North Korea’s Kim Jong-un set to meet Vladimir Putin; Ukraine recaptures gas and oil rigs in Black Sea

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Vladimir Putin has declared that Ukraine’s counter-offensive has delivered no results. The Russian president gave a lengthy speech and participated in a Q&A session at an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok.

Putin appeared to rule out any further conscritpion or mobilisation to help the war effort, claiming that 1,000-1,500 Russians were signing voluntary contracts to join the military every day. He also said that over the past six or seven months, 270,000 people have signed voluntary contracts. That is a figure slightly lower than the 280,000 that former president Dmitry Medvedev stated earlier this month.

The Russian leader accused Ukraine and the west of a crime in deploying cluster munitions and utilising depleted uranium in armaments as it seeks to repel the invasion of Ukraine which Putin ordered in February of last year.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has arrived to Russia by armoured train to meet President Vladimir Putin, Pyongyang said, with face-to-face talks potentially focused on weapon sales. Experts suggest Putin is seeking artillery shells and anti-tank missiles from North Korea, while Kim is reportedly in search of advanced technology for satellites and nuclear-powered submarines, as well as food aid for his impoverished nation.

A US spokesman said the meeting indicated Putin was desperate over the Ukraine conflict and renewed warnings that any arms deal could trigger US sanctions. “Having to travel across the length of his own country to meet with an international pariah to ask for assistance in a war that he expected to win in the opening month, I would characterise it as him begging for assistance,” state department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Tuesday he had vetoed a parliamentary bill that sought to retain closed asset declarations for officials. Parliament voted last Tuesday to restore a declaration rule that was suspended after Russia’s 2022 invasion as a security precaution but, in an important loophole, to keep the disclosures closed to the public for another year.

The Ukrainian military said it had recaptured strategic Black Sea gas and oil drilling platforms, the so-called Boyko Towers, that were seized by Russia in 2015. “Russia has been deprived of the ability to fully control the waters of the Black Sea, and this makes Ukraine many steps closer to regaining Crimea,” the Main Intelligence Directorate said.

Ukraine said its troops had regained more territory on the eastern and southern fronts in the past week of its counteroffensive. Deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said in televised comments that Ukraine had retaken nearly 2 square km (0.77 square mile) of land around the eastern city of Bakhmut, captured by Russia in May. She later added on the Telegram messaging app that the Ukrainian army had in the past week also recaptured 4.8 square km in the southern Tavria sector.

The Biden administration is close to approving the shipment of longer-range missiles packed with cluster bombs to Ukraine, giving Kyiv the ability to cause significant damage deeper within Russian-occupied territory, Reuters reported citing four US officials.

The “decision-making process in Germany is moving forward” regarding the supply of Taurus missiles to Kyiv, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said after a meeting with the country’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock. Earlier on Monday, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, had urged Berlin to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine as soon as possible.