While fighting continues in the east, a new front has been opened in the north of Ukraine.
In the early hours of Friday 10 May, Russian ground troops, backed by warplanes, drones and artillery, crossed the Ukrainian border into Kharkiv region.
In recent months, fighting in Ukraine has been focused across front lines in the east of the country. This development has focused attention on Ukraine’s northeast and its second city of Kharkiv, which lies less than 20 miles from the border.
Fighting around Vovchansk
Footage captured in the early stages of the Russian offensive shows a group of Ukrainian soldiers fighting in woodland.
Sky News has geolocated a section of this clip, which shows the troops withdrawing south, away from the border.
Other video provided to Sky News by Ukrainian sources sheds further light on how fighting unfolded in the early stages of Russia’s assault from the north.
Filmed from a drone, footage shows a group of Russian soldiers on Tuesday entering Vovchansk along the main road connecting to the town from the northwest.
In separate footage, a group can be seen moving southwest around 140 metres from this position. A further 400 metres in this direction, a group was filmed being targeted by Ukrainian forces while appearing to carry one of their wounded.
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Other videos shared by the Ukrainians show that by this time, some Russian forces had moved from the outskirts into a residential area in the west of Vovchansk. They can be seen moving between buildings and are filmed being targeted by a Ukrainian drone.
Footage posted on 16 May suggests Russian troops in the area have been able to make steady progress through the town from the northwest. A group was filmed outside the town’s hospital, with one falling from the building’s first floor.
While on the ground, fighting in Vovchansk appears to have been relatively contained to the west of the town, it has been subject to intense bombing in recent days.
Drone footage posted on 14 May captured smoke rising from multiple locations across the town, showing the scale of Russian shelling.
Just west of Vovchansk, Russian forces entered the villages Buhruvatka and Ohirtseve.
In a photograph geolocated to Ohirtseve by Sky News, a group of soldiers posed with a flag bearing the face of Chechnya’s former leader Akhmad Kadyrov, who was killed in 2004.
Russians advance towards Lyptsi
Further west, Russian forces have made progress in the direction of the town of Lyptsi. Located just south of the Russian border, the town is a mere 20km from the city of Kharkiv.
Geolocated images suggest some Russian forces approached the Ukrainian border from multiple locations. One posted on 10 May shows a collection of destroyed Russian vehicles just north of the Ukrainian border town Pylna.
Footage released on 11 May suggests this was not the only point at which Russians attempted to cross the border, as the video shows a Ukrainian drone targeting Russian vehicles between the towns of Strilecha and Krasne.
From the north, Russian troops moved towards Lyptsi along a road running southwest from the border. Videos posted in recent days show they were targeted repeatedly by Ukrainian drones along this route.
Drone footage posted on 15 May shows the scale of shelling that accompanied this ground offensive, targeting Ukrainian positions ahead of Russian forces.
While Russia has made significant progress in their push south, Ukrainian forces have fought back. Footage posted on 15 May shows a Russian position just north of Lyptsi being bombed and approached by a group of Ukrainian soldiers, who are filmed capturing surviving Russians.
A ‘buffer zone’
While it is yet to be seen how far Russian troops will advance from the north, Vladimir Putin has claimed that the offensive is not an effort to capture the city of Kharkiv.
In a statement on 17 May, he said: “I have said publicly that if it continues, we will be forced to create a security zone, a sanitary zone,” claiming this was the current goal of Russian troops in the north of Ukraine.
For the moment, most fighting is still concentrated in the east, where Russia occupies vast areas of Ukrainian territory.
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”.