As it happened: Russian troops break Ukraine ceasefire; Shane Warne tributes continue to flow

Shane Warne had been on an extreme diet in the days before he died, his manager James Erskine has said, and Thai police have confirmed that the family of the former cricketing great had told them he had been experiencing chest pains in the days before he died.

“He did go on these ridiculous sort of diets … and was just finishing one, where he basically only ate fluids for 14 days, and he’d done this three or four times,” Erskine told Nine’s Today on Sunday morning.

“He was a bit all or nothing, it was either white buns with butter and lasagne stuffed in the middle, or he’d be basically having these black or green juices,” Erskine said, adding that Warne had “obviously smoked for most of his life”.

Erskine said it was only after his death that he learned Warne had been sweating and suffering some chest pain in the past week.

Click here to read the story.

The conflict in Ukraine is set to last months, if not years, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab said on Sunday, adding international allies would need to show “strategic stamina” to ensure Russian President Vladimir Putin fails.

“Our mission with our allies is to ensure Putin fails in Ukraine, and it’s going to take some time - we’re talking about months, if not years - and therefore we have to show some strategic stamina, because, this is not going to be over in days,” Raab told Sky News.

Raab described talk of an increased threat of Russia using nuclear weapons in its invasion of Ukraine as rhetoric and brinkmanship.

“I think it’s rhetoric and brinkmanship,” he told Sky News when asked about a possible nuclear escalation by the Kremlin.

“(Putin’s) got a track record as long as anyone’s arm of misinformation and propaganda ... this is a distraction from what the real issues are at hand - which is that it’s an illegal invasion and it is not going according to plan.“

Reuters

The NSW Education department says there will be 208 schools closed in NSW on Monday due to flooding.

This comprises 110 state schools, 63 independent schools and 35 Catholic schools.

The list is current, at the time of writing, and the majority of schools are in northern NSW.

Click the link here to see the full list of schools.

LONDON: British military officials on Sunday compared Russia’s tactics in Ukraine to those used in Chechnya and Syria, where cities were bombarded and heavily damaged after Russian forces faced unexpected resistance from their defenders.

The strength of Ukrainian resistance continues to surprise Russian forces and they have responded by targeting populated areas, including the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in its daily intelligence briefing.

“This is likely to represent an effort to break Ukrainian morale,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Russia has used similar tactics in Chechnya in 1999 and Syria in 2016, employing both air and ground-based munitions.“

Russia’s advance has been slowed by attacks on its supply lines, the ministry said. As a result, there is a “realistic possibility” that Russia is now trying to disguise fuel trucks to reduce losses.

AP