Moscow’s troops have retaken a few villages in a border area that Kyiv’s forces invaded last month and are also advancing steadily in eastern Ukraine.

Russian forces captured the Ukrainian town of Ukrainsk in the eastern Donetsk region on Tuesday as they advanced westwards in a bid to take the whole of the Donbas, Russian state-run RIA news agency and pro-Russian war bloggers reported.

Determining the exact number of dead and wounded in the conflict has been difficult, with Russia and Ukraine declining to release official estimates or, at times, putting out figu