Russia has removed a senior general in Ukraine for giving misleading reports about the progress of the war as Defence Minister Andrei Belousov tries to clear out poor commanders, pro-Russian war bloggers and Russian media said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that an attack by his forces on the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday morning was carried out using "a new conventional intermediate-range missile". He said that the missile, codenamed Oreshnik, was a response to the use by Ukraine of US and UK long-range weaponry to hit targets inside Russia.