The British Ministry of Defence says today that the Kremlin will spend more than 30 per cent of the entire federal budget on defence and security to support the war in Ukraine.

“On 5 December 2022, President Putin signed the law on Russia’s Federal Budget. Draft budgets have stated over £116bn will be allocated across defence, security and law enforcement in 2023,” said the UK.

The defence ministry added: “This is a significant increase compared to prior years and will represent over 30 per cent of Russia’s entire budget.

“The budget approved by Putin is likely over-optimistic in its expectation of revenue and spending in 2023.

“Therefore, other parts of Russia’s budget are likely to come under increasing pressure to support the costs of the war.”

Vladimir Putin has attempted to justify attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure by claiming Kyiv “started it” when the Crimea bridge was bombed.

Addressing a group of Russian servicemen as part of a lavish reception at the Kremlin, the Russian president said: “There is a lot of noise now about our strikes on the energy infrastructure [of Ukraine]. Yes, we are doing it.

“But who started it? Who struck the Crimean bridge?” he said, before taking a sip from a glass of champagne.

Emily Atkinson reports.

Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, president Volodymyr Zelensky said, while Ukraine’s military on Saturday reported missile, rocket and air strikes in multiple parts of the country.

The war in Ukraine is concentrated on four provinces that Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed in late September. The fighting indicates Russia’s struggle to establish control of those regions and Ukraine’s persistence to reclaim them.

Mr Zelensky said the situation “remains very difficult” in several frontline cities in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

Read more here.

Ukrainian authorities have located and removed over 300,000 explosive devices from the country since Russia’s unprovoked invasion in February.

Deputy interior minister Kateryna Pavlichenko said nearly 30 per cent of Ukraine’s territory still needs to be demined.

Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer released from US custody in exchange for Brittney Griner, has revealed what he said to the basketball star when the two briefly crossed paths on a tarmac in Abu Dhabi.

“I wished her luck, she even sort of reached out her hand to me,” Mr Bout said yesterday in an interview with state broadcaster RT.

“You should wish everyone good fortune and happiness,” he said, adding that he felt Ms Griner “was positively inclined” towards him.

Elsewhere in the interview, the arms dealer went off on a homophobic rant, praised Russian president Vladimir Putin, and said he would personally fight in the war in Ukraine if he had the chance.

“If I had the chance and the required skills, I’d join up as a volunteer,” he said, according to Reuters.

Josh Marcus has more.

A representative of one of the organisations sharing this year’s Nobel Peace Prize said that she thinks Vladimir Putin must face an international tribunal for the fighting in Ukraine.

Oleksandra Matviichuk of Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties said during a news conference in Oslo, Norway, that “we must establish an international tribunal to hold Putin, (Belarusian president Alexander) Lukashenko and other war criminals accountable”.

In October, the Ukrainian group was named a co-winner of the 2022 peace price along with Russian human rights group Memorial and Ales Bialatski, head of the Belarusian human rights group Viasna.

Read more here.

EU member states yesterday agreed to extend a £15.4bn package of financial aid to Ukraine for 2023, despite opposition from Hungary.

The bloc circumvented a veto by Hungary, which has kept aid to Ukraine blocked so that its European partners would not freeze its recovery funds.“Ukraine can count on the EU.

We will continue to support Ukraine also financially, for as long as it takes,” said the EU Council in a statement.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz said he would continue to talk to Russian president Vladimir Putin as part of efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

“We have completely different opinions,” Mr Scholz told an event in the German city of Potsdam.

“However, I will continue to talk to him because I want to experience the moment when it is possible to get out of the situation. And that’s not possible if you don’t talk to each other.”

The chancellor recalled his telephonic conversation with Mr Putin, saying: “He simply wants to conquer part of Ukrainian territory by force.”

“This is the case despite high Russian losses, which could be up to 100,000.”

More than 1.5 million people in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa were left without power after a series of overnight drone strikes by Russian forces, president Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“Only critical infrastructure is connected and to the extent where it is possible to supply electricity,” he said.

The president added: “The power system is now, to put it mildly, very far from a normal state – there is an acute shortage in the system.”

Earlier local government head Maxim Marchenko said that large swathes of the region did not have any electricity.

Moscow says two killed as Kyiv attacks MelitopolAt least two people were killed as Kyiv attacked occupied Melitopol in the country’s southeast on Saturday, pro-Moscow authorities said.

“Air defence systems destroyed two missiles, four reached their targets,” Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-appointed governor of the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on the Telegram messaging app.

He said a “recreation centre” where people were dining was destroyed in the Ukrainian attack with HIMARS missiles.

Exiled mayor Ivan Fedorov said that the attack hit a church that Russians had turned into a gathering place