Russian forces continue to make costly but consistent gains in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. They are steadily grinding down a pocket of resistance around the town of Kurakhove in the southern Donbas region and are also fighting to envelop the larger city of Pokrovsk to the north, Ukrainian soldiers and officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he will urge allies to boost his country's air defenses at a meeting this week in Germany.

Taking the fight to Russia won't deliver a knock-out blow, but it could show the Ukrainian people—and the West—that the Kremlin hasn't won yet. The timing of the attack came just over two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office.

Russian shelling, meanwhile, killed at least one person and wounded another in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, local officials said.

Ukraine appeared to launch a fresh offensive Sunday in Russia’s border region of Kursk, where Kyiv’s forces have held territory for several months.

The assault comes at a critical juncture in the nearly three-year conflict, with both sides seeking to strengthen their negotiating hand ahead of US president-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House on January 20.

Ukraine launched a fresh operation in Russia's southern Kursk region, Moscow said on Sunday, after Ukrainian officials and military bloggers reported new attacks from Kyiv in a region where Moscow is eager to reassert its grip.

Ukraine has launched an offensive in the Kursk region of Russia. Media report that a Russian spy of Serbian origin was killed in early January in liberation battles. Bratislav Živković, in Romania, photographed military radars on the Black Sea coast and provided their coordinates.