Kremlin says it does not know about funeral arrangements; Russian defence ministry did not indicate whether drone attacks caused damage
My colleague Dan Sabbagh has a special dispatch from Kupiansk, a town in the Kharkiv region where some residents have abandoned their homes because of renewed shelling.
In its latest intelligence update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said military service in the Russian armed forces has become increasingly lucrative since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
On 4 February 2022 Russian president Vladimir Putin noted that a lieutenant received 81,200 rubles per month. By October 2022, he announced that even mobilised private soldiers would receive 195,000 rubles per month.
Many junior ranks serving in Ukraine are now on over 200,000 rubles per month. This is over 2.7 times the Russian national average salary of 72,851 rubles. By way of comparison, 2.7 times the average UK salary would equate to over £90,000 a year.
