Ukraine-Russia war latest: Kremlin finally speaks out on CIA director's mysterious visit to Moscow

The Kremlin revealed on Wednesday that CIA director John Ratcliffe held talks with Russian intelligence officials during a mysterious visit this week but did not meet president Vladimir Putin.

Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov framed communication between the two countries’ intelligence agencies as a positive without going into detail on what was discussed.

“All I can tell you is that there have been contacts via the security services,” he said, adding: “These contacts often continue even during the most difficult periods in bilateral relations. Our president, incidentally, has spoken this.

“However, it is still too early to say to what extent this will, overall, help to steer our bilateral relations out of the profound crisis in which they currently find themselves,” he said.

Ratcliffe’s visit is the first known trip to Moscow by a US spy chief since his predecessor, William Burns , held talks with Vladimir Putin in November 2021, before the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Sources told Reuters that the US contacted Ukraine last week to request that it avoid striking Moscow, St Petersburg and a stretch of northern Russia during Ratcliffe’s visit. The request was to cover Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

Up to 70 vessels are waiting near the Danube's Sulina Canal for access to Ukrainian ports to load grain for export, traders and analysts said on Wednesday, with a shortage of pilots and priority given to other cargoes creating long delays.

After Russian attacks effectively blocked Ukraine's Black Sea ports, which had handled 90% of the country's grain exports, some shipments were rerouted through Danube river ports, which have much lower capacity.

Grain cargoes are competing for access with higher-priority shipments such as fuel, slowing exports. Frequent air raid alerts, which force the suspension of all port operations, have added to the disruption.

Ukraine is one of the world's biggest grain exporters and disruptions to its shipments can drive up global prices.

Ukraine’s corruption crisis continues to deepen, with President Volodymyr Zelensky forced to fire one of his most senior officials after they were suspected of money-laundering.

Iryna Mudra was sacked last Wednesday, a day after recently-fired defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov put further pressure on the Ukrainian leader by calling for national elections.

While Kyiv has seized the initiative in its war with Russia with an ongoing long-range drone strike campaign, Zelensky continues to be beset by domestic political challenges.

As the government prepares to tell households to stock up on tinned food and bottled water to prepare for attacks from hostile states or extreme weather, Radhika Sanghani talks to experts who say every household should be ready to survive for two weeks

The government will tell households to stock up on tinned food and bottled water to prepare for extreme weather or cyber attacks on the country, according to reports.

The Financial Times reports Andy Burnham’s government is focusing on national resilience in the wake of threats from Russia and this summer’s heatwaves.

According to the FT , the government is accelerating work on its “war book” – a manual for the defence of the nation against external threats – as well as planning a social media campaign with advice to help people to deal with the impacts of extreme weather, such as the heat waves which have hit the country this summer .

A source told the newspaper: “There will be practical advice on things you can do to improve domestic resilience, like having some bottled water and tinned food. It will be common sense, not scaremongering.”

Nine people were killed when a Ukrainian strike hit a bus in the Russian-controlled part of Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, the region's Russian-installed Governor Leonid Pasechnik said.

Pasechnik said the bus was travelling from Lysychansk to Kadiivka at the time of the strike, but provided no further details the circumstances of the attack.

Reuters could not independently verify the report.

Two of the suspects detained over a planned arson attack on an aerial systems factory in eastern Slovakia are Latvian citizens and the third is a Ukrainian, a prosecutor's office said on Wednesday.

The regional prosecution in the eastern city of Presov told Reuters that one of the Latvian citizens was arrested in Germany, while the other Latvian and the Ukrainian were detained in Slovakia. Slovak police said on Tuesday it had thwarted the plan.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that remarks by ousted Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov official corruption and alleged shortcomings in military strategy showed that Kyiv was consumed by intensifying political infighting.

Fedorov told Reuters this week that Ukraine appeared to be slowly losing the war against Russia, warning that Kyiv had a window of several months to make key decisions needed to turn the tide in its favour. He also complained what he described as engrained corruption and patronage networks.

Asked to on Fedorov's remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that they were a sign of growing political infighting and accused European countries which support Ukraine of failing to notice that the ruling elite in Kyiv was destroying itself from within.

"Political, or rather, let us put it this way, quasi-political, infighting is taking place within the depths of the Kyiv regime, and it is intensifying. The Kyiv regime is collapsing from within," Peskov said.

Ukraine’s presidential office said in response to Fedorov’s that he had been positive the conduct of the war when he was at the defence ministry and the only thing that had changed was his personal status.

Andy Burnham played guitar with Ukrainian soldiers on his first official trip to Kyiv as prime minister.

The footage posted on social media on Monday, 24 August, showed the PM and a soldier jamming to a rendition of “Rusholme Ruffians” by Manchester band The Smiths .

Mr Burnham played the guitar in the mobile recording studio of the military and artistic unit, Cultural Forces, which performs on the front line, in hospitals, and at rehabilitation centres.

“I’m out of practice”, Burnham joked as he picked up the guitar and strummed a few chords, but declined to sing. The soldiers later sang an Oasis song to him.

Andy Burnham was reportedly warned that Russia is plotting retaliation against Britain for its continued support for Ukraine.

Security experts were said to have told the prime minister to be ready for a ‘direct response’, according to the Daily Mail .

Mr Burnham travelled to Kyiv on Monday for his first overseas trip since taking office last month and said London and Paris would provide long-range missile technology to Ukraine.

A unnamed senior security source told the Mail: “An attack on the UK’s defence and security infrastructure is inevitable, based on our high profile support for Ukraine.

“Ourselves and the French are front and centre, and Burnham's visit to Kyiv and his forthright stance will have been noticed at the Kremlin,” they assessed.

“There had been some optimism in Moscow that he would be softer than Starmer on Ukraine. That was not the case.”