High oil prices, sanctions evasion and state investment are providing Russia with enough resources to fight on in Ukraine at the current intensity for at least two more years, Lithuanian intelligence agencies said in a report yesterday.

Meanwhile, a top Ukrainian presidential adviser said it could not be ruled out that a Russian missile strike on Odessa port a day earlier had targeted the delegations of Volodymyr Zelenskiy or Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said Ihor Zhovkva,

The leaders were inspecting the Ukrainian grain export corridor in the Black Sea port when the missile hit port infrastructure less than 500 metres away.

"It really was less than 500 meters from us. What was that? ... You cannot exclude it was directed at the delegation of my president or the delegation of foreign guest," Ihor Zhovkva, a top diplomatic adviser, told CNN Live in an interview.

Elsewhere, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday won the backing of the EU's leading political group, the centre-right European People's Party, to head the bloc's powerful executive for another five years.

The only candidate in the party's ballot, Belgian-born von der Leyen vowed to advance EU economies, clamp down on smugglers driving irregular immigration to the bloc, strengthen competitiveness and businesses, as well as supporting farmers as costs of living rise. Von der Leyen also promised more financial and military aid to Ukraine.

Both Zelenskiy and Mitsotakis appeared at a press conference on Wednesday to say they had witnessed the missile strike. Five people were killed in the attack, the Ukrainian military said.

Russia reformed and strengthened its battle-torn army in Ukraine in 2023 and is on track to expand its military capabilities along its border with Nato, including next to Finland, which joined the alliance last year, Lithuanian intelligence agencies said in their annual assessment of threats facing the Baltic country.

"Moscow is able to evaluate the lessons learned and improve its combat effectiveness", the Lithuanian agencies added in the report that was embargoed for release last morning.

The joint report is the work of two agencies: the counter-intelligence State Security Department and the military's Defence Intelligence and Security Service under the Ministry of National Defence.

The agencies wrote that Russian intelligence is driving efforts to evade the sanctions imposed on the country's defence industry after it invaded Ukraine.

While Russia is openly supplied with weapons and ammo by only Iran and North Korea, China has become its largest supplier of microchips and the yuan has become the main currency for Russia's international transactions, Lithuania's agencies said.

They added that since Russia deployed military warheads in Belarus in 2023, it has been steadily building infrastructure for their use there.