The U.S. Coast Guard said Monday that it tracked a group of Russian naval vessels, including two submarines, as they crossed into U.S. waters off Alaska in an apparent effort to avoid sea ice, a move that is permitted under international rules and customs.

The U.S. military has moved more than 100 soldiers along with mobile rocket launchers to a desolate island in the Aleutian chain of western Alaska amid a recent increase in Russian military planes and vessels approaching American territory.

China Coast Guard ships Meishan and Xiushan have arrived in Russia's Far East port of Vladivostok to conduct joint exercises and patrols with their Russian counterparts, RIA state news agency reported on Tuesday.

Russian forces captured the Ukrainian town of Ukrainsk in the eastern Donetsk region on Tuesday as they advanced westwards in a bid to take the whole of the Donbas, Russian state-run RIA news agency and pro-Russian war bloggers reported.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was briefed last week on elements of a Ukrainian plan to push Russia to end the war, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said today.

Ukraine said on Monday it had asked the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to join humanitarian efforts in Russia's Kursk region following a cross-border incursion by Ukrainian forces.

Russia has brought in “significant” reinforcements to carry out a sweeping counterattack on the western flank of Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region, maps and analysis have revealed. Ukraine launched its cross-border attack at the start of last month,