LATEST HEADLINES

• Ukrainian troops, on the defensive for four months, will launch a long-awaited counterassault "very soon" now that Russia's huge winter offensive is losing steam without taking Bakhmut, Ukraine's top ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Thursday. READ MORE BELOW

• British military intelligence said that Russia had partially regained control over the approaches to the eastern Ukrainian town of Kreminna, after its troops were pushed back from the region earlier this year.

• The Russian-backed administration in Sevastopol suspended ferry routes around the Crimean port, shortly after its governor said air defenses repelled a Ukrainian drone attack.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted footage of him visiting the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, where he promised to "restore everything."

• EU leaders will discuss the Ukraine conflict with UN chief Antonio Guterres on Thursday, including food security and sanctions, and also endorse a plan to ramp up the supply of artillery shells to Kyiv.

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he will have a phone call in two to three days with Putin to discuss the Black Sea grain export deal for Ukraine and Russia, Anadolu news agency reported.

• Estonian PM Kaja Kallas on Thursday spoke against any weakening of sanctions against Russia under a deal to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, and called for the G7 to tighten its oil cap to squeeze Russia's revenue more.

• Poland will seek an additional $260 million in European Union funding to refinance military purchases for Ukraine, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters in Brussels.

• Rebuilding Ukraine's economy is expected to cost $411 billion, 2.6 times Ukraine's expected 2022 gross domestic product, an international study found.

• The spiritual head of the world's Orthodox Christians said Russia's powerful Orthodox Church shared responsibility for the conflict in Ukraine.

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow did not expect an investigation into last year's blasts on the Nord Stream gas pipelines to be transparent.

• Any attempt to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin would amount to a declaration of war against Russia, his ally Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant last week.

• Russian leaders should be put on trial even if they cannot be arrested and brought to court in person, said Ukraine's top prosecutor Andriy Kostin, urging for a special tribunal to prosecute "the highest political and military leadership, including Putin, for the crime of aggression."

• Hungary would not arrest Putin if he entered the country, said PM Viktor Orban's chief of staff, adding that it would have no legal grounds. "The ICC's statute has not been promulgated in Hungary," Gergely Gulyas said.

IN DETAIL

Ukrainian counterassault imminent, says commander

Ukrainian troops, on the defensive for four months, will launch a long-awaited counterassault "very soon" now that Russia's huge winter offensive is "running out of steam" without taking Bakhmut, Ukraine's top ground forces commander said on Thursday.

The remarks by Oleksandr Syrskyi were the strongest indication yet from Kyiv that it is close to shifting tactics, having absorbed Russia's attacks through a brutal winter.

Russia's Wagner mercenaries, trying to capture Bakhmut in what has become the longest and bloodiest battle of the conflict, "are losing considerable strength and are running out of steam," Syrskyi said on the Telegram social media site.

"Very soon, we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we did in the past near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupiansk," he said, listing Ukrainian counteroffensives last year that proved turning points in the conflict, recapturing swathes of land.

Syrskyi was one of the top commanders behind Ukraine's strategy last year that repelled Russia's assault on Kyiv and rolled back Moscow's forces through the second half of 2022.

But front lines in Ukraine have largely been frozen in place since Ukraine's last major offensive in November. Since then, Moscow has sent hundreds of thousands of fighters into battles that both sides describe as a meat grinder.

The Russian campaign has yielded few gains, and Ukraine, which had looked likely to pull out of the small eastern city of Bakhmut, decided this month to keep its troops there, denying Moscow its first victory since last August.

Kyiv has long said it plans a major counteroffensive at some point this year, using newly supplied Western arms. Several of its most successful offensives last year followed quickly after Russia had exhausted its forces in huge battles in the east.

There was no immediate response from Moscow to the latest claims its forces in Bakhmut were losing momentum, but Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary boss, has issued pessimistic statements in recent days warning of a Ukrainian counterassault.

On Monday Prigozhin published a letter to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, saying Ukraine aimed to cut off Wagner's forces from Russia's regular troops, demanding Shoigu act to prevent this and warning of "negative consequences" if he failed.

On Wednesday, Britain's defense ministry reported that Ukraine had launched a local counterattack west of Bakhmut that was likely to relieve pressure on the main route used to supply Kyiv's forces inside the city.

There was still a threat that Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut could be surrounded, it said, but there was "a realistic possibility the Russian assault on the town is losing the limited momentum it had obtained."

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