Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said any peace talks with Ukraine must focus on “creating a new world order”.

Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying: “Any negotiation needs to be based on taking into account Russian interests, Russian concerns. It should be about the principles on which the new world order will be based.”

Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmyhal is planning to visit Canada to seek supplies of ammunition and armoured vehicles for a counteroffensive against invading Russian forces, the Globe and Mail reported on Friday.

Shmyhal said in an interview with the Canadian newspaper that he was not concerned about the lack of new military aid allocated for Ukraine in Canada’s federal budget, and hoped the country would provide more aid among other forms of assistance.

“Now, we need heavy armoured vehicles. And we need more artillery shells: ammunition for howitzers and ammunition for tanks,” Shmyhal said. “It’s crucially important for the organization of our counteroffensive.”

Shmyhal will visit Canada in coming weeks, the Globe and Mail said, adding that for security reasons the Kyiv government was not divulging the date of the trip.

The Ukrainian premier was quoted by the Globe as saying Ukraine would also like Canada to offer war risk insurance to Canadian companies investing in Ukraine to support reconstruction and foreign investment.

“So if a Canadian company will decide to invest money into Ukraine, we will ask the Canadian government to create some mechanism to support Canadian investments,” he said.

Ukraine‘s president and top security brass discussed ways to prevent leaks of military information at a meeting on Friday, Kyiv said, after secret documents detailing Western help for Ukraine reportedly ended up online.

A statement about the meeting issued by the president’s office did not say a leak had occurred. It also did not refer to a New York Times report that said documents about U.S. and NATO plans to build up the Ukrainian military had been leaked online.

“The participants of the meeting focused on measures to prevent the leakage of information regarding the plans of the defence forces of Ukraine,” a presidency statement said, detailing other topics that participants also discussed.

The Times reported on Thursday that the Pentagon was investigating how documents about plans to build up Ukrainian forces before their planned counter-offensive against invading Russian forces were posted on social media channels this week.

Reuters was not immediately able to review the leaked documents.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters earlier that the document leak looked like a Russian disinformation operation to sow doubts about the counter-offensive.

He said the leaked data contained a “very large amount of fictitious information” and that Russia appeared to be trying to seize back the initiative in its invasion, now in its 14th month.

“These are just standard elements of operational games by Russian intelligence. And nothing more,” Podolyak said in a written statement.

Ukrainian troops have for months faced a Russian onslaught in its east that has focused on the city of Bakhmut. Kyiv hopes its forces can launch a counter-offensive in the coming weeks or months to wrest back occupied territory.

“Russia is looking for any ways to seize back the initiative,” Podolyak said. “To try to influence the scenarios for Ukraine‘s counteroffensive plans. To introduce doubts, to compromise the ... ideas, and finally to intimidate (us) with how ‘informed’ they are.”

The Times report said the documents appeared to have been modified in certain parts. One part offered an estimate for Ukrainian military losses that was far higher than Western estimates made available so far.

Ukraine does not disclose the scale of its losses and is very sensitive about the subject.

Russian forces are likely to have reached the centre of Bakhmut in their push to take over the city, according to UK intelligence.

Moscow’s troops have also seized the west bank of the river in the devastated area – endangering a key supply route to Ukraine.

Kyiv said Russia was concentrating all its efforts on capturing the eastern city, describing the situation as “difficult”, but said Ukrainian forces were holding out despite Russia’s numerical advantage during heavy fighting.

Here is the latest from the battlefield:

* Asked to comment on the report, a Ukrainian military command spokesman told Reuters the situation was difficult in Bakhmut and that Russian forces were concentrating all efforts to take the city but were not having “strategic success”.

* If confirmed, the British report suggests Ukrainian forces are under severe pressure, two days after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said they would withdraw if at risk of encirclement.

* On Monday, the head of Russia‘s private Wagner militia had said Ukrainian forces were not abandoning Bakhmut but that, even if they did, he would need more support from the regular Russian military before trying to advance further.

* Donetsk is one of four provinces in eastern and southern Ukraine that Russia is seeking to fully occupy. It declared them annexed last year after failing to seize the capital Kyiv in an attempt to overrun Ukraine early in the war.

* Fighting also rages further south around Avdiivka, a town near the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk.

* Authorities in Russian-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine said a total of seven civilians were killed in two separate Ukrainian artillery strikes, Russian news agencies reported.

It was a month into Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian forces had withdrawn from around Kyiv and in their wake Bel Trew and her team stumbled on a body by an abandoned Russian camp.

His hands were tied. He had been burned and shot in the back. Soldiers said he was a teenager.

As Bel tried to find out who he was and what had happened, she uncovered a nightmare world: a nation struggling to find thousands of its missing and to identify its dead.

The Biden administration is investigating the leak of classified war documents about secret American and Nato plans for bolstering the Ukrainian military ahead of an anticipated spring salvo against Russian forces, senior officials said.

“We are aware of the reports of social media posts and the department is reviewing the matter,” said Sabrina Singh, the deputy press secretary at the Pentagon, reported The New York Times.

The five-weeks-old documents reportedly reveal details of Ukraine’s requirements ahead of a planned counteroffensive to reclaim territory taken by Russia since the full-scale invasion last year, as well as how the US and Nato might meet them.

They appeared on both Twitter and Telegram, a messaging platform that is widely used in Ukraine and Russia.

Arpan Rai reports:

* Turkey is concerned about the potential intensification of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the spring, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

* China’s Xi Jinping expressed willingness on Thursday to speak to Ukrainian President Zelenskiy, the head of the European Union said, after French President Macron urged Beijing to talk sense to Russia over the war in Ukraine.

* The Kremlin said it had followed what it called “important talks” between Xi, Macron and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, but added that China would not change its position on the Ukraine conflict under external influence.

* A top Ukrainian official ruled out talks with Moscow about territory until it withdraws all troops, pushing back on a colleague who had touted the idea of negotiations to resolve the Russian occupation of the Crimean peninsula.

* Russia and Turkey agreed during talks in Ankara that obstacles must be lifted to ensure freer Russian fertiliser and grain exports, and enable a UN-brokered deal ensuring Black Sea shipments of Ukrainian grain to be extended beyond next month.

A leak of classified documents detailing secret U.S. and NATO plans to help Kyiv looked like a Russian disinformation operation to sow doubts about Ukraine‘s planned counter-offensive, a Ukrainian presidential official said on Friday.

Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters that the leaked data reported by the New York Times on Thursday contained a “very large amount of fictitious information” and that Russia was trying to seize back the initiative in its invasion.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday accused the United States of blocking meetings of the Quartet on the Middle East - comprised of Russia, the United States, European Union and United Nations.

Speaking at a news conference in Turkey where he was on a visit to discuss the Black Sea grain deal, Ukraine crisis and energy cooperation with Ankara, Lavrov also said he did not rule out a possible face-to-face meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at UN headquarters if there was a “serious proposal” for dialogue.