Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday he had decided to dismiss Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov from his post and would ask parliament this week to replace him with Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine‘s main privatisation fund.

The announcement, made in his nightly video address to the nation, sets the stage for the biggest shakeup of Ukraine‘s defence establishment during the war launched by Russia in February 2022.

Reznikov, who was named defence minister in November 2021, has helped secure billions of dollars of Western military aid to help the war effort, but been dogged by graft allegations surrounding his ministry that he described as smears.

“I’ve decided to replace the Minister of Defense of Ukraine. Oleksii Reznikov has been through more than 550 days of full-scale war,” Zelenskiy said.

“I believe the ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and society as a whole.”

The change of defence minister must be approved by parliament, but is likely to be supported by a majority of lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada. Zelensky said he expected parliament to approve Umerov’s appointment.

Umerov, a 41-year-old ex-lawmaker who is a Crimean Tatar, has headed Ukraine‘s State Property Fund since September 2022 and has played a role in sensitive wartime negotiations on, for instance, the Black Sea grain deal.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had struck a “very important agreement on training our pilots in France” in conversation with President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday.

“Our coalition of modern fighters is becoming stronger,” he said in his nightly video address.

He did not elaborate on what training would be undertaken. France does not have the F-16 fighter jets Ukraine has recently been promised by Denmark and the Netherlands. It does have French-made Rafale warplanes and previous-generation Mirage 2000 jets.

Zelensky said he and Macron had also discussed what France could do to help protect the Ukrainian city and region of Odesa, critical to grain exports, but did not elaborate.

The French foreign ministry said last month that it would reinforce its military support for Ukraine, notably in strengthening air defence capabilities.

A non-residential building in the western Russian city of Kurchatov caught fire on Sunday after an attack by a Ukrainian drone but emergency services put the fire out and there were no casualties, Roman Starovoit, governor of the Kursk region, said.

In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Starovoit did not say which building was affected. Ukraine‘s Babel online outlet quoted an unnamed source as saying a drone hit a building belonging to the FSB security service.

Starovoit also blamed a Ukrainian drone for damage to a building facade in Kurchatov on 1 September.

Kurchatov is home to one of Russia’s biggest nuclear plants, but there were no reports it was affected in either incident.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Sunday an inquiry into a U.S. allegation that a Russian ship had picked up weapons in South Africa late last year found no evidence the vessel had transported weapons to Russia.

“None of the allegations made about the supply of weapons to Russia have been proven to be true,” Ramaphosa said in an address to the nation.

Concealed under pine branches in the forests of northeast Ukraine, the muzzle of a Soviet-era howitzer rises, aiming for a group of approaching Russian infantrymen many kilometers away.

A Ukrainian soldier signals to fire, then swiftly runs for cover. The thunderous crash of the unleashed projectile sends a pall of black smoke billowing above jabs of yellow flames. A pile of spent shells in the nearby foliage grows by the day.

Here, along a small section of the 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) front line, Moscow’s army is staging a ferocious push designed to pin down Ukrainian forces, distract them from their grinding counteroffensive and minimize the number of troops Kyiv is able to send to more important battles in the south.

Read more:

Cyberattacks by the UK’s enemies are becoming “relentless” as we enter a “new era” of global conflict, an expert has warned.

It comes after Russian hackers allegedly acquired top-secret security information on some of the country’s most sensitive military sites, including the HMNB Clyde nuclear submarine base on the west coast of Scotland and the Porton Down chemical weapon lab.

The “potentially very damaging” attack last month by hacking group LockBit, which has known links to Russian nationals, saw thousands of pages of data leaked onto the dark web after private security firm Zaun was targeted, the Sunday Mirror newspaper reported.

Joseph Draper reports:

A non-residential building in the Russian city of Kurchatov was on fire on Sunday following an attack by a Ukrainian drone, said Roman Starovoit, governor of the Kursk region.

In a post on the Telegram messaging app, he said there were no casualties and that security forces were on the scene.

The missile aimed at the mayor’s office took an estimated 64 seconds to fly 55 miles and detonate in shrapnel and flames after being fired by Russian forces.

Thankfully for Oleksandr Goncharenko, the mayor of Kramatorsk – near the frontline in east Ukraine – it missed the target by 200 metres, hitting a garden square.

The municipal headquarters was swiftly moved to another building for safety. But that building was bombed as well, resulting in a move to yet another location, dodging the missiles coming from the city of Horlivka which has been captured by Vladimir Putin’s forces.

Read more:

Ukraine intends to increase drone production as early as this autumn, the Ukrainian defence minister was quoted as saying on Sunday, as the country conducts more frequent drone attacks on Russian territory.

Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian territory have picked up in recent weeks, with dozens of drones striking Russia at once on some days, reaching as far as the western city of Pskov, 400 miles (600 km) from Ukraine.

Kyiv has used both aerial drones to attack airfields and aquatic drones to attack ships and the bridge to Crimea.

“I think this autumn there will be a boom in the production of various Ukrainian drones: flying, floating, crawling, etc., and this will continue to grow in volume,” Oleksii Reznikov told the state-run Ukrinform news agency.

He said one reason for the growth of production was that authorities had reduced various regulations and laws.

“So we rewrote regulations... and simplified the processes. And I believe that we also succeeded in that and gave us the opportunity for such a booster. Especially for drone manufacturers who started production from garages,” he said.

Ukraine is significantly dependent on supplies of modern Western weapons, but Kyiv has pledged not to use them on Russian territory and for such attacks it uses only domestically produced weapons, primarily drones.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Friday it had destroyed a total of 281 Ukrainian drones over the past week, including 29 over the western regions of Russia, indicating the scale of the drone war now under way between Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine has attacked several airfields deep inside Russia, the centre of Moscow and military bases both in occupied Crimea and in regions close to the Ukrainian border.

Ukrainian officials normally say little or nothing about attacks on Russian targets, but say that destroying Russian infrastructure is vital for the country’s war effort.

Ukraine intends to increase drone production as early as this autumn, the Ukrainian defence minister was quoted as saying on Sunday, as the country conducts more frequent drone attacks on Russian territory.

Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian territory have picked up in recent weeks, with dozens of drones striking Russia at once on some days, reaching as far as the western city of Pskov, 400 miles (600 km) from Ukraine.

Kyiv has used both aerial drones to attack airfields and aquatic drones to attack ships and the bridge to Crimea.

“I think this autumn there will be a boom in the production of various Ukrainian drones: flying, floating, crawling, etc., and this will continue to grow in volume,” Oleksii Reznikov told the state-run Ukrinform news agency.

He said one reason for the growth of production was that authorities had reduced various regulations and laws.

“So we rewrote regulations... and simplified the processes. And I believe that we also succeeded in that and gave us the opportunity for such a booster. Especially for drone manufacturers who started production from garages,” he said.

Ukraine is significantly dependent on supplies of modern Western weapons, but Kyiv has pledged not to use them on Russian territory and for such attacks it uses only domestically produced weapons, primarily drones.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Friday it had destroyed a total of 281 Ukrainian drones over the past week, including 29 over the western regions of Russia, indicating the scale of the drone war now under way between Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine has attacked several airfields deep inside Russia, the centre of Moscow and military bases both in occupied Crimea and in regions close to the Ukrainian border.

Ukrainian officials normally say little or nothing about attacks on Russian targets, but say that destroying Russian infrastructure is vital for the country’s war effort.