TOP HEADLINES

· Kyiv's top military commander said Ukraine's defenses were holding along the front line in Donetsk, including in the besieged town of Bakhmut, the site of the fiercest fighting in the country's east. READ MORE BELOW

· That's despite Russian Defense Ministry saying its troops had advanced 2 kilometers in four days along the frontline in Ukraine.  READ MORE BELOW

· The founder of Russia's private military group Wagner said his mercenary force had taken the strategic village of Krasna Hora just north of Bakhmut, but added it could take two years to wrest full control of the two eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

· Russia is building a water pipeline system that would connect the country's Rostov region with Ukraine's Donbas, one of the regions Moscow claimed last year as one of its new 'republics.'

· Ukrainian shelling killed one civilian and injured two others during an overnight attack on Russian-controlled Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region, according to the city's Moscow-backed mayor. 

· President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the damage to Ukraine's energy network caused by Russian missile and drone strikes on Friday had been repaired, meaning most people had not had to face too many outages over the weekend.

· NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will step down in October, a spokesperson for the alliance said, after it was rumored he could extend his tenure of the Western military alliance. 

· NATO is expected to ask its members to boost ammunition stockpiles depleted by the war in Ukraine, as allies try to steady arms supplies to Kyiv and their own militaries after a year in crisis mode.

· Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he would not seek a meeting with Zelenskyy if he were still head of government, because he blames the president for the war with Russia.

· Russia's Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin has described the calls from more than 30 countries to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from the 2024 Olympics as unacceptable.

IN DETAIL

Russia said on Monday its troops had advanced two kilometers in eastern Ukraine, while Kyiv stated its forces had continued to successfully defend positions from Russian attacks along the war's frontlines. As the first anniversary of the Ukraine war nears, the conflict's heaviest fighting continues to take place around the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Kyiv still controls despite months of Russian attacks. 

The Ukrainian military on Monday reported heavy Russian shelling all along the line of engagement with attacks on 16 settlements near Bakhmut. The besieged town in the partially occupied Donetsk region which Moscow wants to fully occupy is a major objective for President Vladimir Putin, despite months of Russian shelling having left it in ruins.

Russia's Defense Ministry said on Monday its troops had pushed forward to the west in four days, but did not specify which part of the frontline, which covers several Ukrainian regions.

"The Russian servicemen broke the enemy's resistance and advanced several kilometers deeper into its echeloned defense," it said.

Ukraine's military said that over the past day, its forces had repelled a number of attacks near Bakhmut, as well as assaults in the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions.