North Korea said on Monday it will steadily upgrade and bolster its nuclear armed forces and blamed the foreign ministers of G7 states for infringing on its sovereign rights by demanding the end of its nuclear weapons program, state media reported.

Russia will seek guarantees that NATO countries will exclude Ukraine from membership and Ukraine will remain neutral in any peace deal, a Russian deputy foreign minister said in remarks published on Monday."We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement," Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told the Russian media outlet Izvestia."Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance."