Ukraine hailed its first substantial battlefield advances for six months as President Volodymyr Zelensky won pledges of a haul of Western arms for a counter offensive against Russian invaders.
Since last week, the Ukrainian military has started to push Russian forces back in and around the battlefield city of Bakhmut, its first significant offensive operations since its troops recaptured the southern city of Kherson in November.
"The advance of our troops along the Bakhmut direction is the first success of offensive actions in the defence of Bakhmut," Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander of Ground Forces, said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
"The last few days have shown that we can move forward and destroy the enemy even in such extremely difficult conditions," he said. "We are fighting with fewer resources than the enemy. At the same time, we are able to ruin its plans."
The battle for the small eastern city has become the longest and bloodiest of the war and has significance for Russia, which has no other prizes to show for a winter campaign that cost thousands of lives.
Over the past half of a year, Kyiv has held its troops on the defensive while Moscow mounted its campaign, sending hundreds of thousands of fresh reservists and mercenaries into Europe's bloodiest ground combat since World War II.
Kyiv is now preparing a counteroffensive using hundreds of new tanks and armoured vehicles sent by Western countries since the start of this year, aiming to recapture the sixth of Ukraine's territory that Moscow claims to have annexed.
Mr Zelensky met British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London, the latest stop in a tour that brought him to Rome, Berlin and Paris over the past three days, pocketing major new pledges of weapons along the way.
The Kremlin, for its part, said it did not believe the added British hardware would change the course of the conflict.
Fifteen months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine is expected to shift back onto the offensive is a major turning point.
Ukrainian forces drove Russian troops back from the capital Kyiv a year ago, and recaptured ground in two major offensives in the second half of 2022, but have since endured a punishing Russian assault while waiting for arms to arrive.
Ukrainian officials generally give few details about their offensive operations while they are under way but have reported substantial gains retaking territory on both the northern and southern outskirts of Bakhmut over the past seven days.
Moscow has acknowledged retreating north of the city, and the head of the Wagner private army fighting inside Bakhmut has said Russia's regular forces have fled positions on the northern and southern flanks.
Ukrainian officials portray the fighting in that area as localised advances, rather than the major counteroffensive push which they say has yet to get under way.
The public rift between Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and the commanders of regular Russian forces has deepened over the past two weeks, with Mr Prigozhin releasing daily audio and video messages denouncing the Russian military brass.
However, both he and the Kremlin dismissed a Washington Post report citing US intelligence leaks that Mr Prigozhin had offered to betray the positions of regular Russian forces in January in return for Kyiv pulling back some troops in Bakhmut. The Post said Ukraine had rejected the offer.
Mr Prigozhin laughed off the report in an audio message posted on Telegram.
"Reading this is of course nice. It means I am not only fighting for Russia but Zelensky is also fulfilling my orders," he said.
"This is laughable."
He said "people from Rublevka" - a luxurious Moscow suburb home to the Russian elite - could be behind the allegations.
Last week, he accused Moscow's conventional army of "fleeing" positions around Bakhmut.
He has repeatedly claimed that the Russian defence ministry was refusing to deliver ammunition to his soldiers.
Four killed in Russian missile strike
Four people have been killed in a Russian missile attack that hit a hospital in the eastern city of Avdiivka this morning, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko has said.
The attack on the front-line city was one of a wave of strikes that damaged 57 residential buildings in 13 localities, Ukraine's national police force added.
"Four people died as a result of a missile attack on Avdiivka. Russians attacked the city with missiles this morning, hitting a hospital," Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
