Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 376 of the invasion

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has paid tribute to fighters in the Donbas, as his forces come under increasingly intense pressure in the city of Bakhmut. “It is one of the toughest battles. Painful and challenging,” he said in his nightly address.

His comments came after Kyiv said it had repelled “more than 130 enemy attacks” on Sunday as Russian troops continue attempts to surround Bakhmut. Russian forces are said to be contesting lines of communication and preventing resupply.

Zelenskiy also said “the world was strong enough to punish Russia for the war”. Ukraine would spend the next six months working to shore up the country’s energy supply against Russian attack, he said.

Ukraine special forces destroyed a Russian observation tower in the city of Bryansk with a kamikaze drone. Kraken, a special forces unit, has taken credit for the attack on a tower that was being used to monitor the border with Ukraine.

Exiled mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, has claimed “hundreds” of Russian solders were killed in a Ukrainian strike on the city. There was no confirmation from Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence and the Guardian could not independently verify the claim.

The Russian army hit a command centre of the Ukrainian forces’ Azov regiment in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. The Guardian could not independently verify this.

Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Sunday that Ankara was working hard to extend the UN-backed Black Sea grain initiative. A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson indicated Moscow was unhappy with aspects of the deal, which allowed Ukraine to export grain from ports blockaded by Russia following its invasion.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz told CNN it was “necessary” for Russian president Vladimir Putin to understand he will not win the Ukraine war, so negotiations to end the conflict can begin. “If you look at the proposal of the Ukrainians, it is easy to understand that they are ready for peace,” he added.

The death toll from a Russian missile strike that hit a five-storey apartment block in the southern Ukrainian city Zaporizhzhia on Thursday has risen to 13, a local official said on Sunday.

A woman and two children were killed in Russian mortar shelling of a village in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office said on Sunday.

Ukraine MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze told Sky News on Sunday that tens of thousands of Ukrainian children could have disappeared in what she described as “genocide”. Klympush-Tsintsadze said the children were potentially deported to Russia.

Latvia’s prime minister said western states delivering fighter jets to support Ukraine defending itself against Russia is “only a question of time”.

The latest intelligence briefing from the UK’s Ministry of Defence says recent evidence suggests an increase in “close combat” in Ukraine, probably due to Russia’s shortage of “munitions”. It also refers to Russian mobilised reservists being ordered to assault a Ukrainian concrete strong point armed with only “firearms and shovels”. These shovels are likely to be the outdated MPL-50 entrenching tools used in hand-to-hand combat.