President Vladimir Putin claimed on Tuesday that 1,000 – 1,500 Russians were signing voluntary contracts to join the military every day.

He was responding to a question about whether Russia needed to introduce a new compulsory mobilisation to boost its military effort in Ukraine, something the Kremlin has repeatedly said is not necessary.

Over the past six or seven months, 270,000 people have signed voluntary contracts, Putin said – a figure slightly lower than the 280,000 that former president Dmitry Medvedev stated earlier this month.

A criminal investigation into prominent Russian nationalist Igor Girkin was extended until 18 December his supporters said on Tuesday in their Telegram channel.

Girkin, who has strongly criticised the conduct of the Ukraine war, was detained in July on charges of inciting extremism. If convicted, the 52-year-old may face up to five years in jail

Girkin, who also goes by the name Igor Strelkov, is a former security services officer who helped to start the initial war in Ukraine in 2014, when a militia under his command seized the east Ukrainian city of Sloviansk.

He is best known in the West for having been convicted in absentia by a Dutch court over the shooting down of a Malaysian passenger plane with the loss of 298 lives over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The North Korean leader is in Russia to discuss weapons for Moscow’s war machine. Given the isolation both men face, it is clear they need each other, writes Chris Stevenson.

Read Chris’s full piece here:

The European Union will not renew sanctions against three men targeted over Russia’s war against Ukraine when the current punitive measures expire later this week, two diplomatic sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

The trio are Russian businessman Grigory Berezkin, billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov and the former head of Ozon, Russian e-commerce firm, Alexander Shulgin.

The EU needs unanimity of all the bloc’s 27 member states to impose sanctions, which are renewed every six months. The next batch expires 15 September.

Britain’s BAE Systems has won a further £130 million ($162 million) order from the government for munitions, as the Ukraine war continues to boost the UK defence industry.

Britain had already signed a £280 million munitions contract with BAE, Britain’s biggest defence company, in July before it exercised an option to increase its supply by another £130 million on Tuesday.

“The conflict in Ukraine has forced a global rethink around munition priorities,” Steve Cardew, BAE’s business development director, munitions, told media at the DSEI arms fair in London.

The chief executive of British military technology company Qinetiq, Steve Wadey, said the war in Ukraine had triggered its main customers of Britain, the United States and Australia to “strategically step back and look at the long-term threats in the world and consider their defence and security policies, budgets and solutions.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has arrived in Russia to see President Vladimir Putin. It will be the two isolated leaders’ second meeting. Their governments have not confirmed an agenda, but US officials say Putin may ask for artillery and other ammunition for his war in Ukraine.

Such a request would mark a reversal of roles from the 1950-53 Korean War when the Soviet Union provided ammunition, warplanes and pilots to support communist North Korea‘s invasion of the South and the decades of Soviet sponsorship of the North that followed.

“We will end this war with drones”, former deputy prime minister of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov said in July.

Since that statement, Kyiv has announced plans to invest $1bn into the industry, as more than 10,000 drones are said to be lost on the battlefield every month.

Alexander Butler reports:

An attempted attack by Ukrainian forces on a Russian atomic facility was orchestrated by the UK, Vladimir Putin has claimed.

The Russian president was speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

“Do they understand what they are playing with?” Putin said.

“Are they trying to provoke us into retaliating against Ukrainian atomic power stations? Does the British prime minister know what his secret services are doing in Ukraine?”

The Swedish government will ask its armed forces to investigate the potential for sending Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine, Swedish public radio (SR) reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.

The government wants to know, among other things, how a handover would affect Sweden’s defence capabilities and how quickly Sweden could get new Gripen fighters, SR reported.

Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Ukraine was only likely to start peace talks when it ran out of resources and would use any potential cessation of hostilities to rearm again with Western help.

The war has sown devastation across swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, killed or injured hundreds of thousands and triggered the biggest rupture in Russia’s ties with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Putin, speaking at an economic forum in Russia’s Pacific port city of Vladivostok, said Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces had so far failed and that the Ukrainian army had sustained heavy losses.

“I have the impression that they want to bite off as much as they can and then, when their resources are close to zero, to achieve a cessation of hostilities and start negotiations in order to replenish their resources and restore combat capability,” Putin said.