Volodymyr Zelensky has called for an end to the Russian military offensive and roused support for Ukraine’s defensive capabilities.

“Before the new ‘Ramstein’, such signal is extremely relevant. We must put an end to the Russian aggression this year exactly and not postpone any of the defensive capabilities that can speed up the defeat of the terrorist state,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly address.

He said modern “western armoured vehicles and western-type tanks” are just one of these key capabilities that will bolster Ukraine’s counterattack on Russian forces invading the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday sent a frigate armed with the country’s latest Zircon hypersonic missile on a trans-ocean cruise in a show of force as tensions with the West escalate over the war in Ukraine.

Russia touts that the Zircon missile can evade any Western air defenses by flying at an astounding 7,000 miles per hour (11,265 km/h).

Here is a glance at the ship and its weapons.

An official from the Ukrainian defence ministry’s intelligence section, Andriy Cherniak, said in comments to the RBC-Ukraine media outlet that Kyiv expected no let-up in Russia’s offensive this year despite the heavy human toll.

“According to Ukrainian military intelligence estimates, in the next four-five months the Russian army may lose up to 70,000 people. And the occupying country’s (Russia’s) leadership is ready for such losses,” Mr Cherniak said.

Russian leaders “understand they will lose but they do not plan to end the war”, he said.

In a signal to the West that Russia will not back down over Ukraine, Mr Putin sent a frigate on Wednesday to the Atlantic Ocean armed with new generation hypersonic cruise missiles, which can travel at more than five times the speed of sound.

French President Emmanuel Macron told Ukraine’s presidentn Zelenskiy that France would send light AMX-10 RC armoured combat vehicles to help in the war.

This is according to a French official said a phone call between the two men.

They added this would be the first time Western-made armoured vehicles are being delivered in support of the Ukrainian army.

Rishi Sunak reaffirmed the UK’s support for Ukraine, in an early January call with Volodymyr Zelensky.

The two leaders spoke after a Ukrainian rocket attack killed dozens of Russian soldiers in a town in the Donetsk region.

Russia had unleashed a barrage of attacks on Ukrainian sites over the new year period.

Russia has effectively shut down all direct opposition to the war, with open criticism banned by severe media rules.

In contrast, Moscow it has given comparatively free rein to pro-war bloggers, some of whom have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

Many are increasingly vocal about what they consider a half-hearted and incompetently led campaign, and have expressed anger this week over the strike that killed Russian troops housed in a vocational school in Donetsk province on New Year’s Eve.

Criticism has been directed at military commanders rather than at Putin, who has not commented publicly on the attack.

Russia’s Defence Ministry, which raised the official death toll in the attack to 89 from 63, blamed soldiers for illegally using mobile phones, which it said led Ukraine to locate the base in Makiivka, twin city of regional capital Donetsk.

Semyon Pegov, a war correspondent decorated by Putin, said on Telegram the mobile phone explanation “looks like an outright attempt to smear the blame”, and there were other ways Ukraine could have spotted the base. Other pro-Russian bloggers have said the strike was worsened because ammunition was stored at the site. Moscow has not confirmed this.

The UK will provide more military equipment to Ukraine in the weeks ahead, Downing Street has revealed after Rishi Sunak agreed to “intensify” cooperation with president Volodymyr Zelensky.

No 10 said the prime minister told the president that moves were underway “to provide further equipment in the coming weeks and months to secure Ukraine’s victory on the battlefield”.

Mr Zelensky suggested that “concrete decisions” had been made on fresh military equipment after he talked about “further defence cooperation” with the PM.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia was planning to call up more troops for a major new offensive, even as Moscow was facing some of its biggest internal criticism of the war over a strike that killed scores of fresh conscripts.

Kyiv has been saying for weeks that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to order another mass conscription drive and shut his borders to prevent men from escaping the draft.

“We have no doubt that the current masters of Russia will throw everything they have left and everyone they can round up to try to turn the tide of the war and at least delay their defeat,” Mr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Tuesday.

“We have to disrupt this Russian scenario … Any attempt at their new offensive must fail.”

Russia should expect strikes “deeper and deeper” into the territory it controls, as pressure ramps up on Moscow’s military leaders in the wake of a Ukrainian missile strike that killed scores of conscripts and the defence ministry has blamed on the use of mobile phones by its soldiers.

Raising the death toll from the strike in the Russian-held eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka from 63 to 89 on Wednesday, the Defence Ministry claimed that the “illegal” use of mobile phones was the main factor in the attack.

“This allowed the enemy to track and determine the coordinates of the soldiers’ location for a missile strike,” the ministry said – despite an investigation into the incident still going on. It is the highest death toll in a single incident that Moscow has acknowledged since it started the invasion of Ukraine last February. Kyiv has claimed that up to 400 conscripts died in the attack.