Ships brought grain from Ukrainian ports yesterday, suggesting Moscow had stopped short of reimposing a blockade that might have caused world hunger, despite suspending its participation in a UN programme to safely export grain from the war zone.

Ukraine’s maritime grain exports were halted yesterday after Russia suspended its participation in a landmark agreement that allowed the vital shipments, blaming drone attacks on its ships in Crimea.

Russia announced on Friday it had finished calling up reservists to fight in Ukraine, having drafted hundreds of thousands of people in a month, with more than a quarter of them already sent to the battlefield.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has plunged Europe into an era of insecurity, Germany said yesterday, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin predicted a “dangerous” decade ahead.

Russia yesterday announced it had finished calling up reservists to fight in Ukraine, having drafted hundreds of thousands of people in a month, with more than a quarter of them already sent to the battlefield.

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday scolded the West for playing what he cast as a “dangerous, bloody and dirty” geopolitical game, but said the United States and its allies would ultimately have to talk to Russia.

A senior Russian government official raised the possibility that Moscow could shoot down commercial Western satellites being used to help Ukraine's war effort. The White House has vowed response if Russia attacks US satellites.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the world faced the most dangerous decade since World War Two as Western elites scrambled to prevent the inevitable crumbling of the global dominance of the United States and its allies.

Russia rehearsed its response to a nuclear attack yesterday in an exercise that involved nuclear submarines, strategic bombers and ballistic missiles at a time when tensions are high over a “dirty bomb” allegation it has made against Ukraine.

Russia doubled down on a warning that Ukraine is preparing to use a “dirty bomb” on its own territory, an assertion dismissed by the West and Kyiv as false, and was expected to bring the issue to the UN Security Council later yesterday.

Western countries yesterday accused Russia of plotting to use a threat of a bomb laced with nuclear material as a pretext for escalation in Ukraine, as Moscow evacuated civilians from a southern city in anticipation of a major battle.

Under pressure in the south of Ukraine, Russia fired missiles and drones into Ukrainian-held Mykolaiv yesterday, destroying an apartment block in the ship-building city near the front and warning the war was trending toward “uncontrolled escalation”.

Pro-Russian authorities yesterday urged residents in the southern Kherson region, which Moscow claims to have annexed, to leave the main city “immediately” in the face of Kyiv’s advancing counter-offensive.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday accused Russia of deliberately delaying the passage of ships carrying grain exports under a U.N. brokered-deal, and said 150 vessels were waiting to be loaded.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the West to warn Russia not to blow up a hydroelectric dam that would flood a swath of southern Ukraine, as his forces prepare to push Moscow’s troops from Kherson in one of the war’s most important battles.

The United States has determined that Iranian military personnel were on the ground in Crimea helping the Russian military operate drones provided by Tehran to conduct strikes across Ukraine, State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Thursday.

Ukrainians conserved electricity and some went without running water yesterday to ease pressure on the grid and allow the repair of infrastructure destroyed by Russian air strikes as Kyiv’s forces advanced towards the city of Kherson.

Ukraine is restricting electricity usage nationwide for the first time on Thursday following a barrage of Russian missile and drone attacks that have destroyed some power plants just before the cold winter months set in.

President Vladimir Putin yesterday introduced martial law in four Ukrainian regions he says Russia has annexed as residents of the occupied city of Kherson left by boat following warnings of a looming assault.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday introduced martial law in Ukraine's Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions that Moscow claims to have annexed.