Russian ⁠air defence ⁠units have ​downed ⁠206 ⁠Ukrainian ​drones ⁠overnight, ‌including 43 ‌over Moscow region, ‌the ⁠Interfax news agency reported ‌this morning.

The Prime Minister said he would meet the Ukrainian president to maintain focus on the war despite international attention being diverted by the Iran conflict.

The rise in energy prices caused by the Middle East turmoil has benefited Vladimir Putin’s Russia despite the sanctions imposed to stifle the flow of funds to his forces.

The US temporarily loosened sanctions preventing other countries buying Russian oil and petroleum which was already loaded on vessels at sea to try to ease the pressure on global supplies triggered by the US-Israel strikes on Iran and Tehran’s retaliation against Gulf states.

The conflict could also constrain supplies of air defence missiles for Ukraine because of the surge in demand in the Middle East.

At a Downing Street press conference, Sir Keir said he would meet Mr Zelensky “soon” because “it’s vital that we continue to focus on supporting Ukraine”.

Kenya said it had agreed with Russia ​that Kenyans would no longer be eligible for signing up to fight in the war with Ukraine ‌after the scale of Russian recruitment triggered anger in some African countries.

Kenyan foreign minister Musalia Mudavadi who met his Russian counterpart Segrei Lavrov said an agreement had been reached with Russia to no longer allow Kenyans to sign up to ​fight.

Kenya says that more than 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited to fight, attracted by monthly salaries of several thousand dollars and bonuses of more than $6,000 for contract soldiers.

“His excellency has conversed with us on the issue of the welfare of Kenyans who are in Russia and more ​specifically those who are involved in the special operation,” Mudavadi said at a joint news briefing with Lavrov.

“And I want to make it clear that we have now agreed that Kenyans shall not be enlisted through the (Russian) Ministry of Defence – they will no longer be ​eligible to be enlisted,” he said.

“There will no further enlisting.”

He added that consular services would be organised through proper ​diplomatic channels for those Kenyans who had already signed up and required assistance.

Lavrov said that Kenyan citizens had voluntarily signed contracts to ‌fight alongside ⁠the Russian army.

Italy, France and seven other nations told the European Commission that a Russian liquefied natural gas tanker currently adrift in the Mediterranean represents an ecological threat, and they urged swift action on the issue, a letter showed on Monday.

“The precarious condition of the vessel, combined with the nature of its specialised cargo, gives rise to an imminent and serious risk of a major ecological disaster in the heart of the Union’s maritime space,” the letter seen by Reuters said.

Russia’s transport ministry said the Arctic Metagaz, carrying LNG from the Arctic port of Murmansk, was attacked earlier this month by Ukrainian naval drones launched from the Libyan coast. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for any such attack.

Russia has taken control of a dozen settlements in Ukraine in ​the first two weeks of March as part of advances along the front line in eastern and ‌southern Ukraine, Russian state-run news agencies reported quoting top general Valery Gerasimov.

The claims have not been confirmed by Ukraine and come at a time Kyiv is making rapid adavances on the battlefield. President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country’s armed forces had disrupted Russian plans for an offensive, with Moscow failing to reinforce its troops.

Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, was speaking during a ​visit to the southern grouping of forces and pointed to gains around major Ukrainian cities in the more ​than four-year-old conflict, known in Russia as a special military operation.

“The offensive is being conducted ⁠in all directions,” the Russian defence ministry quoted him as saying on its Telegram channel.

“In two weeks in March, 12 ​settlements have been liberated by units and military formations of the United Group of troops,” it said.

Gerasimov said Russian forces were “actively ​moving towards Sloviansk,” a heavily defended town in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region long seen as one of Moscow’s major targets.

Zelensky, speaking in his nightly video address after meeting Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Russian assaults had become less intense.

“Ukraine’s defence forces have disrupted Russia’s strategic offensive operation that the enemy had planned for March,” he said.

Hollywood actor Sean Penn stepped out of a train carriage in central Kyiv yesterday, thousands of miles away from the glitz of Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre where he had failed to turn up to receive his third acting Oscar hours earlier.

Penn, 65, won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his role in the political thriller “One Battle After Another”, but skipped Sunday’s ceremony to travel to meet Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky in the war-battered capital.

Ukraine’s state railway operator posted a short video clip of Penn getting out of the train in the morning, saying it had kept his trip a secret until the very last moment.

“Now we can say it officially: Sean Penn chose Ukraine over the Oscars!” it said on its Facebook page.

Zelensky posted a picture of him meeting the actor in the presidential office in Kyiv’s barricaded government quarters.

The photo showed the black-clad president talking to Penn who was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. There were no immediate details on their conversation.

“Sean, thanks to you, we know what a true friend of Ukraine is,” Zelensky wrote on the Telegram app.

“You have stood with Ukraine since the first day of the full-scale war. This is still true today,” Zelensky added.

Penn, a long-time advocate for Ukraine, has visited the country several times during the four-year war with Russia. He filmed a documentary about Russia’s invasion that premiered in February 2023.

Penn also lent Zelensky, a former comedian and actor, one of his other Oscars in 2022.

Russian air defence units downed at least 67 Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow yesterday, according to data published by the city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

On Monday morning, Sobyanin had listed 38 drones intercepted. In a long series of posts later, the mayor said a further 29 drones had been downed during the day, starting at about 8am (0500 GMT).

Sobyanin also said that air defence units had shot down around 250 Ukrainian drones approaching Moscow over the previous two days.

In its latest tally, the Russian defence ministry said air defence units had downed 59 Ukrainian drones from 4pm to 8pm over different parts of the country, including 13 targeting Moscow.

A Russian attack on a hydroelectric plant in southern Ukraine triggered an oil spill and polluted water systems in neighbouring Moldova yesterday, with supplies cut completely in the country’s second-largest city, officials said.

President Maia Sandu, who wants to bring Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, into the European Union by the end of the decade, said she held Russia responsible for the pollution in the Dniestr River.

Moldova’s environment ministry said the spill prompted the cutoff in Balti, a city of 90,000, and in three other towns and would remain in effect for at least a further 12 hours into Tuesday.

Schools were ordered closed and students told to work online.

Moldova declared a 15-day environmental alert on Sunday as the extent of the pollution became apparent.

“We declared environmental alert and are acting to protect our people,” Sandu said in a statement on social media, referring to the 7 March attack on the Novodnistrovsk hydro station. “Russia bears full responsibility.”

The European Union is set to impose sanctions on nine people accused of war crimes related to the Bucha killings in Ukraine, French foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, said on Monday.

Mr Barrot announced the decision as he arrived at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

Kyiv has said over 1,400 people were killed in Bucha, a suburb near the Ukrainian capital, during a 33-day occupation by Russian forces at the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The EU would also impose sanctions on Monday on several alleged Kremlin propagandists, including: the Franco-Russian Adrien Bocquet, whom Barrot described as “a key recruiter of foreign fighters in Ukraine, responsible for glorifying war crimes, and also responsible for disinformation campaigns in Europe and Africa.”