Russia's war in Ukraine

Russian forces have used nearly 500,000 munitions in the last week alone on the Eastern front, according to Ukraine's deputy defense minister, who described the situation as "extremely difficult and tense."

Hannah Maliar said on YouTube there had been "endless assaults" by the Russians, with more than 9,000 instances of shelling, compared to about 8,000 the previous week.

Russian forced executed several attacks in Donetsk and Luhansk fronts, describing the eastern front lines as the epicenter of hostilities. 

Maliar said the Kupyansk direction in the Kharkiv region was "probably the hottest" in fighting and that Russian forces were trying to regain positions they lost last autumn.

But she said repeated Russian efforts to break through Ukrainian defenses did not succeed.

Failed Russian efforts: There had also been intensive clashes in the forested areas to the east of Lyman and Russians had "desperately" tried to surround Avdiivka but failed, according to Maliar.

She said Russian forces risk losing their soldiers to "street fights" in those areas and don't risk going there because they cannot advance.

Difficulties in the south: Ukraine's armed forced on the main offensive directions of Melitopol and Berdiansk in the south faced quite difficult positions last week. Maliar said Russian forces were "mining positions" in what could be plans for an advance.

Positions attacked: The commander of Ukrainian forces in the south, Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, said late Sunday that Russian forces had attacked Ukrainian positions 21 times and carried out 608 shellings over the past day.

He said that Ukrainian artillery had carried out 1,344 firing missions in the same period and destroyed 21 units of enemy military equipment.

Air defense systems donated to Ukraine by the United States and Germany have achieved "significant results," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday.

His address came hours after a wave of Russian missiles hit Ukraine early Sunday, targeting an important air base in the west of the country. 

Western allies have donated a range of air defense systems to Ukraine, including US-made Patriot batteries. Patriot interceptor missiles can hit high- and medium-altitude aircraft, cruise missiles and some ballistic missiles, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Russian shelling killed a 59-year-old woman and wounded at least three others in Ukraine's southern Kherson city, a military official said Monday.

In a Telegram post, Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, said a 93-year-old woman was among those hospitalized following the shelling of residential areas.

Russia's targeting of residential areas comes after the United Nations warned in a statement last week about the impact of a "new wave of attacks" on civilians in Ukraine.

Russian air defenses shot down a drone southwest of Moscow, a regional governor said Monday.

In a Telegram post, Kaluga Gov. Vladislav Shapsha said the incident happened around 2:30 a.m. local time in the region's Ferzikovsky district.

No injuries or damage were reported, he said.

The was no immediate comment from Ukraine over the reported attack.

Some context: A string of aerial drone strikes have peppered Russian cities, including Moscow, throughout the summer.

Though recent strikes on the Russian capital did not reportedly cause any injuries or fatalities, they have unsettled residents and created a sense that the scope of the conflict is drifting across the border. On Sunday, an attempted Ukrainian drone attack briefly halted traffic at an airport in Moscow, according to the city's mayor.

Ukrainian strikes inside Russia and Moscow-controlled territory are an increasingly common feature of the war, and Kyiv has effectively served notice that the attacks will continue, with President Volodymyr Zelensky declaring the conflict is "returning to Russia."

Here's what we know about some of the recent attacks:

Delegations from various countries and organizations attending the Ukraine peace summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, agreed to continue working together toward "achieving lasting peace in the region," Saudi state news reported Sunday, but no specific developments were revealed.

In statements Sunday, the head of Ukraine's presidential office called the talks "productive" and "extremely honest and open," while Russia's deputy foreign minister dismissed the talks as "doomed" to prevent meaningful developments.

Some context: The lack of any concrete resolutions announced after the talks does not come as a surprise, as officials had tempered expectations.

The meetings — which did not include representatives from Russia — were seen mostly as a means for laying out future frameworks. They were also viewed as a venue to potentially win support for Kyiv's peace proposals from beyond its core Western backers like the United States and United Kingdom: The meetings included representatives from developing countries and from world powers that have sought to project varying degrees of neutrality in the conflict, like China and India.

Ukraine and Russia remain publicly committed to prerequisites for direct negotiations that the other side finds unacceptable.

Ukraine's military has confirmed that it struck road bridges linking Crimea and Russian-occupied parts of southern Ukraine on Sunday.

The strikes "hit two key routes of communication" for Russia, the Chonhar bridge linking the Kherson region to Crimea and a smaller bridge to the peninsula from the Ukrainian town of Henichesk, the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram.

Russian-backed authorities and Russian state media had earlier reported that Kyiv was responsible for strikes on the bridges. The Russian-appointed head of occupied areas in the Kherson region accused Ukraine of using British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles in the attack.

Explosions hit critical road bridges linking occupied Crimea with parts of Kherson region under Russian control, Russian authorities say, as Ukraine escalates its targeting of Russian infrastructure and territory.

The blasts came on the same day the Moscow mayor said a drone had been shot down approaching the city and soon after Ukraine struck one of Russia’s biggest oil tankers with a sea drone as well as carrying out an attack on a major naval base.

The Russian-appointed acting head of Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, says the missiles that hit two bridges in Crimea Sunday were all Storm Shadows, an air-launched long-range missile supplied to Ukraine by the UK.

Saldo said the two bridges were used by civilian and not military traffic. A rupture to a gas pipeline running alongside the bridge had cut off supplies to 20,000 residents of the city of Henichesk in Kherson.

He added that no one was hurt and the bridge would reopen to traffic by the end of the day.

Read more here.

A Russian guided aerial bomb struck a blood transfusion center in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region Saturday, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

He said on Telegram there are dead and wounded victims as a result of the attack, but did not provide any specific numbers.

Zelensky said the blood transfusion center is located in the Kupyansk community, where Russia has recently amassed troops on the eastern front line. A fire broke out at the center following the attack, he added.

CNN cannot independently verify reports about attacks on the front lines in Ukraine.

The area was liberated in a Ukrainian counteroffensive last fall.