TOP HEADLINES

• Russia said Ukraine had attacked Moscow with at least five drones that were all either shot down or jammed, despite one of the capital's main airports having to reroute flights for several hours. The foreign ministry called the assault "yet another act of terrorism."

• Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to summon Georgia's ambassador to Ukraine over what he decried as the "public execution" of the country's jailed former president who had appeared severely emaciated at a court hearing. Zelenskyy urged Georgian authorities to allow Mikheil Saakashvili, who holds Ukrainian citizenship, to come to Kyiv for medical treatment.

• NATO has extended Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's contract by a further year, deciding to stick with an experienced leader as the conflict rages on the alliance’s doorstep rather than try to agree on a successor.

• Lithuania's president urged NATO leaders to be bolder in helping Ukraine's push for membership at a summit in his country next week, saying this would bolster Kyiv's battlefield performance while Moscow would see any caution as weakness.

• Ukraine said its troops had regained more ground along eastern and southern fronts in what President Zelenskyy described as progress in a "difficult" week for Kyiv's counteroffensive against Russian forces.

• A man and a woman were killed by shelling in Ukraine's southern city of Kherson. That's after a Russian drone attack killed at least two people and injured 19 in the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy on Monday.

• The EU is considering letting the Russian Agricultural Bank to set up a subsidiary to reconnect to the global financial network in a bid to safeguard the Black Sea grain deal that allows Ukraine to export food to global markets. Moscow has threatened to drop out of the deal over Western sanctions inhibiting its own exports. 

• Turkey will not lift its opposition to Sweden joining NATO unless it stops harboring groups Ankara considers to be terrorists, President Tayyip Erdogan said. Ankara, a NATO member, has repeatedly said that Sweden needs to crack down on supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) before it lifts its objections.

• President Vladimir Putin, speaking during a virtual summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, said "the whole of society clearly demonstrated their unity and elevated sense of responsibility... when they responded as a united front against an attempted armed mutiny." READ MORE BELOW

IN DETAIL

Putin tells SCO leaders Russia is 'united'

President Vladimir Putin reassured Asian leaders of Russia's stability and unity on Tuesday in his first appearance at an international forum since the country was rocked by a brief armed rebellion last month.

"The Russian people are consolidated as never before," Putin told a virtual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

"Russian political circles and the whole of society clearly demonstrated their unity and elevated sense of responsibility for the fate of the Fatherland when they responded as a united front against an attempted armed mutiny."

Putin's speech emphasised Russia's unity after the short-lived mutiny led by Wagner mercenary founder Yevgeny Prigozhin late last month. Wagner fighters took control of a southern city and advanced towards Moscow on June 24, confronting the Kremlin with its biggest challenge to power since the 1990s. 

The mutiny was defused in a deal brokered by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko. Putin has since thanked his army and security services for averting civil war.

In his speech, Putin thanked members of the SCO who he said had expressed their support for his efforts "to protect the constitutional order, the lives and security of citizens."

He told them that Russia would stand up against Western pressure, sanctions and "provocations" imposed over the conflict. He said Moscow planned to boost ties with the SCO and supported the transition to settlements in local currencies in foreign trade.

Putin told the group there was a growing risk of a new global economic and financial crisis fueled by developing countries' debts and worsening food and environmental security.

"And all these problems, each of which is complex and diverse in its own way, in their totality lead to a noticeable increase in the potential for conflict," he said.