Vladimir Putin said Russia had struck Ukraine with a new hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile in response to Kyiv’s use of US and British missiles against Russia.

On 21 November, he said Russia had launched an “Oreshnik”, one of its newest intermediate-range missiles, at a defence enterprise in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Putin said it travelled at 10 times the speed of sound and could not be intercepted. It has a range of around 3,100 miles allowing Russia to strike most of Europe, according to experts.

It appears to have multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles: separate warheads able to hit different targets.

Anatoly Matviychuk, a Russian military expert, said it could carry six to eight conventional or nuclear warheads, and was probably already in service.

Ukrainian naval drones have struck and destroyed surveillance systems on Russian-controlled gas platforms in Crimea, vice-admiral Oleksii Neizhpapa said.

“The hunt for the enemy in the Black Sea continues. The occupiers will not stay on our territory — we will get them everywhere,” Neizhpapa said on Saturday in a post on Facebook.

“Naval (drones) delivered precise strikes on Russian targets.”

Recent weeks have seen intensified attacks on Russian assets in Crimea. Strikes have targeted radar stations, and explosions were also reported in Sevastopol and near the Belbek airbase in November.

Russian forces have increased the pace at which they are taking territory in eastern Ukraine, as Kyiv’s troops struggle to hold back a much larger and more heavily armed military.

Along the 1,000 km frontline, Moscow has focused its attacks on towns and villages around the transport hub of Pokrovsk, the seizure of which could severely disrupt Ukraine’s ability to supply its forces.

Pasi Paroinen, an analyst from the Finland-based Black Bird Group, which studies footage and satellite images from the frontline, told Reuters that Russian gains in Ukraine had accelerated in recent months.

He estimated the following monthly territorial gains by Russia:

• August – 403 sq km
• September – 422 sq km
• October – 491 sq km
• 1-18 November – 363 sq km

In Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion in August, Kyiv now holds approximately 500 sq km of territory, Paroinen estimated, down from a maximum of around 1,200 sq km.

Devastating human and material losses continue to mount, leaving Ukraine more vulnerable than at any time since the early days of the war.

As of 31 August, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine had documented at least 11,743 civilians killed and 24,614 wounded in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Ukrainian prosecutors have said 589 Ukrainian children had been killed by 15 November.

Western countries believe Russia has suffered far worse casualties than Ukraine, sometimes losing more than 1,000 soldiers killed per day during periods of intense fighting in the east.

But it is Ukraine, with around a third of Russia’s population, that is likely to be facing the more severe manpower shortages arising from battles of attrition.

Russia now occupies and claims to have annexed around a fifth of Ukraine, an area around the size of Greece.

The draft 2025 budget envisages that about 26% of Ukraine’s GDP, or 2.2 trillion hryvnias ($53.3 billion), would go on defence. Ukraine has already received more than $100 billion from its Western partners in financial aid.

There are several variants of Army Tactical Missile Systems, a long-range missile system that often carries varying amounts of cluster bomblets.

Ukrainian forces used the US-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles for the first time in October 2023, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy saying the weapons had “proven themselves.”

Ukraine likely has what are known as M39A1 Block IA ATACMS that are guided in part by Global Positioning System and have a range of 40 to 190 miles. They can carry a payload of 300 bomblets. The M39 Block IA were used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to Army documents, and were added to the US arsenal in 1997.

Russian troops have taken control of the settlement of Blahodatne in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s RIA state news agency reported on Sunday, citing the defence ministry.

The report could not be independently verified.

Denmark has delivered a second batch of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday.

In a message on Telegram, Zelenskyy praised Denmark and lamented a lack of dedication from other allies.

“The first batch of planes provided by the Danes are already shooting down Russian missiles: rescuing our people and our infrastructure. Now our air shield is reinforced even further,” he said. “If all partners were so determined, we would have been able to make Russian terror impossible.”

Canada said Thursday it is outlawing another 324 firearm varieties — guns the public safety minister said belong on the battlefield, not in the hands of hunters or sport shooters.

Ottawa also said it is working with the government of Ukraine to see how the guns can be donated to support the fight against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The move follows the May 2020 ban of 1,500 makes and models of firearms, a number that grew to more than 2,000 by November of this year as new variants were identified.