Ukraine-Russia war live: Putin’s losses up to 834,000 as Moscow claims Donetsk town

Ukrainian investigators have opened a criminal case involving defence minister Rustem Umerov, a move likely to deepen a standoff in his ministry over arms procurement that could strain Kyiv’s ties with important Western allies.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) told Reuters in a statement that its investigation, requested by a corruption watchdog, would examine whether there had been an abuse of authority by Mr Umerov but gave few other details.

The watchdog, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre, has accused Mr Umerov of acting illegally by sidelining the head of the defence procurement agency, whose contract

Mr Umerov is refusing to renew after criticising the agency’s work.

Mr Umerov said last week that the DPA, which coordinates weapons purchases, had failed to deliver results for Ukrainian forces, comments that brought ministry infighting over arms procurement out into the open.

“Despite the publicised scale of procurement, our defenders on the frontlines have not experienced its tangible impact,” he wrote on Facebook.

The dispute comes at a critical time in the war with Russia as president Donald Trump reviews US support for Ukraine’s military and as Kyiv tries to convince its Western partners that it is winning the battle against endemic corruption.

Weapons supplied by Ukraine’s Western allies including tanks, rockets, missile defences and ammunition are vital to Kyiv’s war effort.

Russian forces are closing in on the strategically important eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk after capturing a string of villages to its south.

Pokrovsk is a road and rail hub in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which had a pre-war population of some 60,000 people. While most people have fled, Ukraine estimated last month that up to 11,000 still remain in the city.

It lies on a key road used by the Ukrainian military to supply other embattled eastern outposts including the towns of Chasiv Yar and Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region.

Ukraine’s only mine that produces coking coal – used in its once vast steel industry and vital for the country’s pre-war economy – is just a 20-minute drive to the west of Pokrovsk.

Moscow says it has annexed Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and sees taking control of Pokrovsk as an important stepping stone to incorporating the entire region into Russia. Kyiv and the West reject Russia’s territorial claims as illegal and accuse Moscow of prosecuting a war of colonial conquest.

Control of the city, which the Russian media call “the gateway to Donetsk”, would allow Moscow to severely disrupt Ukrainian supply lines along the eastern front.

The number of drug-resistant infections is rapidly rising in Ukraine, according to reports – with the UK’s government agency for health security on alert over a risk of case numbers increasing.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) infections occur when bacteria evolves to learn how to defend itself against common antibiotic and other medicines, making treatment ineffective.

Overuse of antibiotics is the main cause of the so-called “silent pandemic” of AMR infections, with a type of infection called Klebsiella pneumoniae now becoming a major issue for hospitals near Ukraine’s frontline, with a type of infection called Klebsiella pneumoniae now becoming a major issue for hospitals near Ukraine’s frontline.

US-funded aid programs around the world have begun firing staff and shutting down or preparing to stop their operations, as the Trump administration’s unprecedented freeze on almost all foreign assistance brings their work to a sudden halt.

Allies including Ukraine also are struggling to save part of their security funding from the 90-day freeze, ordered by US president Donald Trump last week. Trump also just paused federal grants and loans inside the United States.

Slovakia’s foreign ministry has summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to protest against earlier Ukrainian comments over gas transit.

The European neighbours are engaged in a deepening rift after Ukraine ended Russian gas transit to Slovakia at the start of the year.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said that Slovak prime minister Robert Fico had been “poisoned by Russian propaganda”, which followed a comment by Mr Fico who called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky an “enemy” of Slovakia due to the gas transit dispute, according to Slovak media.

France has invited foreign ministers from Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Britain and the European Union as well as new US secretary of state Marco Rubio to discuss the war in Ukraine on 12 February, diplomats said yesterday.

It was not clear yet whether Mr Rubio would attend the talks, said the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a meeting that has not yet been officially announced.

The day Mstyslav Chernov won the Bafta for his documentary 20 Days in Mariupol was the day he learned two soldiers he knew had been killed in combat.

They were primary subjects of his new film 2,000 Meters to Andriivka, a harrowing portrait of modern warfare that puts audiences on the frontlines of the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive.

At least one person was killed in a Russian drone attack on a multi-storey apartment building in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy.

Three others were also injured in the drone strike, regional governor Volodymyr Artyukh said.

The governor, standing in front of a crane and piles of rubble, said emergency services were pulling residents out from parts of the building that had been damaged in the strike.

The number of drug-resistant infections is rapidly rising in Ukraine, according to reports – with the UK’s government agency for health security on alert over a risk of case numbers increasing.

Last week, the BBC reported on a sharp rise in cases faced by clinicians in Ukraine. While globally, 1.4m people died from antimicrobial resistant (AMR) infections in 2023. In the same year, 58,000 people had AMR infections in the UK.

The UK Health Security Agency has called it a global crisis with the agency calling for action to drive down infections around the world.

Here, The Independent asks what is helping drive the increase in Ukraine and what can be done about it: