Ukraine fighting is deadlocked, spy chief Kyrylo Budanov tells BBC

"The situation is just stuck," Kyrylo Budanov told the BBC in an interview. "It doesn't move."

After Ukrainian troops recaptured the southern city of Kherson in November, most of the fiercest battles have been around Bakhmut, in the eastern Donetsk region. Elsewhere, Russian forces appear to be on the defensive while winter has slowed down the pace of Ukraine's ground operations across the 1,000km (620-mile) front line.

Mr Budanov said Russia was "now completely at a dead end" suffering very significant losses, and he believed the Kremlin had decided to announce another mobilisation of conscripts. But, he added, Ukrainian forces still lacked resources to move forward in multiple areas, Qazet.az reports.

"We can't defeat them in all directions comprehensively. Neither can they," he said. "We're very much looking forward to new weapons supplies, and to the arrival of more advanced weapons."

Earlier this month, after a series of Russian military setbacks, Ukrainian officials warned about the possibility of another ground offensive by Moscow's forces from Belarus at the start of 2023. The push, they said, could include a second attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, and involve tens of thousands of reservists being trained in Russia.

Mr Budanov, however, dismissed Russia's activities in Belarus, including the movement of thousands of troops, as attempts to make Ukraine divert troops from the battlefields in the south and east to the north.