Russia Ukraine war latest news: Putin lost ‘staggering’ 900 soldiers a day, Kyiv claims

Russia is losing a “staggering” 900 soldiers a day, Ukrainian officials have claimed, urging the West to greenlight delivery of fighter jets for its counteroffensive at a Nato meeting this week.

Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, indicated the long-awaited counteroffensive was making headway, reporting that Ukrainian forces had taken back seven villages opening 90sqkm of land in the last week alone.

However, she said the advance was hard as Russian forces had superior air support and were showering their troops with intense artillery fire.

Germany is set to unveil its first comprehensive national security strategy in Berlin today, in a push to address what it views as growing military, economic and social threats to the country.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz and four of his top ministers are due to present the new strategy, which has been months in the making and is seen as a centerpiece of his three-party governing coalition.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has heightened anxiety in Germany about the preparedness of its own armed forces, prompting Mr Scholz to announce a “turning point” on military spending.

Resilience against cyberattacks and the dangers posed by climate change will also be part of the new security strategy.

UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi has delayed a planned trip to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant until it is safer to travel, a senior Ukrainian official has said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) boss had been expected to visit the facility on Wednesday following talks in Kyiv, but a diplomatic source said the visit would be delayed by “some hours”.

Russian news agency Interfax quoted a Russian-installed local official as saying Mr Grossi would visit the plant on Thursday.

“He’s waiting to be able to travel safely,” said the senior Ukrainian government official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. The official did not say when Mr Grossi would arrive at the plant, which is relatively close to areas subject to reported heavy fighting since Ukraine’s counteroffensive began.

Mr Grossi has said he is “very concerned” that the nuclear plant could be caught in the military push, after the UN agency warned it needed access to a site near the plant to check water levels after the nearby reservoir lost much of its water because of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam downstream.

There is no reason for Moscow not to destroy its enemies’ undersea communications cables given purported Western “complicity” in the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has claimed.

While it is still unclear exactly who is responsible for the blasts last September, The Washington Post, New York Times and Wall StreetJournal have each reported that the CIA knew of a Ukrainian plot to attack the pipelines – for which president Volodymyr Zelensky has denied any responsibility.

“If we proceed from the proven complications of Western countries in blowing up the Nord Streams, then we have no constraints – even moral – left to prevent us from destroying the ocean floor cable communications of our enemies,” said Mr Medvedev, an ally of President Vladimir Putin.

Sub-sea cables which criss-cross the world’s oceans have become the arteries of global communications, with their importance making them the focus of growing geopolitical competition.

The elite Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) are likely helping Putin’s regular ground troops, especially in southern Ukraine, to resist Ukrainian increased offensive operations, the British Ministry of Defense has claimed.

It noted an uptick in Russian tactical combat air sorties, especially over southern Ukraine, in the past two weeks.

“This has almost certainly been in response to reports of increased Ukrainian offensive operations, as the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) attempt to support ground troops with airstrikes,” the ministry said in its latest intelligence update.

It added that despite the uptick, “VKS’s daily sortie rate remains much lower than the peak of up to 300 daily missions early in the war”.

“Since the start of the invasion, the south of Ukraine has often been more permissible for Russian air operations compared to other sectors of the front,” the ministry said.

On the battlefield over the last year, the VKS has increased its use of air-to-surface weapons, such as glide bombs, which allow attack aircraft to remain well away from their targets, it said.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has said his country has started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

“We have missiles and bombs that we have received from Russia,” Lukashenko said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 Russian state TV channel which was posted on the Belarusian Belta state news agency’s Telegram channel.

“The bombs are three times more powerful than those (dropped on) Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he said.

This is the first such deployment of warheads by Moscow – shorter-range less powerful nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield – outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The move is being watched closely by the United States and its allies as well as by China, which has repeatedly cautioned against the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war.

At least one person was injured in shelling of a residential area in the city of Nova Kakhovka, the city’s Russia-installed administration said today.

The administration also said that shelling of the nearby village of Plodovoye disrupted the power supply there.

Officials in Kyiv have not issued a response on the allegations.

The region saw widespread destruction last week after the Kakhovka dam was destroyed, flooding swathes of land and forcing thousands to flee in one of the biggest industrial disasters in Europe for decades.

At least three people were killed and 13 were injured after Russian missiles struck civilian buildings in Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa overnight, the war-hit nation’s military said early this morning.

Russia fired four cruise missiles on the city, the South command of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said. Initially, the military said two missiles were destroyed before hitting their targets.

“As a result of air combat and blast waves, a business center, an educational institution, a residential complex, food establishments and shops in the city center were damaged,” the South command said on the Telegram app.

The three people killed were working at a retail chain’s warehouse when a missile hit, setting it ablaze, the military added. Seven people were wounded there.

“Sifting through the debris continues,” the military said. “There may be people under.”

A video and photographs of the attacked site by Odesa military administration spokesperson Serhiy Bratchuk showed a multi-storey building bombed out by the missile, with parts of walls and windows blown to shards.

Firefighters were also seen at the spot battling against flames in what appeared to be a warehouse.