Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy says his forces are “strengthening” their positions in Russia’s Kursk region where Kyiv has been mounting a major ground offensive. He said his army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi had reported that Ukrainian troops continued their advance and also took more Russian servicemen as prisoners. Ukraine says it has seized more than 80 settlements over 1,150 square km (444 square miles) in Kursk since 6 August in the biggest invasion of Russia since the second world war. The latest battlefield reports could not be verified, but locals accuse the Russian government of downplaying the Ukrainian attack. Zelenskiy also renewed his calls for Ukraine’s western allies to allow long-range strikes on Russia: “The long-range capability for our forces is the answer to all most important, most strategic questions of this war,” Zelenskiy said. Western governments providing military aid to Ukraine have so far refused to allow Ukraine to use long-range weapons because of the perceived risk of escalation in the conflict. Russia has accused Nato and the west more widely of aiding the Ukrainian incursion, including by permitting the use of western-supplied equipment. But British officials said Ukraine was entitled under international law to use British-donated equipment in operations, including within Russia. Reporters from the Associated Press said that on a trip through Kursk organised by the Ukrainian government, they witnessed a “trail of destruction”. Alexander Kots, military correspondent with the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, also said that Ukrainian pressure in Kursk “is not weakening yet”. Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has derailed plans to hold indirect talks in Qatar on halting strikes on energy infrastructure, the Washington Post reported, citing undisclosed official sources. Ukraine is reaping “huge political gains” from its military offensive into western Russia but the incursion is not altering the “anti-escalation approach” of the west, Polish interior minister Tomasz Siemoniak said. The United States and western powers, keen to avoid direct military confrontation with Russia, have said Ukraine had not given advance notice and that Washington was not involved. Safety at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is deteriorating following a drone strike that hit a perimeter access road on Saturday, according to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Mariano Grossi. The warning followed the plant’s Russian management saying a Ukraine drone had dropped an explosive charge on a road used by staff, the Tass news agency reported earlier. Grossi expressed his alarm: “I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint from all sides,” he said. On Saturday, Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukraine of planning to attack the Kursk nuclear power plant and blame such a “provocation” on Moscow, Interfax news agency reported. The ministry said Russia would respond harshly in the event of such an attack, which it said would contaminate a large surrounding area. Kyiv denied Russia’s claims, calling them “insane propaganda”. Russia has lost 598,180 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, according to the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. This number includes 1,230 casualties Russian forces suffered over the past day. Russia is restricting access to information in a bid to limit criticism of its invasion of Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said. In a post on X, the MoD said Russian authorities are “deliberately slowing” traffic on WhatsApp and YouTube and that the latter could be “blocked altogether in autumn 2024”. In Ukraine’s Donetsk region, where Moscow has made a string of advances in recent weeks, Ukraine’s military said 51 Russian attacks were stopped near Pokrovsk, a major logistics hub in the eastern region, and another 13 near the town of Toretsk in the last 24 hours. The Ukrainian air force said on Saturday that its air defences shot down 14 Russian drones fired in an overnight attack. In a statement, it said that the Shahed drones were downed over six Ukrainian regions in the south and centre of the country. Germany, the second largest contributor of aid to war-torn Ukraine, plans to halve its bilateral military aid to Kyiv in 2025, a parliamentary source told AFP on Saturday. Instead, the government of Olaf Scholz will bank on money generated from frozen Russian assets to continue supporting Kyiv, and is not planning “additional aid” to the 4 bn euros ($4.4bn) set aside in next year’s budget. Chechnya president Ramzan Kadyrov invited Tesla CEO Elon Musk to Russia on Saturday after being filmed behind the wheel of one of the company’s Cybertrucks mounted with a machine gun. He also said he would donate the vehicle to Russian forces fighting in the invasion of Ukraine. Messages left with Tesla seeking comment were not immediately returned.