Russia Ukraine war live: Putin launches huge naval drills amid Black Sea losses

The acting governor of Kursk region in Russia has said that the fire caused by Ukrainian drones on Sunday has finally been put out, two days after the attack caused a blaze spanning 200 square metres.

Three tanks at the oil storage depot caught fire on Sunday after the aerial attack by Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine said the oil depot was being used to meet the needs of the Russian military, and contains 11 tanks with a total volume of 7,000 cubic metres, adding the attack prompted “powerful explosions and a fire … probably involving containers with oil products”.

The United States announced a new security assistance package for Ukraine on Monday that is valued at up to $200 million and includes air defenses and anti-tank weapons, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.

Only six Ukrainian pilots are trained to fly the F-16 fighter jets set to be delivered to Kyiv next month by America, according to a report.

The F-16 fighter jets that Ukraine has been asking from its allies for months could not be immediately used on the frontlines as Russia is improving its air defences, the Washington Post reported, citing Ukrainian and Western officials.

The Nato member countries were involved in the programme to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s.

However, the programme was hit by delays, an official told the newspaper.

Ukraine is set to receive one squadron of F-16s — about 20 jets — this year, officials said.

More than 80 jets have been promised by Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway. But most of those won’t arrive in Ukraine for years.

Only six pilots are expected to finish training on F-16s “because the programme has limited spots and has been marred by delays”, it said.

Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who is in Beijing to relaunch ties with China, has said Xi Jinping’s economic support of Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine is a source of “great friction”.

She is on her first trip to China since taking office and met premier Li Qiang on Sunday to sign a three-year plan to strengthen economic co-operation.

She said China was an “important interlocutor” in managing global tensions while Mr Xi hailed the “long-established friendly” ties with Italy.

Her comments come as China has been accused of supplying dual-use munitions to Russia that can end up being used in the Ukraine war amid its strong ties with Moscow. Russia and China have both denied the claims.

Ukrainian military intelligence agency has claimed it played a role in the deadly ambush in west African nation Mali in which fighters from Russia’s Wagner Group were killed.

Wagner on Monday said it suffered heavy losses during the attack in Mali last week, according to a post shared on a Telegram channel.

Wagner members and the Malian armed forces engaged in intense battles over a five-day period against a coalition of Tuareg separatist forces and jihadi groups, it said.

The separatist forces used heavy weapons, drones, and suicide bombers. Numerous Wagner fighters, including a commander named Sergei Shevchenko, were killed in the clashes, according to the channel.

On Monday, Andrii Yusov, spokesman for Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, said: “The rebels received necessary information, and not just information, which enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals.”

He did not confirm if Ukrainian military personnel fought in the attack and said the agency “won’t discuss the details at the moment, but there will be more to come”.

Ukrainian forces said Russian troops have begun attacks in the direction of Huliaipole in Zaporizhzhia Oblast after a “long pause” and from two different fronts.

Dmytro Lykhovyi, spokesperson for the Tavria group of Ukrainian forces, told national TV that the assault began from the village of Reshetylivske in the direction of Huliaipole.

“Some reports said that it could be a major offensive with the formation of an offensive group, but according to our intelligence, it is a continuation of the tactics of small assault actions, because the total numbers of the Russian group in Zaporizhzhia Oblast have not changed in terms of the number of troops,” he said.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Russian forces are making attempts to dislodge Ukrainian troops from positions in the Orikhiv and Huliaipole directions.

The US will send another $1.7bn in military aid to Ukraine that will include anti-tank missiles and long-term contracts.

The latest tranche of aid will include an array of munitions for air defence systems, artillery, mortars and anti-tank and anti-ship missiles.

The package includes $1.5bn in funding for long-term contracts through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, and $200m in immediate military aid taken from Pentagon stockpiles.

It comes a bit more than two weeks after the Nato summit in Washington, where allies focused a significant amount of time on shoring up support for Ukraine as it fends off Russian forces.

However, the US defence department did not elaborate on which specific systems were being sent to Ukraine immediately, and which ones would be funded through contracts.

American intelligence officials have accused Russia of using unwitting Americans and commercial public relations firms in Russia to spread disinformation about the US elections.

Officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters that Russia continues to pose the greatest threat when it comes to election disinformation while there are indications that Iran is expanding its efforts and China is proceeding cautiously.

“The American public should know that content that they read online — especially on social media — could be foreign propaganda, even if it appears to be coming from fellow Americans or originating in the United States,” an official told reporters on condition of anonymity due to the rules set by the office of the director.

They said that the groups linked to the Kremlin are hiring marketing and communication firms within Russia to outsource some of the work of creating digital propaganda while also covering their tracks.

Two such firms were the subject of new US sanctions announced in March. Authorities say the two Russian companies created fake websites and social media profiles to spread Kremlin disinformation.

“Foreign influence actors are getting better at hiding their hand, and getting Americans to do it,” said the official, who spoke alongside officials from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

The countries in the collective West have imposed about 20,000 sanctions against the Russian economy to make Moscow “weak”, Vladimir Putin’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Pankin told the upper house of the parliament, according to state-run media.

Mr Pankin called the measures “unilateral” restrictions and said these efforts are “not materialising” as he criticised what he called a disinformation campaign against Russia, according to the Tass news agency.

“About 20,000 various restrictive sanctions have already been imposed on Russia. Actually, they cannot be called sanctions, because sanctions are a legitimate measure introduced by the [UN] Security Council, while these are unilateral restrictive measures,” he said.

Mr Pakin said the goal of the campaign by the US and the EU was to make Russia “weak” till the point of “collapse”.

“These expectations are not materialising despite being accompanied by a powerful disinformation campaign waged using all means available,” he said.