Putin confident he is winning in Ukraine

VLADIMIR PUTIN is heading to Friday's planned summit with Donald Trump confident that Russia is in a dominant position on the battlefield as his military advances in Ukraine.

- BLOOMBERG

That's likely to strengthen his determination to secure major territorial concessions when the Russian and US presidents meet in Alaska in return for a ceasefire that Putin has so far been reluctant to concede to Trump.

Russian forces broke through Ukrainian defenses in the eastern Donetsk region around villages leading to the town of Dobropillya, according to the Deep State monitoring platform, which maintains cooperation with Ukraine's defense ministry. They're consolidating positions and probing for weak points in defenses to try to reach the road linking the town and the strategic city of Kramatorsk, it said.