MOSCOW, Dec 29 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Monday told his army to press on with a campaign to take full control of the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine after a Russian commander said Moscow's forces were 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) from its biggest city.

January, President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine will have dragged on longer than the war on the Eastern Front that ended with the fall of Berlin in May 1945.

President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the Russian society can tolerate the high human cost of the war in Ukraine. But we’ve analyzed more than 6,000 official complaints by soldiers and their loved ones that paint a very different picture.

Putin said at an annual meeting with top military officers that Moscow will move to expand a “buffer security zone” along the border.