A Russian drone attack on the Black Sea port city of Odesa overnight injured three people, sparked fires and damaged homes and civilian infrastructure, regional governor Oleh Kiper said. Russia's Ministry of Defence said its units destroyed 26 Ukrainian drones overnight. Nine of the drones were shot down over the southern Voronezh region, while eight were taken down over the border region of Belgorod. The remaining drones were downed over the Kursk, Lipetsk and Moscow regions, as well as over the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula, the ministry said. The Defence Ministry also said Russia has taken control of Kalynove village in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.

Ukraine's military said it destroyed 46 of 83 Russian drones launched at the country overnight. Another 31 drones were reportedly "lost" and failed to reach their targets. A drone attack on Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa damaged energy infrastructure in the area, triggering power and heat supply interruptions in the city, regional Governor Oleh Kiper wrote. Odesa's Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov said the attack knocked out three boiler plants. A Ukrainian drone attack targeted an industrial enterprise in Russia's southern city of Syzran, the governor of the Samara region said on Tuesday, adding that there were no casualties.

Our world is in a spiral of crises. While conventional threats, such as famine, drought, civil war and genocide, continue to loom over humanity in many parts of the world, the race to assume control of new phenomena that have the potential to change the world – such as novel communications and weapons technologies, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies – is also gaining pace and posing new threats to our collective wellbeing. Our current "rules-based international order", which was established in the aftermath of World War II to increase global cooperation, generate economic prosperity, prevent wars, and ensure stability, equality and justice is struggling to navigate these complex challenges and falling short of preventing violations of its founding principles. A state of irregularity, which benefits only a handful of powerful countries and interest groups while spelling catastrophe for the masses, is close to becoming the new normal of the global order. Therefore, it is now not a preference but an obligation to make comprehensive reforms to the system to prevent this scenario from becoming reality.

Now it's Russia that appears to have most to worry about, as Ukrainian drones and commandos launch raids on the northwest corner of Crimea, damaging a radar base on the Tarkhankut Peninsula and even planting a Ukrainian flag during an operation to mark Independence Day, on 24 August.

Ukraine has warned Vladimir Putin that more drone attacks coming -- just hours after a flying bot smashed into one of Moscow's skyscrapers for the second time in as many days. Although Kyiv refuses to officially take responsibility for such attacks inside Russia, this latest skirmish is considered to be part of a wider offensive aimed at shifting the focus of the conflict to the Kremlin's doorstep. Experts say the way Kyiv is looking to do this is with the help of drones in the air and by sea -- a'cheap', expendable technology which has been revolutionising modern warfare over the past two decades. It is certainly turning attention from the First World War-style trench warfare that has been raging throughout Ukraine since the conflict broke out - and there's a reason the rest of the world is watching. Here, MailOnline looks at how drones are changing the face of future conflict, and why Ukraine is ratcheting up the use of them in an attempt to win the propaganda war and turn the tide of Putin's invasion.

Russia has blamed Ukraine for setting ablaze one of its oil refineries, while Kyiv has accused Moscow of launching dozens of overnight strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles for the second day running. The targeting of the fuel facility on Thursday occurred at the Ilsky refinery near the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in the Krasnodar region, Russia's TASS news agency reported citing local emergency services. A fuel reservoir was on fire, it said, but gave no further details. A day earlier, a fuel depot further to the west caught fire near a bridge linking Russia's mainland with the occupied Crimean Peninsula. "A second turbulent night for our emergency services," Krasnodar Governor Veniamin Kondratyev wrote on Telegram, confirming tanks with oil products were set ablaze.

British navy personnel planted explosives and blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines last month, Russia's defence ministry says, a claim London called false and designed to distract from Moscow's military failures in Ukraine. Russia did not give evidence for its allegation that a leading NATO member had sabotaged critical Russian infrastructure amid the worst crisis in relations between the West and Moscow since the depths of the Cold War. The Russian ministry alleged "British specialists" from the same unit that directed Ukrainian drone attacks on ships from the Russian Black Sea fleet in Crimea earlier on Saturday were responsible for the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. "According to available information, representatives of this unit of the British Navy took part in the planning, provision and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 this year – blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines," the ministry said. The United Kingdom denied the accusation.

Russian scientists are developing an advanced automated submarine that will be powered by an external combustion engine, Igor Denisov, deputy director of the Foundation for Advanced Studies (FPI), revealed in an interview with Interfax, a Russian news agency. "We are planning to create an apparatus that will pass through the Northern Sea Route without floating up and without the use of nuclear power, including under the ice," Denisov said. "In order for this device to accomplish such a'feat,' its autonomy should be at least 90 days, which is already commensurate with the autonomy of modern submarines." The decision to forego the nuclear option to power the underwater vehicle was a conscious one, Denisov said, in order to make it increasingly safe. While a nuclear installation helps power submarines for uninterrupted movement throughout the world's oceans, it also puts its operational capabilities at risk.