KYIV, Ukraine: Russia said Monday it captured the village of Levadne in southern Ukraine as it probes for weaknesses along the war ‘s roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, including in eastern areas that are the main focus of Moscow’s military effort before winter arrives.
Ukrainian authorities, meanwhile, reported no nighttime Shahed drone attacks on the country for the first time in about six weeks, after saying five days ago they struck a Shahed storage facility in Russia’s Krasnodar region where around 400 drones reportedly were being kept.
Levadne, in the Zaporizhzhia region, was seized by the Russians early on during the full-scale invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, but was recaptured by Ukrainian forces during a counteroffensive in the summer of 2023.
Ukrainian officials made no comment about Levadne’s reported capture, though they had previously noted that the Russian army was assembling troops there and was conducting local assaults at the end of last week.
Ukraine’s troops are straining to hold back Russia’s military might, especially in the eastern Donetsk region, and don’t have the manpower or weaponry to launch their own offensive. Though Russia’s gains have been incremental, its steady forward movement is slowly adding up as the Ukrainians are pushed backward.
In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was briefed on Russia’s autumn and winter plans for attacking Ukraine and said North Korea was supporting Moscow.
Ukraine says it needs more Western help to have a chance of holding back Russia’s invasion.
Zelensky said Monday that Ukraine’s victory plan will be publicly presented to Kyiv’s European partners and he dubbed it a strategy to compel Russia to come to a “just end to this war.”
Details of the plan have not been disclosed, but Zelensky has said the plan is about strengthening Ukraine “both geopolitically and on the battlefield” before any kind of dialogue with Russia.
Russia illegally annexed four regions of Ukraine, including Zaporizhzhia, in September 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from all four regions as the main condition for a prospective peace deal — a demand Ukraine and the West have rejected.
Last week, the Ukrainian General Staff reported a direct hit on the Shahed drone warehouse inside Russia.
“The destruction of the Shahed drone storage base will significantly reduce the ability of Russian occupiers to terrorize peaceful residents of Ukrainian cities and villages,” it said at the time.
Ukrainian officials are keen to show the West that they aren’t giving up the fight against their much bigger neighbor. An incursion into Russia’s Kursk border region has put Ukrainian troops on Russian soil for more than two months.
The Russians are managing to retake some territory in Kursk but the Ukrainians are capturing even more, according to Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military analyst from Information Resistance, a Kyiv-based think tank.
He told The Associated Press that the onset of winter fog and rain will affect the use of drones — an important element in Ukraine’s military strategy.
Ukraine has deployed sophisticated long-range drones to strike targets inside Russia, including airfields, oil refineries and ammunition depots.
The Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence said Monday that it destroyed a Russian military transport aircraft, a Tu-134, at a military airfield in Russia’s Orenburg region.
Russia, meanwhile, struck port infrastructure in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa with a ballistic missile Monday, killing one person and wounding eight others, as well as damaging two merchant ships, officials said.
The attack damaged grain storage facilities, cargo cranes, administrative buildings, port equipment and vehicles, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration Oleksii Kuleba said on his Telegram channel.
Recent attacks on Odesa port facilities appear intended to disrupt the country’s exports of grains and other food staples.

NEW DELHI: Canada and India each expelled six diplomats Monday in tit-for-tat moves as part of an escalating dispute over the June 2023 assassination of a Sikh activist in Canada.
A senior Canadian government official said that Canada was expelling six Indian diplomats, including the high commissioner, after police uncovered evidence of ongoing violent criminal activity linked to the Indian government.
Shortly afterward, the Indian foreign ministry said it was expelling six Canadian diplomats, including the acting high commissioner and the deputy high commissioner. It said in a statement that the diplomats were told to leave India by the end of Saturday.
The ministry had said earlier Monday that India was withdrawing its diplomats, after rejecting Canada’s diplomatic communication on Sunday that said the Indian ambassador was a “person of interest” in the assassination.
A second senior Canadian official said that Canada expelled the Indian diplomats first before they withdrew. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last year that there were credible allegations that the Indian government had links to the June 2023 assassination in Canada of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Mike Duheme said that police have evidence allegedly tying Indian government agents to homicides and other violent acts in Canada. He declined to provide specifics.
“The team has learned a significant amount of information about the breadth and depth of criminal activity orchestrated by agents of the government of India, and consequential threats to the safety and security of Canadians and individuals living in Canada,” Duheme said.
RCMP Assistant Commissioner Brigitte Gauvin called it extremely concerning.
“Indian diplomats and consular officials are to protect the interests of their nationals based in Canada and their national interest and not to be part of criminal activity or intimidation, so we take that very seriously. That is without a doubt a contravention of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” Gauvin said.
India has rejected the accusation as absurd.
Nijjar, 45, was fatally shot in his pickup truck in June 2023 after he left the Sikh temple he led in the city of Surrey, British Columbia. An Indian-born citizen of Canada, he owned a plumbing business and was a leader in what remains of a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland.
India designated him a terrorist in 2020, and at the time of his death had been seeking his arrest for alleged involvement in an attack on a Hindu priest.
In response to the allegations, India told Canada last year to remove 41 of its 62 diplomats in the country. Ever since, the relations between the two countries have been frosty.
The pro-Khalistan, or Sikh independence, movement is a thorny issue between India and Canada. New Delhi has repeatedly criticized Trudeau’s government for being soft on supporters of the Khalistan movement who reside in Canada. The Khalistan movement is banned in India, but has support among the Sikh diaspora, particularly in Canada.
India has been asking countries like Canada, Australia and the UK to take legal action against Sikh activists. India has particularly raised these concerns with Canada, where Sikhs make up nearly 2 percent of the country’s population.
The Indian foreign ministry said Monday that “India reserves the right to take further steps in response to the Trudeau government’s support for extremism, violence and separatism against India.”
The ministry also summoned the top Canadian diplomat in New Delhi and told him that “the baseless targeting” of the Indian high commissioner, or ambassador, and other diplomats and officials in Canada “was completely unacceptable.”
“We have no faith in the current Canadian government’s commitment to ensure their security,” it said.
Stewart Wheeler, the Canadian diplomat who was directed to leave India, told reporters after being summoned that his government has shared “incredible and irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.”
Wheeler said India must investigate the allegations and that Canada “stands ready to cooperate with India.”
Meanwhile, the US State Department said in a statement Monday that an Indian enquiry committee set up to investigate a plot to assassinate another prominent Sikh separatist leader living in New York would be traveling to Washington on Tuesday as part of their ongoing investigations to discuss the case.
“Additionally, India has informed the United States they are continuing their efforts to investigate other linkages of the former government employee and will determine follow-up steps, as necessary,” it said.
Last year, U,S, prosecutors said that an Indian government official directed the plot to assassinate Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil and announced charges against a man they said was part of the thwarted conspiracy.
The Indian government official was niether charged nor identified by name, but was described as a “senior field officer” with responsibilities in security management and intelligence, said to have previously served in India’s Central Reserve Police Force.
New Delhi at that time had expressed concern after the US raised the issue, and said India takes it seriously.