Ukraine wants to rebuild its war-ravaged nation – Russia isn’t letting it (Picture: Reuters)

As the future of the Russia-Ukraine war hangs in the balance of a precarious peace deal, it’s business as usual for Vladimir Putin.

The Russian president has ordered the expansion of a ‘buffer zone’ along the Russia-Ukraine border in 2026, Moscow’s top general said today.

The Kremlin has long said that the zone in Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv was to protect Russian civilians on the border from enemy raids.

Yet the stretch is widely seen as nothing more than a land-grab, with a peace plan drawn up by Kyiv and Washington saying Russia must withdraw from the border regions to help rebuild the war-torn nation.

Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov said he recently inspected the ‘North’ troop gathering, which has been pushing back Ukraine in the buffer zone, the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Drone attacks, such as one today in Odesa, Ukraine, continue to pound both sides (Picture: Reuters)

He added: ‘The troops of the joint grouping are confidently advancing deeper into the enemy’s defences and in December achieved the highest offensive tempo to date.

‘Over the month, more than 700 square kilometres [270 square miles] of territory was taken.’

The vow to keep invading Ukraine comes after Putin told US President Donald Trump that a Ukrainian drone attack targeted one of his residences.

Russia alleges Kyiv bombed one of Putin’s most secretive hide-outs south of St Petersburg, to ‘sabotage’ Trump on Sunday night.

This would have been only hours after Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Recounting the call the following day, Trump said: ‘It’s one thing to be offensive because they’re offensive. It’s another thing to attack his house.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged to Donald Trump over the phone that Ukraine attacked one of his homes (Picture: EPA)

‘It’s not the right time to do any of that. I was very angry about it.’

Zelensky brushed off the claim as nothing more than ‘typical Russian lies’ designed to undermine the peace deal.

He said on X: ‘Ukraine does not take steps that can undermine diplomacy. To the contrary, Russia always takes such steps.’

Top Kyiv officials also stressed that Russia has repeatedly bombarded the Ukrainian government building and other non-military targets.

Zelensky’s Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, meanwhile, told reporters that the attack was ‘savage terrorism at the highest level’.

Analysts say the attack so far lacks any clear-cut evidence, with no drone activity recorded at the time it was said to have occurred.

Russia has shown little willingness to end the war (Picture: Getty Images Europe)

Locals also did not receive any warnings about a possible attack, despite it allegedly involving 100 Ukrainian drones.

One said: ‘There was no noise that night, no explosions, nothing. If something like that had happened, the whole town would have been talking about it.’

Yet experts warn that the claim will be used by the Kremlin to justify dragging on the nearly four-year war by gobbling up more Ukrainian land.

Analyst Georgi Bovt said on Telegram that Moscow may try to take land from beyond the Donbas, made up of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

This could include ‘the entirety of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions’, so far only partly occupied by Russian forces, Bovt said.

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