Ukraine-Russia war latest: Blow to Putin’s forces as Kyiv destroys weapons store with North Korean missiles

Mark Rutte, NATO’s new secretary general, says Ukraine faces its toughest winter since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Rutte was speaking at a press conference in Brussels with the President of Finland, Alexander Stubb.

We’ll bring you more of his comments as they come in.

Regional authorities in Ukraine have reported their daily total of casualties over the past day.

They say that at least three people were killed and 49 were injured over the past day - including children.

Russia struck a Palau-flagged vessel in Odesa on Monday, killing a 60-year-old Ukrainian national working on the boat and injuring five foreign citizens.

One person died and seven were injured in Sloviansk, in the region of Donetsk, when Russian forces struck a residential building. A 2-year-old girl was injured in the strike.

One person was killed and 24 injured in an attack on a library and administrative building in Kherson.

Ukraine’s military claimed it struck a major oil terminal Monday in Crimea that provides fuel for Russia’s war effort as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the war has entered a key phase.

Both sides are facing the issue of how to sustain their costly war of attrition — a conflict that started with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and that shows no signs of a resolution.

Russia has exported more than 180,000 tonnes of stolen Ukrainian grain through the temporarily occupied Mariupol port in the past year.

This is according to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who said the occupied territories in Ukraine are being robbed to finance Russia’s invasion with the stolen money.

"At the same time, Russia continues to use food as an element of aggression. This year, the enemy has smuggled more than 180,000 tonnes of stolen Ukrainian grain through the port of Mariupol alone,” Shmyhal said.

"Undoubtedly, Russian economic terror will be one of the areas of work of the special tribunal for the crime of Russian aggression against Ukraine," he added.

Russia’s forces have launched hypersonic missiles at Ukraine on as Kyiv’s military said it had struck a major oil terminal in occupied Crimea that provides fuel for Vladimir Putin's war effort.

Ukraine's general staff said on social media that the oil terminal in Feodosia, on the south coast of the Russia-occupied Crimea Peninsula, has been supplying the Russian army with fuel and that the strike was part of an ongoing effort to "undermine the military and economic potential of the Russian Federation".

The Independent’s Alexander Butler reports:

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will meet with leaders of the US, France and Germany in Berlin on Saturday, his spokesperson said on Tuesday.

They will discuss the war in Ukraine and the latest Middle East developments.

“The Prime Minister will travel to a meeting of the Quad in Berlin on Saturday. Leaders will discuss the situation in Ukraine as well as the concerning developments in the Middle East,” the spokesperson told reporters.

The spokesperson referred to the “Quad” grouping of Britain, the United States, Germany and France.

The UK’s domestic spy chief said on Tuesday that Russian military intelligence is seeking to cause “mayhem” in Britain, adding that “MI5 has one hell of a job on its hands”.

Security Service (MI5) Director General Ken McCallum also said Iran is behind “plot after plot” on British soil.

He said the growing threat from al Qaeda and Islamic State is still his greatest terrorism concern.

State threat investigations were up 48 per cent in the last year as criminals, drug traffickers and proxies were tasked by Russia and Iran to do their “dirty work”.

"The GRU in particular is on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson, sabotage and more. Dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness," he said, without adding detail.

Since January 2022, MI5 and the police have responded to 20 Iranian-backed plots. "We’ve seen plot after plot here in the UK, at an unprecedented pace and scale," Mr McCallum said.

US President Joe Biden will meet with other leaders of the Ramstein group, which supplies arms to Ukraine.

A German government source told Reuters ahead of Saturday’s summit that the meeting will send a strong signal of commitment to military support for Ukraine.

It will become clear to Putin that he cannot play for time and wait for Western support to cease, the source told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron will join President Biden - who visits Germany from October 10-13 - for talks in Berlin before visiting a US air base in the western German town of Ramstein.