I'm Dom Nichols and this is Ukraine the latest.

Today as Ukrainian forces continue to try to expand their lodgment inside Russia,

we hear how a Ukrainian F-16 pilot shot down six Russian cruise missiles.

And we also have an interview with General the Lord Danette, the former head of the British Army.

Bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory.

The first duty of my government is security and defence to make clear our unshakable support of NATO and with

our allies towards Ukraine. Keep stand strong. Nobody's going to break us. We're strong. We're

Ukraine is. It's Tuesday, January 7th, two years and 312 days since the full-scale invasion began.

And today, I'm joined by the executive editor for audio, Francis Dernley.

They're starting Kursk.

Citing Geolocated footage published Sunday and Monday by Martin Tuitero, among others, and all links are going to be in the episode notes today.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War assess that Ukrainian forces have advanced in southern Bairdin, central Roscoa, Proshnoia and central Novastnitsky.

They're all about 15Ks northeast of Sutsja in Kersk Oblast.

Russia's MOD and Russian mill bloggers said yesterday that Russian forces had repelled numerous

Ukrainian attacks in the area, including a roughly reduced platoon-sized mechanized assault.

Now, none of those claims can be verified. As you'd expect,

it's a very fluid situation. It's very difficult to get any ground truth. But geolocated footage,

as well as showing those Ukrainian advances, have also shown that Russian forces may gain

to the northwest of Sousja. So it's very, very fluid, very dynamic activity happening around Kersk at the moment.

There were audible explosions near a Russian aviation technical base in Kersk City.

Now Kirste City is about 30-ish kilometres further on from where Ukrainian forces are, we think.

That's out of direct-tubed artillery range from Ukrainian positions in Kursk.

...