and Robert M Gates, former secretary of defense, write:

Both of us have dealt with Putin on a number of occasions, and we are convinced he believes time is on his side: that he can wear down the Ukrainians and that U.S. and European unity and support for Ukraine will eventually erode and fracture. To be sure, the Russian economy and people will suffer as the war continues, but Russians have endured far worse.

Under current circumstances, any negotiated cease-fire would leave Russian forces in a strong position to resume their invasion whenever they are ready. That is unacceptable

The only way to avoid such a scenario is for the United States and its allies to urgently provide Ukraine with a dramatic increase in military supplies and capability — sufficient to deter a renewed Russian offensive and to enable Ukraine to push back Russian forces in the east and south.

Russian attacks reported in at least seven Ukraine regions despite Putin’s ceasefire pledge; shelling reportedly damages power plants in Moscow-controlled region

• What we know on day 319 of the invasion

One person was killed as a result of the attack on the Starobesheve power plant in Novyi Svit, Russia’s state Tass news agency said on Sunday.

The thermal power plant was one of two in part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region that is controlled by Russian forces that were damaged in a rocket attack by the Ukrainian army, Moscow-installed officials said.

The body of one dead woman was extracted from under the rubble at the plant.

The tasks set by the president (Putin) for the special military operation will still be fulfilled.

And there definitely will be a victory.

Reports of strikes on Ukraine’s frontline after Vladimir Putin ordered a truce to observe Russian Orthodox Christmas

• What we know on day 318 of the invasion

Ukraine has updated the number of Russian troops it believes it has killed to 110,740.

The general staff of the armed forces said in its early morning update on Saturday that a further 490 troops were killed on Friday.