Ukrainian forces have broken through Russia's defences in the south of the country while expanding their rapid offensive in the east, seizing back more territory in areas annexed by Moscow and threatening supply lines for Russian troops.

BATTLEFIELD ADVANCES

* Russian military bloggers described a Ukrainian tank advance through dozens of kilometers of territory along the west bank of the Dnipro. Kyiv has so far maintained almost complete silence about the situation in Kherson.

* Ukraine on Sunday claimed full control of Russia's eastern logistics hub of Lyman, its most significant battlefield gain in weeks, setting the stage for further advances aimed at cutting Russia's supply lines to its battered troops to a single route.

* Ukraine's capture of a city within territory of Russian President Vladimir Putin's declared annexation demonstrates that Ukrainians are making progress and are able to push back against Russian forces, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.

* Kyiv appears on course to achieve several of its key battlefield objectives as it strengthens its military position against Russia ahead of the winter, a senior Pentagon official added.

* Russia said its troops had withdrawn from Lyman to avoid being surrounded by Ukraine's army.

* Russia has sacked the commander of its Western military district, news outlet RBC reported, after a series of painful battlefield reverses in Ukraine.

* The military commissar of Russia's Khabarovsk region in the far east was also removed from his post after half of newly mobilised personnel were sent home as they did not meet the draft criteria, the region's governor said.

DIPLOMACY

* Billionaire Elon Musk asked Twitter users to weigh in on a plan to end Russia's war in Ukraine, including proposing U.N.-supervised elections in four occupied regions that Moscow annexed last week and formally recognising Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014, as Russia. The plan drew immediate condemnation from Ukrainians.

* The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) executive board will consider Ukraine's request for $1.3 billion in additional emergency funding on Friday as Russia's war against the country continues, two sources familiar with the matter said.

* Head of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Ihor Murashov, has been released, U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said, after a detention that Kyiv blamed on Moscow and called an act of terror.

* The Kremlin said it favoured a "balanced approach" to the issue of nuclear weapons, not based on emotion, after a key ally of President Putin called over the weekend for Russia to use a "low-yield nuclear weapon" in Ukraine.

Reuters