Russia 'captures' Selydove

Moscow said Tuesday it had seized the war-battered mining town of Selydove in eastern Ukraine where Kyiv's forces are buckling.

The Kremlin's forces have been advancing rapidly across the sprawling eastern front where exhausted and outgunned Ukrainian troops are having to cede ground.

The Russian defence ministry said its forces had "fully liberated" Selydove, a town of Soviet-era buildings whose estimated population of around 21,000 people have fled from Moscow's drone and rocket attacks.

Moscow also said it had wrested control of the nearby villages of Bogoyavlenka, Girnyk and Katerynivka, also in the Donetsk region.

Nuclear drills

Russia said Tuesday its army held fresh nuclear drills under the supervision of President Vladimir Putin.

Russia's defence ministry said a "training exercise was conducted with the forces and means of the land, maritime and aviation components of the strategic deterrent force" and that an "intercontinental ballistic missile was launched."

The ministry said the missile was launched at a test site in the far-eastern Kamchatka peninsula.

Other missiles were launched from a submarine in the Barents Sea in the Arctic and from the Sea of Okhotsk in the Russian Far East.

The TASS news industry published footage of a missile being launched in the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the Russian Far-North.