It was the ninth time this month that Russian air raids have targeted the capital, a clear escalation after weeks of lull and ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive. Russia launched missiles overnight at Kyiv again, with falling debris causing a fire at a business building, authorities reported. Johnson also described Macron as “Putin’s lickspittle”, Guto Harri told the latest edition of Unprecedented, his podcast about his time at No 10. The former British prime minister Boris Johnson described Emmanuel Macron as “nauseating” for travelling to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin, a former UK government aide has said. The error was the result assigning a higher than warranted value on weaponry that was taken from US stocks and then shipped to Ukraine, two senior defence officials said. The Pentagon overvalued US equipment it sent to Ukraine by about $3bn, a Senate aide and a defence official said on Thursday, an error that opened up the possibility of more weapons being sent to Kyiv for its defence against Russian forces. The deal has been extended for two more months, in what the UN secretary general, António Guterres, hailed on Wednesday as “good news for the world”, a day before Russia could have quit the pact over obstacles to its grain and fertiliser exports, Reuters reported.

The Black Sea grain corridor designed to ensure the safe supply of Ukrainian food to world markets has not yet resumed operation despite statements by Turkey and Russia on extending the agreement, a senior Ukrainian official said on Thursday. Zelenskiy is set to join a G7 session on Sunday via teleconference. Kishida also appeared to confirm that the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, would not be visiting Japan in person for the G7 summit being held from 19 to 21 May. The Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, told reporters that he and the US president, Joe Biden, have agreed to continue sanctions against Russia and support Ukraine as the two leaders met in the Japanese city of Hiroshima today, Reuters reported. Reuters was unable to verify his assertion and there was no immediate comment from the defence ministry. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, on Thursday accused regular Russian army units of pulling back 570 metres north of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, leaving his own fighters’ flanks exposed. The claim comes a day after a major wave of missile strikes on Ukrainian cities, the Russian state-owned news agency Tass has reported. The Russian defence ministry said on Thursday that it had struck Ukrainian military targets using high-precision missiles. While Russia boosted its forces in the city, attacked the suburbs to the north and engaged in fierce fighting in the southern suburbs, Ukraine’s forces advanced 500 meters in the north and in some areas in the south by one kilometre, deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said on her Telegram channel. Ukraine said it had repelled a day of Russian attacks in and around the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut on Thursday and made gains of a kilometre in some places while buying time for “certain planned actions”. At a press conference alongside his Norwegian counterpart at the Northwood military base on Thursday, Wallace said Moscow has submarines and spy ships “specifically designed” to “potentially sabotage or attack critical national infrastructure belonging to its adversaries”. There is no doubt Russia has “the intent and the ability” to target the west’s underwater energy and communication lines, the British defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said. Meanwhile, Gram said Norway donating F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine was not on the agenda at the moment. “All I can say is it is my understanding that it has been used since we announced its deployment to Ukraine, but I’m not going to go into further details,” Wallace said at a joint press conference with Norway’s defence minister, Bjørn Arild Gram. Long-range Storm Shadow missiles provided to Ukraine by Britain have been used, the British defence minister, Ben Wallace, said on Thursday. The time in Kyiv is just coming up to 9pm.

Submerge synonym