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       Ukrainian soldier Volodymyr Kerbut died in Soledar and was laid to rest in Bucha, his life and death linked to two of the bloodiest scenes since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.

       He was 46 years old and served 25 years as a policeman before voluntarily enlisting when the war began.

       Weeks later the streets of Bucha were littered with civilian corpses.

       In nearby Soledar, a handful of Volodymyr's comrades were holding out as best they could against an onslaught by the Russian army and Wagner mercenaries.

       Moscow says the city has fallen, Ukraine denies the claim.

       The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, promises to do everything possible to prevent Soledar and the neighbouring Bakhmut from falling into the hands of an enemy that seems ready to take the cities at any price.

       Bakhmut is another city that has been at the heart of a grinding fight between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the past few months.

       At a health centre in the city, Dr Elena Molchanova ushers patients into a narrow office warmed by a wood-burning stove, where she hands out medication and fills in death certificates.

       Sometimes her visitors, the last remaining residents in the town shelled daily and cut from essential services, are just seeking shelter from the biting cold.

       The 40-year-old doctor is one of just five left in Bakhmut who are now a lifeline to the some 8,000 people local officials say are still in the city that used to be home to 70,000.

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       An explosion in a gas pipeline in central Lithuania sent flames fifty metres into the air on Friday and forced the evacuation of a nearby village according to officials.

       Local media said there were no reports of injuries.

       Firefighters were quickly at the scene but could do little other than look on while the remaining gas in the pipe was still burning.

       The operator company, Amber Grid, immediately cut off the tap on the pipeline, which runs parallel to another one and transports natural gas from Klaipeda on the Baltic coast to Latvia.

       The company said the other pipeline was not damaged.

       In a statement, the Amber Grid CEO, Nemunas Biknius, said the circumstances of the incident were being investigated.

       Local media reported the Latvian energy minister as saying he'd been told the incident was a technical accident.

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       An original Tintin drawing that has captivated millions of readers over several generations around the world is to go up for sale.

       'Tintin in America' is one of the best-known episodes of the saga of the Belgian comic book hero.

       Drawn in black and white by Hergé in 1942, it's due to go up for auction on February 10 in Paris and could fetch more than €3 million euros.

       The director of the auction house, Vinciane de Traux, said the drawing reveals a certain amount of experimentation by the artist.

       "You can look at this here and imagine that the Indians were probably originally drawn larger, only to be erased and replaced by teepees, and then placed in the foreground," she explained, "or perhaps it was a test on the perspective and size of different people and different objects in the composition."

       Tintin fans may well be hoping that the buyer will not keep it for years in a drawer.

       In 2021, the original cover illustration of "Blue Lotus", drawn in 1936, was sold for €3.2 million.