\n Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday vowed to bring more \"destruction\" to Ukraine in retaliation for a drone attack on the central Russian city of Kazan a day earlier.\n<\/p>\n
\n Russia accused Ukraine of a \"massive\" drone attack that hit a luxury apartment block in the city, some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the frontier.\n<\/p>\n
\n Videos on Russian social media networks showed drones hitting a high-rise glass building and setting off fireballs, though there were no reported casualties as a result of the strike.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Whoever, and however much they try to destroy, they will face many times more destruction themselves and will regret what they are trying to do in our country,\" Putin said during a televised government meeting on Sunday.\n<\/p>\n
\n Putin was addressing the local leader of Tatarstan, the region where Kazan is located, in a road-opening ceremony via video link.\n<\/p>\n
\n The strike on Kazan was the latest in a series of escalating aerial attacks in the nearly three-year conflict.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukraine has not commented on the strike.\n<\/p>\n
\n Putin has previously threatened to target the centre of Kyiv with a hypersonic ballistic missile in response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory.\n<\/p>\n
\n And the defence ministry has called Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities over recent weeks retaliatory hits for Kyiv using Western-supplied missiles to hit Russian air bases and arms factories.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Advances -\n<\/p>\n
\n The latest threat comes as Russia claimed fresh advances on the battlefield in east Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n
\n The defence ministry said on Telegram that its troops had \"liberated\" the villages of Lozova in the northeastern Kharkiv region and Krasnoye -- called Sontsivka in Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n
\n The latter is close to the resource hub of Kurakhove, which Russia has almost encircled and would be a key prize in Moscow's attempt to capture the entire Donetsk region.\n<\/p>\n
\n Russia has accelerated its advance across eastern Ukraine in recent months, looking to secure as much territory as possible before US President-elect Donald Trump comes to power in January.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Republican has promised to bring a swift end to the nearly three-year-long conflict, without proposing any concrete terms for a ceasefire or peace deal.\n<\/p>\n
\n Moscow's army claims to have seized more than 190 Ukrainian settlements this year, with Kyiv struggling to hold the line in the face of manpower and ammunition shortages.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kyiv on Sunday also accused Russian forces of killing captured Ukrainian soldiers -- an alleged war crimes violation.\n<\/p>\n
\n A video posted by Ukraine's 110th separate mechanised brigade showed \"the shooting of soldiers who surrendered,\" Kyiv's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said in a post on Telegram.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said the video -- aerial footage from a drone of an apparent confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers -- showed Russians shooting the Ukrainians at point-blank range after they had already surrendered.\n<\/p>\n
\n AFP could not verify the footage.\n<\/p>\n
\n It is the latest in a string of similar allegations lodged by Ukraine throughout the nearly three-year conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday vowed to bring more \"destruction\" to Ukraine in retaliation for a drone attack on the central Russian city of Kazan a day earlier. Russia accused Ukraine of a \"massive\" drone attack that hit a luxury apartment block in the city, some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the frontier. Videos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-139831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n