Ukraine war latest: Two Russian oil tankers wrecked near Crimea

Vladimir Putin has lost over 1,000 soldiers in the past day as Russia pushes fowards to capture ground in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s armed forces said.

It comes as Russian forces took control of the villages of Veselyi Hai and Pushkino in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Russia’s defence ministry said.

The ministry also said Russian forces had hit and destroyed four Ukrainian Patriot air defence systems.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has led to questions over Russia’s ability to sustain its military adventures abroad. Russia had supported Assad militarily for over a decade, building on longstanding ties between Moscow and Damascus.

But the rapid advance of anti-government forces this month saw Russia apparently powerless to influence the situation beyond a number of airstrikes (as always, apparently mostly delivered on civilian targets) in support of government forces.

That has inevitably led people to draw conclusions about Russia’s ability to project power overseas, and what it may mean for the course of the war in Ukraine.

Russian forces took control of the villages of Veselyi Hai and Pushkino in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Russia’s defence ministry said.

The ministry also said Russian forces had hit and destroyed four Patriot air defence systems.

Britain is not properly prepared to defend itself in a war with Russia and cannot rely on the United States and Nato, a retired senior general has warned.

Writing in The Independent, Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as Nato’s deputy supreme allied commander in Europe from 2011 to 2014, said another global conflict will only be prevented if there is a “band of deterrent steel from the Baltic to the Black Sea” – something he said the UK may have to be prepared to help realise without the support of Washington.

His dramatic intervention comes alongside warnings from former defence secretary Ben Wallace and Labour peer Admiral Lord West that a failure to prioritise defence would be a grave error for the prime minister.

Russia has deployed North Korean soldiers in significant numbers for the first time to support its offensive in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian president said North Korean troops are reportedly being used in assaults on Ukrainian forces defending an enclave in Russia’s Kursk region.

“Today, we already have preliminary data that the Russians have begun to use North Korean soldiers in their assaults. A significant number of them,” Mr Zelensky said during his nightly wartime address.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky says his country could provide food aid to Syria from its “Grain from Ukraine” programme.

“Now we can help the Syrians with Ukrainian wheat, flour and our oil – our products that are used worldwide to ensure food security,” Mr Zelensky said.

More than a million Syrians have been displaced since armed rebels began a lightning offensive that eventually forced president Bashar al-Assad out of the country, ending his family’s 50-year rule.

A major Russian oil depot was set ablaze after Ukrainian troops launched a “massive drone attack” over 100 miles inside Russian territory.

The Stalnoy Kon oil refinery, part of Vladimir Putin’s “military industrial complex” that supplies Russian troops, was struck overnight on Friday, Kyiv’s chief of staff said.

The Russian governor of Oryol said on Telegram that fuel had caught fire at “a facility” in the region after the “massive drone attack”.

Russian media reported images, purportedly of the attack, showing clouds of smoke billowing up into the night sky from a fire.

A Ukrainian drone struck a campus of Russia’s National Guard in Chechnya, some 800km southeast of the front line in Ukraine, according to reports.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov confirmed the drone strike, saying it hit a site that belonged to the Akhmat Grozny riot police battalion.

He said two other drones were shot down by Russian air defences.

The Russian defence ministry yesterday said it downed 15 Ukrainian drones overnight over Kursk and Belgorod regions.

The Ukrainian navy has criticised Russia for sending old vessels into choppy waters after a tanker sank and another sustained severe damage during a storm in the Black Sea.

The Volgoneft 212 tanker, with 15 people on board, split in half and spilled oil into the Kerch Strait, located between mainland Russia and annexed Crimea.

Dmytro Pletenchuk, Ukraine’s navy spokesperson, said: “These are quite old Russian tankers. You can’t go to sea in such a storm. The Russians violated the operating rules. The result is an accident.”