A woman was killed early yesterday when Russian forces shelled the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, while two other people were killed in Russian shelling of border areas of the Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine, officials said.

Ukraine carried out a drone strike overnight on a Russian tanker in the Kerch Strait, a day after one of Moscow’s ships was hit in the Black Sea, a Ukrainian security source told AFP yesterday.

A Russian warship was seriously damaged in an overnight Ukrainian naval drone attack on Russia’s Black Sea navy base at Novorossiysk, two sources said yesterday, after Russia said it had fended off the attack.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken took aim at Russia at the UN Security Council yesterday, accusing Moscow of “blackmail” over its recent withdrawal from a key grain initiative.

Fighters from Russia’s private Wagner mercenary force are being moved close to Nato’s eastern flank to destabilise the military alliance, Poland’s prime minister said yesterday.

Russian drones yesterday damaged infrastructure at a Ukrainian port on the Danube, as Moscow targeted facilities vital for grain shipments from Ukraine following the collapse of a key export arrangement.

A 10-year-old girl and her mother were among four civilians killed in a Russian air strike on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home town yesterday, officials said, while his forces reported new incremental gains along the front line.

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.