Standing by a makeshift stove at the bottom of a bitterly-cold ditch, the Ukrainian troops enjoyed a quick tea break.
Suddenly there was a loud whistle and a crack as a Russian artillery round flew overhead and exploded in a field behind them.
The soldiers barely flinched, hardened by months of war. Instead, their focus was on staying warm.
One of them even carried on calmly cutting into a plastic bottle.
The water inside had frozen solid as temperatures on the frontline plunged below zero.
Peeling away the plastic, he plonked the giant, bottle-shaped ice cube into a pan to melt.
Then came a second round, this one much closer, smashing into a road above them with a punishing crash.
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“That was too near,” said a fellow soldier, before taking a sip of tea from a tin mug.
A Sky News team also in the large ditch had hit the ground at the sound of the first blast and was then ushered towards better cover after the second one – along with the troops.
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This is the daily reality for Ukrainian soldiers holding defensive positions in trenches close to the frontline town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Russian forces appear determined to try to take the town after suffering humiliating defeats in other parts of the country.
It has made the Battle for Bakhmut one of the fiercest of the war – described as a “meat grinder” because of the scale of the casualties.
One soldier, a company commander who asked to go by his first name Maks, vowed the Russians would never succeed.
“They will throw up more meat and we will destroy it,” he said. “They will launch rockets, but we will hide and then destroy them. They have no chance.”
In a trip on Monday that was cut short by the artillery attack, Maks and other members of a battalion in Ukraine’s 24th King Danylo Brigade showed Sky News around a line of trenches they were digging as part of efforts to help defend Bakhmut.
It is tough work even without the threat of enemy fire as soldiers must also battle the elements.
Armed with a shovel, a soldier called Serhii cut away at chunks of earth as he made a square-shaped trench.
“We are on our land, we need to defend our land,” he said, his breath frosty. “It’s hard but it’s needed.”
Signs of winter were all around – a rucksack and bedding, layered with frost; specks of white on the hard earth; and a green, woollen hat with a frosted covering, hanging off the bare branch of a tree.
These soldiers must fight, eat and sleep in the cold – but they know the Russians must endure the same, many with worse protective clothing.
Temperatures will likely drop even to minus 30 by January and February.
Analysts have said both sides may seek to slow or even pause the fighting when conditions become too harsh. But Ukrainians say they will push on as they have no other choice.
“We will fight – how can we stop?” said Orest, the battalion commander.
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How will winter affect the war?
Ukrainian and western officials say Wagner, the Russian private military company, has sent large numbers of mercenaries – including convicted criminals released on condition they fight – to launch wave after wave of assaults against Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut.
Conventional Russian forces, withdrawn from the southern city of Kherson in the face of a Ukrainian counter-offensive last month, have also been added to the fight in recent days, increasing the pressure on Ukrainian lines.
Asked whether the Russians would capture the town, Orest said: “No …we will stop them.”
But Ukrainian troops are paying a heavy price as well.
The commander showed us where Russian rounds over the past two days had crashed into a field close to where his men had been digging, killing one of his soldiers.
This is meant to be a defensive line, set slightly back from the frontline action.
Orest said he has lost a total of seven troops in the past month, mainly doing assaults against Russian positions. He said the nearest Russian point is just over a mile away.
The change of season means there are no longer leaves on the trees, providing top cover from drones, sent to scout targets for artillery to strike – a new peril for both sides.
There is a constant threat of incoming fire – as we later discovered during the tea break.
That artillery attack went on for almost half an hour.
Each time a round struck, the ground shook – a terrifying experience, even from where we had been able to shelter.
Yet this deadly hazard is something the soldiers have grown almost immune to.
After a while, the commander said it was safe to leave.
We made a scramble up a bank of the ditch to our vehicle and sped off. For the troops, they stayed put, dug in for the winter war.
Representatives of dozens of climate vulnerable islands and African nations have stormed out of high-stakes negotiations over a climate funding goal.
Patience is wearing thin and negotiations have boiled over at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan, which were due to finish yesterday but are now well into overtime.
After two weeks of talks, the more than 190 countries gathered in the capital Baku are still trying to agree a new financial settlement to channel money to poorer countries to both curb and adapt to climate change.
Talks have now run well into overtime at COP29, but a deal now feels much more precarious.
The least developed countries like Mozambique and low-lying island nations like Samoa say their calls for a portion of the fund to be allocated to them have been ignored.
Samoa’s minister of natural resources and environment Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster is one of the representatives who walked out.
“We are here to negotiate but we have walked out… at the moment we don’t feel we are being heard in there,” he said on behalf of more than 40 small island and developing states, whose shorelines are being lost to rising sea levels.
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Shortly after he made a veiled threat of leaving COP29 altogether, saying: “We want nothing more than to continue to engage, but the process must be INCLUSIVE.
“If this cannot be the case, it becomes very difficult for us to continue our involvement here at COP29.”
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Evans Njewa, who chairs a group of more than 40 least developed countries, said the current deal is “unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do.”
The last official draft on Friday pledged $250bn a year annually by 2035.
This is more than double the previous goal of $100bn set 15 years ago, but nowhere near the annual $1.3trn that experts say is needed.
Sky News understands some developed countries like the UK were this morning willing to bump up the goal to $300bn.
Developing countries are angry not just about the finance negotiations, but also on how to make progress on a pledge from last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”.
A group of oil and producing countries, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, have tried to dilute that language, while the UK and island state are among those that have fought to keep it in.
Mr Schuster said all things being negotiated contain a “deplorable lack of substance”.
He added: “We need to see progress and follow up on the transition away from fossil fuels that we agreed last year. We have been asked to forget all about that at this COP, as though we are not in a critical decade and as though the 1.5C limit is not in peril.”
“We need to be shown the regard which our dire circumstances necessitate.”
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
At least 11 people have been killed and 63 injured in an Israeli strike on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities have said.
Lebanon‘s health ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency workers dug through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, the ministry added.
State-run National News Agency (NNA) said the attack “completely destroyed” an eight-storey residential building in the Basta neighbourhood early on Saturday.
Footage broadcast by Lebanon’s Al Jadeed station also showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it.
The Israeli military did not warn residents to evacuate before the attack – the fourth targeting the centre this week.
At least four bombs were dropped in the attack, security sources told Reuters news agency.
The blasts happened at about 4am (2am UK time).
A seperate drone strike in the southern port cuty of Tyre this morning killed one person and injured another, according to the NNA.
The blasts came after a day of bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and Tyre. The Israeli military had issued evacuation notices prior to those strikes.
Israel has killed several Hezbollah leaders in air strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs.
Heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is ongoing in southern Lebanon, as Israeli forces push deeper into the country since launching a major offensive in September.
US envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region this week to try to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, ignited last October by the war in Gaza.
Mr Hochstein indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz.
According to the Lebanese health ministry, Israel has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000.
It has displaced about 1.2 million people – a quarter of Lebanon’s population – while Israel says about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed in northern Israel.
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will ramp up the production of a new, hypersonic ballistic missile.
In a nationally-televised speech, Mr Putin said the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was used in an attack on Ukrainian city Dnipro in retaliation for Ukraine’s use of US and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.
Referring to the Oreshnik, the Russian president said: “No one in the world has such weapons.
“Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development.”
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He added: “We have this system now. And this is important.”
Detailing the missile’s alleged capabilities, Mr Putin claimed it is so powerful that using several fitted with conventional warheads in one attack could be as devastating as a strike with nuclear weapons.
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General Sergei Karakayev, head of Russia’s strategic missile forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with either nuclear or conventional warheads – while Mr Putin alleged Western air defence systems will not be able to stop the missiles.
Mr Putin said of the Oreshnik: “There is no countermeasure to such a missile, no means of intercepting it, in the world today. And I will emphasise once again that we will continue testing this newest system. It is necessary to establish serial production.”
Testing the Oreshnik will happen “in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia“, the president added, stating there is “a stockpile of such systems ready for use”.
NATO and Ukraine are expected to hold emergency talks on Tuesday.
Meanwhile Ukraine’s parliament cancelled a session as security was tightened following the strike on Dnipro, a central city with a population of around one million. No fatalities were reported.
EU leaders condemn Russia’s ‘heinous attacks’
Numerous EU leaders have addressed Russia’s escalation of the conflict with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying the war is “entering a decisive phase [and] taking on very dramatic dimensions”.
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Russia’s new missile – what does it mean?
Speaking in Kyiv, Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky called Moscow’s strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe”.
At a news conference, Mr Lipavsky gave his full support for delivering the additional air defence systems needed to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks”.