A major drone strike hit several neighborhoods in Ukraine's capital, Kiev

Kiev acknowledged that Russia had made gains on the ground and advanced several kilometers under the control of Ukrainian forces, but suffered heavy losses in its ground offensive since early October.

According to the British Ministry of Defence, the fighting in Ukraine has brought no change to the front line, with Russia continuing to attempt isolated attacks.

The Ukrainian military confirmed that Moscow forces were making gains in a two-month ground offensive around the industrial city of Avdiivka in southeastern Ukraine. “Since October 10, the enemy (Russia) has become more active, it has advanced one and a half kilometers to two kilometers in some places,” said Colonel Oleksandr Stupun, the media spokesman of the army's front.

Much has been said recently about the balance tipping in favor of Russian forces, especially after the Ukrainian counteroffensive faltering last summer. Perhaps for these reasons Ukraine has tended to recruit more of its own citizens. It summoned men stationed abroad to join the struggle against Russia.

“But it will cost him a lot,” Stepan said, noting attacks on the front, particularly in Avdiivka near the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk. Appearing on Ukrainian television news Wednesday, Stepan acknowledged that Russian forces are outnumbered.

Observers such as the Institute for War Studies in the United States have pointed to Russia's deployment of large numbers of soldiers and armored vehicles to the region, as well as high Russian casualties. According to the German agency, their reports confirm the Russian advance, which puts the remaining Ukrainian defenders in Avtivka under greater pressure.

A Ukrainian General Staff report Wednesday evening listed 89 individual Russian ground attacks across 7 sectors of the front. According to the report, 31 attacks took place near Avdivka. However, 29 battles are counted on the southern bank of the Dnipro River near Krynki in the Kherson region. According to the General Staff report from Kiev, the Russians have not yet been able to dislodge these relatively small Ukrainian forces.

As part of Ukraine's search for more soldiers, Defense Minister Rustam Amirov wants men living abroad to join the army next year.

In reports published Thursday in German media outlets including Bild newspaper, Welt TV and Politico, Amirov urged Ukrainians aged 25 to 60 in Germany and other countries eligible for military service to go to military centers. Recruitment in Armed Forces.

The minister added that he would issue an invitation, but if anyone did not comply with the request, he would be fined. “We are still discussing what will happen if they don't come voluntarily,” he said.

The Ukrainian military wants to mobilize 450,000 to 500,000 additional soldiers to repel a Russian invasion. However, the financial and political framework conditions are still unclear. President Volodymyr Zelensky described the mobilization as a “sensitive issue”. Justice is important, Amirov said. In future, how they will be trained and equipped, where and when they will serve and when their service will be terminated should be clear in advance to those concerned. Despite the ban, many Ukrainian men went abroad before being recalled.

On the other hand, as a result of Russian bombing operations, two women died and a man was injured on Thursday morning in the city of Nikopol, located in southern Ukraine, where several areas are subject to new airstrikes, according to local authorities. reported. “The Russian army bombarded Nikopol with heavy artillery in the morning,” the governor of Dnipropetrovsk region, Sergei Lysak, said in a post on Telegram, the French newspaper reported. He added that two women aged 60 and 46 were killed and an 86-year-old man was injured in the blast, explaining that 7 buildings were damaged. He accompanied his letter with photographs, in particular, of a house whose walls had been destroyed.

In Russia, two people were injured when Ukraine bombed a village in the border region of Bryansk. Also, local occupation authorities reported one person killed in bombing operations by Kiev forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which has been partially under Russian control since 2014.

Before that, Ukraine announced that it had come under a new night attack from Russia with 35 Iranian-made “Shahad” drones, of which 34 were shot down.

The attacks, which took place in “waves” at night, were launched from the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula, the eastern shore of the Sea of ​​Azov, and the nearby Russian city of Kursk to the north. The border of Ukraine, as reported by the Ukrainian Air Force in the “Telegram” application.

Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said on Thursday that Russia had managed to shoot down 2,900 of the 3,700 Shahed drones launched by Russia since September 2022, when it began a massive campaign of drone attacks on the country.

The head of the Kiev region's military administration, Ruslan Kravchenko, spoke about how a fire caused by a drone strike at a warehouse was quickly extinguished.

The State Department of Emergency Management released a video of the damaged area in the Kyiv region, showing charred debris and rescue workers working at the scene.

Russia conducts nightly drone and missile strikes against Ukraine. Kiev accused the Kremlin of trying to terrorize people and destroy energy infrastructure to plunge citizens into darkness and cold, as happened last winter. Since then, the country has bolstered its air defense systems with Western weapons capable of intercepting most drones or missiles launched by Russia.