Putin orders tighter security at Russia-Ukraine border after spate of drone attacks

Russian president also orders security services to counter espionage and sabotage operations by Ukraine and the West

Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a meeting of the Federal Security Service board in Moscow on Tuesday (AP)

Vladimir Putin has ordered that the Russian border with Ukraine be tightened after a spate of drone attacks while Moscow’s forces pushed to encircle the eastern city of Bakhmut.

Taking Bakhmut, the scene of some of the war’s fiercest fighting, would be Russia’s first major prize in more than six months and open the way to seizing bigger cities in the Donetsk region, one of four regions Moscow seeks to control. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has said the situation in Bakhmut is becoming “more and more difficult”.

Mr Putin instructed the Federal Security Service (FSB) on Tuesday to bolster security in the four regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – currently only partially controlled by his forces, and also to counter what he described as growing espionage and sabotage operations against Russia by Ukraine and the West.