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Chosen by us to get you up to speed at a glance8:09amRussia planning to hold elections in occupied Ukraine this week: MoD7:58amRussia’s ‘General Armageddon’ seen in first photo since Wagner mutiny7:29amKim Jong-un to travel to Russia for possible arms deal

Ukrainian troops have reached the third and “final layer” of a key Russian line of defence, according to war analysts.

Kyiv’s forces had reached fighting positions near Verbove, in the southern Zaporizhia region, said George Barros, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

The settlement is a nodal point in the so-called Surovikin line, the main line of Russian defences in the area. The line is named after General Sergei Surovikin, who was briefly in charge of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine before being replaced in January.

“Ukrainian forces continue pressuring the line between Verbove and Robotyne and may be setting conditions to breach the line in earnest,” Mr Barros said, citing another settlement in the region which Ukraine said it had captured last month.

A breakthrough would provide the first test of Russia’s deeper defences, which Ukraine hopes will be more vulnerable and less heavily mined than areas its troops have traversed so far.

Ukraine’s generals want to breach the line and push down towards the Sea of Azov, splitting Russian forces in the east and south of the country and severing their supply lines.

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More than 900 cluster munition casualties in Ukraine in 2022, monitor says

Cluster munitions killed more than 900 people in Ukraine last year amid broad Russia use of the widely-banned weapons, a monitoring group said.

Since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, it has “extensively” used stocks of old cluster munitions and newly developed ones, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) said in an annual report.

Ukrainian forces also used such weapons, albeit “to a lesser extent”, the group added.

In total, Ukraine, which had registered no cluster munition casualties for several years, recorded 916 deaths and injuries from the weapons last year, its report said.

The casualties in Ukraine accounted for the vast majority of the global figure, which rose to 1,172 in 2022 – the highest annual figure since CMC began reporting in 2010.

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Latest images from the war

Russia planning to hold elections in occupied Ukraine this week: MoD

Russian authorities in occupied Ukraine are planning to hold elections for the first time later this week, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.

The votes are set to take place between September 8-10, in parallel with elections being held within Russia itself, the MoD said in its latest intelligence update on the war in Ukraine.

“Whilst over 1,000 candidates have been identified, there is a lack of qualified, experienced and willing candidates according to some reports,” the MoD said, adding voting had already started in Zaporizhzhia and Mariupol.

“There is also an absence of independent candidates that are not members of the Kremlin endorsed parties, indicating that these will not be free or fair elections.”

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Kim Jong-un to travel to Russia for possible arms deal

Kim Jong-un’s reported plans to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin this month reveal the lengths the North Korean leader would be willing to go to woo Moscow as a strategic partner in countering US interests, Nicola Smith writes.

The reclusive leader is famously paranoid about his security, rarely stepping beyond the sealed borders of his regime, and shunning air travel where possible in favour of a bottle green train of 21 bulletproof carriages.

If Kim does personally make the trip to Vladivostok, it suggests the meeting with Mr Putin goes far beyond an arms deal and reinforces a deeper alliance of convenience between two pariah states who increasingly view an opportunity to upset Washington’s policies in Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific.

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‘Human trafficking network’ coercing Cubans to fight for Russia

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Cuba claimed it had uncovered a human trafficking ring that has coerced its citizens to fight for Russia in the war in Ukraine.

The statement from Cuba’s foreign ministry on Monday said that authorities were working to “neutralize and dismantle” the network.

It gave few details, but noted the trafficking ring was operating both within the Caribbean island nation, thousands of miles from Moscow, and in Russia.

“The Ministry of the Interior…is working on the neutralization and dismantling of a human trafficking network that operates from Russia to incorporate Cuban citizens living there, and even some from Cuba, into the military forces participating in war operations in Ukraine,” the statement said.

Russian has not commented on the allegations.