Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 371 of the invasion

The US does not expect Russia to make significant territorial gains in Ukraine in the near term, a US undersecretary of defence has said. Describing the frontlines as a “grinding slog”, Colin Kahl told a House of Representatives hearing: “I do not think that there’s anything I see that suggests the Russians can sweep across Ukraine and make significant territorial gains anytime in the next year or so.”

A military drone targeted a gas facility in the Moscow region, according to a senior Russian official, and photos of the wreckage suggested it was Ukrainian-made, indicating a rare attempted strike hundreds of miles behind Russian lines. The alleged attack was one of several reports of successful or attempted unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strikes in at least four regions of Russia.

Russia’s Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg temporarily suspended all flights amid reports of an unidentified object such as a drone being seen nearby. Some flights were diverted back to Moscow while the airport was shut for about an hour. Russia’s defence ministry later announced there had been a training exercise between air defences and civilian aviation authorities.

The Russian defence ministry said it stopped two attempted Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil using drones. It said: “28 February, at night, the Kyiv regime attempted to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to attack civilian infrastructure in the Krasnodar territory and the Republic of Adygea.” The claims were not independently verified.

Emergency services put out a fire at an oil depot in southern Russia after a drone was spotted flying overhead, the RIA news agency said. The fire in the Russian town of Tuapse, Krasnador, was reported at 2.30am local time and spread to an area of about 200 sq m before it was extinguished. “The oil tanks were not affected. There was no spill of oil products. No injuries,” said Sergei Boyko, who leads the local administration.

A hacking attack caused some Russian regional broadcasters to put out a false warning urging people to take shelter from an incoming missile attack, the emergencies ministry said. “As a result of the hacking of servers of radio stations and TV channels, in some regions of the country information about the announcement of an air alert was broadcast. This information is false and does not correspond to reality.” A similar attack caused commercial radio stations in some Russian regions to send air alarm messages on Wednesday last week.

Vladimir Putin has told the FSB security service to step up its intelligence activity and stop “sabotage groups” getting into Russia. In a speech to FSB officials, Putin instructed the agency to strengthen its activity to counter what he described as growing espionage and sabotage operations against Russia by Ukraine and its western allies. He also admitted that FSB members had been killed in Ukraine.

The intensity of fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces around the eastern city of Bakhmut continued to increase, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address.

Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and a close ally of Putin, arrived in Beijing for a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

China had “very clearly” taken Russia’s side and had been “anything but an honest broker” in efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, the US department of state spokesperson Ned Price said at a news briefing. China had provided Russia with “diplomatic support, political support, with economic support, with rhetorical support”, he added.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has reiterated the Biden administration’s concern that China is considering providing lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Speaking after a meeting with leaders in the Kazakh capital, Astana, Blinken warned that Beijing would face “implications and consequences” if it decided to provide such support.

Ukraine will become a Nato member in the “long term”, the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said. The Nato chief stressed that the immediate priority was Ukraine remaining an independent country in the face of the Russian invasion. He said Finland and Sweden joining was a “top priority” and that the Nordic countries have had the “quickest accession process in Nato’s modern history”.

Russia is open to negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has said, but he insisted Moscow would “never compromise” on what he described as new “territorial realities”. Speaking to reporters during a regular briefing, Peskov said Moscow would not renounce its claims to four Ukrainian regions that Putin annexed in September.