Anti-aircraft units were in action against attack drones during a three-hour air raid alert in and around Kyiv this morning, the Ukrainian military said, with several explosions reported but no strikes or casualties announced.
Kyiv military authorities lifted the alert just after 4am local time. One report by the military said airborne targets had been downed, but no details were provided.
Alerts were also lifted in most other areas of the country.
Elsewhere in the country, Russian forces have made no headway along the front lines, but are entrenched in heavily mined areas they control, making it difficult for Ukrainian troops to move east and south, Ukrainian officials said yesterday.
Russian accounts of the fighting on the frontline said 12 Ukrainian attacks had been repelled in Donetsk region - a focal point of Russian advances for months.
Much of Russian military activity focused on air attacks that damaged grain infrastructure in Ukraine's Danube port of Izmail.
Russia's Defence Ministry also said its forces had destroyed a Ukrainian naval drone that tried to attack a Russian warship escorting a civilian vessel in the Black Sea.
Ukrainian forces launched a drive in June to retake occupied areas and have been pressing southward toward the Sea of Azov to sever a land bridge between occupied eastern Ukraine and the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.
Kyiv also says it has retaken areas near Bakhmut, an eastern city seized by Russian forces in May after months of battles.
Deputy Ukrainian Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Russian forces had "tried quite persistently to halt our advance in the Bakhmut sector. Without success".
She wrote on the Telegram messaging app that Russian forces were beefing up reserves and equipment in three areas further north, where heavy fighting has also been reported in recent weeks.
Oleksiy Danilov, the Secretary of Ukraine's Security Council, said Russian forces had ample time in months of occupation to prepare defences and lay extensive minefields.
"The enemy has prepared very thoroughly for these events," he told national television. "The number of mines on the territory that our troops have retaken is utterly mad. On average, there are three, four, five mines per square metre."
Mr Danilov restated assertions by President Volodymyr Zelensky that the advances, while slower than hoped, could not be rushed as human lives were at stake.
"No one can set deadlines for us, except ourselves... there is no fixed schedule," he said. "I have never used the term counter-offensive. There are military operations and they are complex, difficult and depend on many factors."
Russia's Defence Minister, in its account of the fighting, said Ukrainian forces had made unsuccessful attempts to advance in several sectors in both southern and northern parts of Donetsk region.
It also said Russian forces had launched strikes on towns around Bakhmut, including Kurdyumovka on the city's southern fringes and Chasiv Yar, the first major town to the west.
Germany rules out long-range missiles for Ukraine
Meanwhile, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has again ruled out supplying Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles, saying it was "not a top priority" right now.
Ukraine asked Germany in late May to provide it with Taurus air-to-surface cruise missiles, which have a range in excess of 500km, but the government has so far rebuffed the request.
"We continue to believe that this is not our top priority right now," Mr Pistorius said during a visit to a mountain infantry brigade in Bavaria.
The concerns about sending "special range" missiles to Ukraine "are obvious", Mr Pistorius said.
"Our American allies are not delivering these cruise missiles either," he added.
After some initial hesitation, Germany has drastically ramped up its support for Ukraine and is now the second-biggest supplier of military assistance to Kyiv after the US.
But like Washington, Berlin remains opposed to sending weapons to Kyiv that could reach inside nuclear-armed Russia, potentially widening the conflict that started with Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Mr Pistorius stressed that Germany was playing a leading role in helping Ukraine with "air defence, training support, engineering and armoured vehicles".
"This is our first priority, our core competency," the minister said, adding that he saw "no urgent need for a decision" on the Swedish-German Taurus weapon system.
France last month announced it would join Britain in supplying SCALP/Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, which have a range of over 250km.
