The front line inside Ukraine has become more static, Ukrainian soldiers say, even as Russia regains ground in its own Kursk region.

Russia has repeatedly painted modern Ukraine as a Nazi state, in a crass distortion of history. Putin had already seized Ukraine's Crimean peninsula eight years earlier, after a revolution that ousted Ukraine's pro-Russian president and replaced him with a more pro-Western government.

Russia launched air strikes overnight on Kyiv, with air defence systems engaged in repelling the attack, Ukrainian authorities said late on Monday. "Air defence forces are working to eliminate the threat in the skies over Kyiv,