Russian anti-aircraft defences shot down a drone over the city of Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula, the city’s Russian-installed governor said on the Telegram messenger app on Monday.

The city has come under attack repeatedly since Russia ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on 24 Feb 2022. Russian officials have blamed Ukraine for the attacks.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

The death toll from the weekend Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro has risen to 35, officials said.

Rescuers are continuing to search through the rubble for more victims, regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said.

At least 75 people were wounded and 35 others are still missing after Saturday’s strike.

About 1,700 people lived in the multi-storey building, with residents saying there were no military facilities at the site.

The reported death toll made it the deadliest attack in one place since a September 30 strike in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project.

The strike on the building on Saturday came amid a major barrage of Russian cruise missiles across Ukraine.

Russia has produced the first nuclear warheads for the Poseidon super torpedoes to be deployed on the Belgorod nuclear submarine, TASS reported on Monday, citing an unidentified defence source.

"The first Poseidon ammunition loads have been manufactured, and the Belgorod submarine will receive them in the near future," TASS quoted the source as saying.

President Vladimir Putin first announced what would become known as Poseidon in 2018, saying it was a fundamentally new type of strategic nuclear weapon with its own nuclear power source.

In the 2018 speech, Mr Putin said the range of the torpedo would be unlimited and that it could operate at extreme depths at a speed many times that of any submarine or other torpedoes.

"They are very low noise, have high maneuverability and are practically indestructible for the enemy. There is no weapon that can counter them in the world today," he added.

The cargo ship MKK 1, travelling from Ukraine to Turkey, was grounded in Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait on Monday and traffic in the strait was suspended but no damage was reported, shipping agents Tribeca said.

Several tugs were among vessels sent to provide assistance to the ship, the coastguard authority said.

Television footage showed the bow of the ship, carrying 13,000 tonnes of peas, grounded close to the coastline on the Asian side of the Bosphorus.

As Russia claims to have seized the eastern town of Soledar after months of fighting, Bel Trew reports on what it means for Moscow’s invasion – and for the Ukrainians in the path of any further advance.

Soldiers from the Ukrainian armed forces are “almost certainly” maintaining positions in Soledar, north of Bakhmut even as they continue to face a series of Wagner group assaults, the British defence ministry said today.

Ukraine’s eastern sector on the Donbas front saw intense fighting over the weekend in both the Kremina and Bakhmut, the ministry pointed out.

“Around Kremina, fighting has been characterised by a complex series of local attacks and counter-attacks in wooded country. However, overall, the UAF continue to gradually advance their front line east on the edge of Kremina town,” the MoD said in its latest intelligence update on the war.

It added that over the last six weeks, both Russia and Ukraine have achieved hard-fought but limited gains in different sectors.

“In these circumstances, a key operational challenge for both sides is to generate formations of uncommitted, capable troops which can exploit the tactical successes to create operational breakthroughs,” the ministry added.

Officials in Belarus have accused Ukraine of “provoking” the Russian ally on the heels of the joint military drills between Moscow and Minsk starting today.

The situation on Belarus’s southern border which it shares with Ukraine was "not very calm," and Ukraine has been "provoking" Belarus, according to Pavel Muraveyko, first deputy state secretary of Belarusian Security Council.

Mr Muraveyko said: "We’re maintaining restraint and patience, keeping our gunpowder dry. We have the necessary set of forces and means that will respond to any manifestations of aggression or a terrorist threat on our territory," according to a post on the Belarusian defence ministry’s Telegram app yesterday.

The death toll from the Russian missile attack on a residential building in Dnipro on Saturday has now reached 35, authorities said, as rescue operations entered the third day.

The airstrike hit a section of the apartment building and tore it down, killing dozens — including two children, Dnipropetrovsk oblast governor Valentyn Reznichenko said on Telegram.

Russia has denied targeting residential and civilian infrastructure in its “special military operation” in Ukraine, but there have already been thousands of civilian casualties in the 11-month war.

Editorial: Despite the success in Donetsk, this is a weak moment for Russia, and the West should ensure that Ukraine can take full advantage of it.

Ukraine has continued to insist that its forces are still fighting in Soledar after Russia claimed last week to have taken control of the town.

Russia’s forces, mostly led by mercenary group Wagner in the eastern Ukrainian territory, are advancing their military offensive in and around the key mining town from various directions.

“Put simply, THE BATTLE CONTINUES,” Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said on the Telegram messaging app. “Everything else is unverified information.”

According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, it was highly unlikely that Ukrainian forces still held positions within Soledar itself.