Russian forces attacked Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, early on Monday, wounding five people and damaging a residential building, according to the head of the city's military administration, Tymur Tkachenko. A Russian drone hit a Ukrainian bus carrying 39 evacuees in the eastern Sumy region, near Ukraine's border with Russia, on Sunday, killing three people and wounding 19 others, according to the regional governor. Two others were killed in a landmine explosion in Sumy's Esman community on Saturday, while two more were killed in Russian attacks on the front-line Donetsk region, according to officials, taking the death toll from attacks across Ukraine on that day to at least six. Ukraine's forces also launched drone attacks at Russia on Sunday, with the governor of the Leningrad region reporting that at least 10 Ukrainian unmanned aircraft were downed over the areas surrounding the city of St Petersburg. Falling debris injured a woman, Governor Alexander Drozdenko said.

Three people were killed in Russian shelling and drone attacks on towns in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, while at least a dozen people were injured in a Russian missile attack in the early hours of Sunday morning on the town of Myrnohrad, about 40km (25 miles) from the front line in Donetsk. Kyiv said Russia launched 39 Iranian-made Shahed attack drones across central and southern regions, including the Kyiv region. The Air Force said 35 were shot down over 10 regions. It did not say whether there was any damage. St Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport was closed briefly after a Ukrainian drone was detected in the neighbouring Leningrad region.

Russia and Ukraine traded deadly aerial attacks on civilian centres in the past week of the war, but Ukraine also scored hits on military and economic infrastructure deep in the Russian heartland, extending its reach to St Petersburg for the first time. Ukrainian military intelligence said it had struck an unspecified military target in St Petersburg on Thursday, using drones launched from Ukrainian soil. Ukrainian strategic industries minister Oleksandr Kamyshin confirmed the attack, telling the World Economic Forum in Davos that the attack was carried out by a Ukrainian-built drone that had travelled 1,250km (780 miles) from Ukrainian soil. Russia's defence ministry said three drones had been launched and it had downed all three over the Gulf of Finland that day, one near an oil terminal. On Sunday, Ukraine attacked again in several locations, and this time, the evidence of its success was clear.

In October last year, a Russian news site published a short video of Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary army, sitting with four men on a rooftop terrace in the resort town of Gelendzhik, on Russia's Black Sea coast. Two are missing parts of a leg. A third lost an arm. They are identified as pardoned former convicts, returned from the front in Ukraine after joining Wagner from prison. "You were an offender, now you're a war hero," Prigozhin tells one man in the clip. It was the first video to depict the return of some of the thousands of convicts who joined Wagner in return for the promise of a pardon if they survived six months of the war. Reuters news agency used facial recognition software to examine this video and more than a dozen others and photographs of homecoming convict fighters, published between October 2022 and February 2023.

It has been the dream of science fiction fans since they first saw Captain Kirk and Spock disappear from the deck of the Enterprise, only to reappear on a planet in a haze of light. Now scientists in Russia are on a mission to bring Star Trek-style teleportation to life as part of a multi-trillion Rouble research and development drive. Russian investors say the plan isn't as far-fetched as it may seem, with much of the common technology used today inspired by sci-fi of decades gone by. The Russian government could develop the technology by 2035 as part of a 2.1 trillion ( 1.4 trillion) research and development drive. Investors say the plan isn't as far-fetched as it may seem, with much of the common technology used today inspired by sci-fi of decades gone by.

It has housed soldiers, scientists, and even ravers, but Fort Alexander near St Petersburg now lies abandoned. Magnificent drone footage shows the fortress, named after a Russian Emperor, in its current forsaken state. The structure was built between 1838 and 1845 on an artificial island in the Gulf of Finland. Dramatic drone footage shows the derelict Russian'Plague Fort' near St Petersburg in the Gulf of Finland During the Crimean war the fort guarded the Imperial Russian Navy base in Kronstadt against British and French fleets. But it was never involved in hostilities and lost its military value soon after construction.