The United States believes China and Russia have leverage they can use to persuade North Korea not to resume nuclear bomb testing, a senior U.S. administration official said on Thursday.

Blasts were heard in Kyiv on Monday when Russian missile strikes around the country, after Moscow blamed Kyiv for an attack on its Black Sea fleet and pulled out of a deal to allow Ukrainian grain shipments.

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

Russia said on Saturday that the accelerated deployment of modernised U.S. B61 tactical nuclear weapons at NATO bases in Europe would lower the "nuclear threshold" and that Russia would take the move into account in its military planning.

"We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis," Biden said.

The Kremlin has touted the SCO summit in the ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand as showing there is an "alternative" to Western dominated international institutions.

President Erdogan is visiting Ukraine to hold talks with President Zelenskyy and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Finding a solution to the prevailing crisis in the war-hit country is on the agenda of the meetings.

As West sends more long-range weapons into Ukraine, geographical aims of Russian troops will move even further, says foreign minister

India’s biggest cement company, Ultratech, will import 1,57,000 tonnes of coal from western sanction-hit Russia for $25.81 million.

Russia has struggled to keep up payments on $40 billion of outstanding bonds since its invasion of Ukraine

World Bank stated that the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war could bring a global recession as food, energy, and fertilizer the prices go higher

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, observed on Monday that Ukraine must compromise its territorial integrity in order to achieve peace.