Ukraine war: Kyiv forces capture key Black Sea oil rig as Kim Jong-un to meet Putin

“We will end this war with drones”, former deputy prime minister of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov said in July.

Since that statement, Kyiv has announced plans to invest $1bn into the industry, as more than 10,000 drones are said to be lost on the battlefield every month.

Alexander Butler reports:

An attempted attack by Ukrainian forces on a Russian atomic facility was orchestrated by the UK, Vladimir Putin has claimed.

The Russian president was speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

“Do they understand what they are playing with?” Putin said.

“Are they trying to provoke us into retaliating against Ukrainian atomic power stations? Does the British prime minister know what his secret services are doing in Ukraine?”

The Swedish government will ask its armed forces to investigate the potential for sending Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine, Swedish public radio (SR) reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.

The government wants to know, among other things, how a handover would affect Sweden’s defence capabilities and how quickly Sweden could get new Gripen fighters, SR reported.

Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Ukraine was only likely to start peace talks when it ran out of resources and would use any potential cessation of hostilities to rearm again with Western help.

The war has sown devastation across swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, killed or injured hundreds of thousands and triggered the biggest rupture in Russia’s ties with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Putin, speaking at an economic forum in Russia’s Pacific port city of Vladivostok, said Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces had so far failed and that the Ukrainian army had sustained heavy losses.

“I have the impression that they want to bite off as much as they can and then, when their resources are close to zero, to achieve a cessation of hostilities and start negotiations in order to replenish their resources and restore combat capability,” Putin said.

The Black Sea Grain deal is on hold, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

According to state-run media, Peskov added that there had been no progress in restraining the deal, which broke down in July last year.

Moscow pulled out after claiming the West was failing to enable the shipment of Russia’s own grain and fertiliser exports.

The deal allows for commercial food and fertilizer (including ammonia) exports from three key Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea – Odesa, Chornomorsk, Yuzhny/Pivdennyi.

President Vladimir Putin claimed on Tuesday that 1,000 – 1,500 Russians were signing voluntary contracts to join the military every day.

He was responding to a question about whether Russia needed to introduce a new compulsory mobilisation to boost its military effort in Ukraine, something the Kremlin has repeatedly said is not necessary.

Over the past six or seven months, 270,000 people have signed voluntary contracts, Putin said – a figure slightly lower than the 280,000 that former president Dmitry Medvedev stated earlier this month.

Kim Jong-un appears to have chosen his favoured means of transportation for his first journey outside North Korea in nearly four years – a lavishly adorned, heavily fortified and slow-moving train.

Mr Kim reached Russia on Tuesday after boarding the train on Sunday. He was accompanied by top arms industry and military officials besides North Korea’s foreign minister.

Maroosha Muzaffar reports:

The recapture of the so-called Boyko Towers platforms provides an energy source and takes back an asset that Russia seized in 2015 and used to launch helicopters, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence has said.

“Russia has been deprived of the ability to fully control the waters of the Black Sea, and this makes Ukraine many steps closer to regaining Crimea,” the Main Intelligence Directorate said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to do all he can to bring back Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and has urged international allies to support the effort.

The North Korean leader is in Russia to discuss weapons for Moscow’s war machine. Given the isolation both men face it is clear they need each other, writes Chris Stevenson.

Read Chris’s full piece here.

Russian president Vladimir Putin on Tuesday described the co-founder of tech company Yandex Arkady Volozh as a “talented man” who has the right to express his opinion following an anti-war outburst he made last month.

Volozh slammed Russia’s “barbaric” invasion of Ukraine days after criticism in Russia over his apparent efforts to distance himself from the country.

Volozh is the founder and CEO of Yandex – Russia’s largest internet company, which has been compared to Google.