Russia-Ukraine war live: Putin accuses ‘arrogant’ west of risking global conflict and says his forces are at ‘combat readiness’

Ukraine’s parliament has dismissed agriculture minister Mykola Solsky who tendered his resignation in late April as he faces an investigation into alleged involvement in illegal acquisition of state-owned land, Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak said on Telegram.

Solsky, 44, has denied the allegations, Reuters reported.

He has been at the centre of Ukraine’s effort to keep its grain industry going as Russia’s full-scale invasion has blocked Black Sea export routes, strewn fields with landmines and seen farmland occupied.

David Cameron is to warn that the west is not learning the lesson of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that authoritarian adversaries will only be spurred on if the west shows hesitation or caution.

The foreign secretary will call for the west to be tougher and more assertive and realise it is locked in a battle of wills in which “we all must prove our adversaries wrong – Britain, and our allies and partners around the world”.

In his first set-piece speech as foreign secretary outside parliament and after a whirlwind six months in the job, Cameron will argue not enough allies have stepped up to the challenge of a more hard-edged world, whether by increasing defence spending, facing down Iranian proxy forces or championing women’s rights in the Islamic world.

He will say: “We need to adopt a harder edge for a tougher world. If Putin’s illegal invasion teaches us anything, it must be that doing too little, too late, only spurs an aggressor on. I see too many examples in this job of this lesson not having been learned.”

Russia president Vladimir Putin has accused the West of risking a global conflict and said no one would be allowed to threaten the world’s biggest nuclear power as Russia marked the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

As Russian troops advance against Ukraine’s Western-backed forces, Putin accused “arrogant” Western elites of forgetting the decisive role played by the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany, and of stoking conflicts across the world, Reuters reported.

“We know what the exorbitance of such ambitions leads to. Russia will do everything to prevent a global clash,” Putin said on Red Square after defence minister Sergei Shoigu reviewed troops lined up in a blizzard.

“But at the same time, we will not allow anyone to threaten us. Our strategic forces are always in a state of combat readiness.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s parliament has voted to dismiss deputy prime minister Oleksandr Kubrakov, a key government figure who has overseen the wartime reconstruction effort and championed efforts to set up a vital Black Sea shipping lane, Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak said on Telegram.

The 41-year-old’s dismissal comes amid plans to break up his powerful ministry into two separate government portfolios.

It was not immediately clear who would replace him, Reuters reported.

A Ukrainian air attack on Russia’s Belgorod region injured eight people and damaged scores of residential buildings and cars, the governor of the region bordering with Ukraine said on Thursday.

Among the wounded is an 11-year-old girl who was taken to a hospital, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor said on the Telegram messaging app, Reuters reported.

About 34 flats in 19 apartment buildings were damaged, as well as three dozen cars in the city of Belgorod, the region’s administrative centre, Gladkov added.

Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 15 rockets launched from the RM-70 Vampir system, and one drone over the region, Russia’s defence ministry said.

Three drones were also downed over Russia’s Kursk region and two over the Bryansk region, the ministry said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. All regions border Ukraine.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Kyiv has said often that destroying military, energy and transport infrastructure inside Russia undermines Moscow’s overall war efforts.

Hello and welcome to the Ukraine live blog. We start with news that Russia is today marking the former Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

It comes as relations with the West spiral deeper into crisis over the advance of Russian troops against Ukraine’s Western-backed forces.

Vladimir Putin, who rose to power just eight years after the Soviet Union broke up, will speak at the Victory Day parade on Red Square though there will be less military hardware on display than in parades before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Putin now casts the war as part of a holy struggle with the West, which he says has forgotten the role played by the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany and the lesson that neither Napoleon Bonaparte nor Adolf Hitler could defeat Russia.

“I want to bow to our heroes, the participants of the special military operation, to all those who are fighting for the Fatherland,” Putin said as he was sworn in for a new term as president on Tuesday.

In other news:

• The EU has reached a deal to arm Ukraine using seized profits from Russia’s frozen assets. EU senior diplomats meeting on Wednesday agreed on using the €4.4bn windfall profits, smoothing over a dispute about taxation and management costs in Belgium where most of the frozen assets are held.

• A Ukrainian drone attack started a fire and damaged an oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region, the area’s crisis administration said on Thursday. Several oil tanks were damaged at the refinery near the village of Yurovka, the administration said.

• Ukraine’s air defences destroyed 17 out of 20 attack drones that Russia launched targeting the Odesa region into Thursday morning, the Ukrainian air force said.

• Officials from Belgorod, close to the border inside Russia, said there were eight people injured including a girl, 11, after what was variously described on Telegram channels as a missile attack or shelling by Ukrainian forces. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region, said on Telegram that apartments and vehicles were damaged. Ukraine has previously targeted Belgorod which has served as a base of operations and staging post for Russia’s military and security forces.

• Rajeev Syal writes that an “undeclared” Russian military intelligence officer, named as Col Maxim Elovik, will be expelled from the UK. James Cleverly, the British home secretary, also announced the closure of several Russian diplomatic premises in retaliation for “malign activity” across Britain and Europe. The Russian properties that have had diplomatic status removed include Seacox Heath in Ticehurst, East Sussex, and the Russian embassy’s trade and defence section in Highgate, north London.

• The measures come after a suspected arson attack on a Ukrainian-linked business in east London which authorities suspect was organised by the Kremlin, and over which charges have been laid. Russia has denied involvement. In a separate case, six Bulgarian nationals have been charged with conspiring to commit espionage on behalf of Russia in the UK.

• Russian missiles and drones struck nearly a dozen Ukrainian energy infrastructure facilities on Wednesday, causing serious damage at three thermal power plants and blackouts in multiple regions, officials said. Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 39 of 55 missiles and 20 of 21 drones. Two people were injured in the Kyiv region and one was hurt in the Kirovohrad region, said the interior minister, Ihor Klymenko. National power grid operator Ukrenergo said it was forced to introduce electricity cuts in nine regions and expanded them nationwide for businesses during the peak evening hours of Wednesday.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy noted the attacks were launched on the day Ukraine marks the end of the second world war. Ukraine’s president singled out what he said was the west’s limited progress in curbing energy revenue to Vladimir Putin’s regime. Fighting nazism back then, he said, was “when humanity unites, opposes Hitler, instead of buying his oil and coming to his inauguration”.

• Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, estimated that more than 800 heating facilities had been damaged and up to 8GW of power generation lost so far, adding the government needed $1bn to fund repair work.

• Ukraine said it was producing the same number of deep strike drones as Russia, claiming to have reached parity on a key type of weapon.

• Russian forces have taken over the village of Kyslivka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and the village of Novokalynove in the Donetsk region, Russia’s defence ministry said.

• Ukraine’s parliament has passed a bill allowing mobilisation of some categories of convicts but not those convicted of premeditated murder, rape, sexual violence, and crimes against national security.

• Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, stressed Berlin’s support for a Ukraine peace summit to be held in Switzerland in mid-June during a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, a government spokesperson in Berlin said. “They agreed to work towards the broadest possible global participation,” Reuters reported from a statement.