African leaders pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday to move ahead with their peace plan to end the Ukraine war and to renew a deal on the export of Ukrainian grain that Moscow tore up last week.

Russia yesterday said it was impossible for it to return to the Black Sea grain export deal until an agreement related to Russian interests was honoured, rebuffing a call by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for Moscow to rejoin.

Russia spoke of taking harsh retaliatory measures against Ukraine after two drones damaged buildings in Moscow early yesterday, including one close to the Defence Ministry’s headquarters, in what it called a brazen act of terror.

A drone attack on an ammunition depot in Crimea prompted authorities to evacuate a five km radius and briefly suspend road traffic on the bridge linking the peninsula to Russia, the region’s Moscow-installed governor said yesterday.

Russia pounded Ukrainian food export facilities for a fourth day in a row on Friday and practised seizing ships in the Black Sea in an escalation of what Western leaders say is an attempt to wriggle out of sanctions by threatening a global food crisis

The spike in grain prices in the days since Russia quit a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of Ukraine grain “potentially threatens hunger and worse for millions of people,” the United Nations’ aid chief told the Security Council yesterday.

Sheikh Hasina calls for amicable end to the conflict while addressing a meeting of the Global Crisis Response Group

Russia is responsible for a major global food supply crisis, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said yesterday, some days after the Kremlin announced it would suspend an agreement for Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea.

Ukraine accused Russia yesterday of damaging grain export infrastructure in “hellish” overnight strikes focused on two of its Black Sea ports, vowing not to be intimidated from working to keep grain exports moving out of them.

Russia struck Ukrainian ports yesterday, a day after pulling out of a UN-backed deal to let Kyiv export grain, and Moscow claimed gains on the ground in an area where Ukrainian officials said Russian forces were going back on the offensive.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia had a “sufficient stockpile” of cluster bombs and reserved the right to use them if such munitions, the use of which he said he regarded as a crime, were deployed against Russian forces in Ukraine.

Ukraine has received cluster bombs from the United States, munitions banned in more than 100 countries, but has pledged to only use them to dislodge concentrations of enemy soldiers.

US President Joe Biden said yesterday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “already lost the war” in Ukraine, with Moscow running short of resources and in economic trouble.

The United States and global allies unveiled new security assurances for Ukraine at a Nato summit yesterday, designed to bolster the country’s defences against Russia over the long haul while Kyiv strives for membership of the alliance.

Nato leaders yesterday agreed that Ukraine’s future lies within the alliance but they stopped short of handing Kyiv the invitation or timetable for accession it sought, a stance that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had earlier criticised as “absurd”.

US President Joe Biden told CNN in an exclusive interview that Ukraine is not yet ready for Nato membership, saying that Russia’s war in Ukraine needs to end before the alliance can consider adding Kyiv to its ranks.

Russian air defence systems shot down a cruise missile near the city of Kerch, Moscow-installed Crimea Governor Sergei Aksyonov wrote on the Telegram messaging app yesterday.

President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday secured Turkey’s crucial backing for Ukraine’s Nato aspirations after winning a US pledge for cluster munitions.

Like landmines, widely-banned cluster munitions often pose a deadly threat years after being deployed. Now the US will send cluster bombs to Ukraine to support the country's counter-offensive against Russia

The United Nations condemned the civilian cost inflicted by Russia's war in Ukraine as the fighting passed the 500-day mark with no end to the conflict in sight