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Vladimir Putin has replaced two of his longest-serving security officials in a surprise reshuffle, suggesting the Russian president is dissatisfied with the handling of his two-year invasion of Ukraine.

Putin, who was sworn in for a fifth term in office earlier this week extending his quarter-century rule until at least 2030, has moved Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister since 2012, to become head of Russia’s security council on Sunday, according to the upper house of parliament.

Andrei Belousov, a deputy prime minister and longtime economic adviser to Putin, is to replace Shoigu.

Nikolai Patrushev, a hawkish former spy and one of Putin’s closest aides who has led the security council since 2008, will take up an unspecified new position.

Putin’s appointments mark the biggest shake-up of his security officials in a decade and a half, even as his forces continue to advance against Ukraine’s outmanned, outgunned army.

The Kremlin painted Shoigu’s move as part of efforts to rein in Russia’s runaway defence spending. On Putin’s orders to supply armed forces fighting in Ukraine this has been earmarked for the current year at a record Rbs10.8tn ($118.5bn).

Shoigu had previously been seen as a near-untouchable figure thanks to his closeness to Putin — with whom he has holidayed several times in Tuva, his home region in Siberia — and for his success in seeing off the challenge from a mutiny by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin last year.

However, even as Russia gained the upper hand in Ukraine in recent months, Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, continued to arouse widespread ire among supporters of the war over the military’s many battlefield failures.

Russia’s security services arrested Timur Ivanov, a deputy defence minister, on corruption charges late last month, a step seen as indicating Putin had wanted to weaken Shoigu.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, told reporters the Kremlin wanted to appoint an economic official to run the defence ministry after Russia’s security budget ballooned to 6.6 per cent of gross domestic product.

“This isn’t a critical number for now but, because of well-known geopolitical circumstances around us, we are gradually getting closer to the situation in the mid-1980s when the share of spending on security was just 4 per cent,” Peskov said.

“This demands special attention,” Peskov added. “It’s very important to put the security economy in line with the economy of the country, so that it meets the dynamics of the current moment.”

“It’s also important to point out that, on the battlefield, he who is more open to innovation [ . . . ] wins. At this stage, the president has decided that a civilian should run the defence ministry.”

Peskov said Belousov’s tenure as an economic adviser to Putin, as minister of economic development, and as first deputy prime minister, was suitable experience for a defence ministry that needed to be “open to innovation, implementing advanced ideas, and creating conditions for economic competition.”

He said Belousov’s appointment would not affect the work of Gerasimov, Russia’s top commander in Ukraine.

He did not explain why Patrushev had been replaced. Patrushev “continues to work, and in the next few days we will tell you where,” Peskov told reporters.

Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who studies the Russian military, said the shake-up showed it was “clear that Russian economic elites performed far better than military elites in this war.”

Belousov’s appointment means Gerasimov will eventually also be replaced, Kofman said.

“Shoigu was incompetent but loyal. The same can be said of Gerasimov. In the past chiefs of general staff were replaced with the minister of defence. Although Peskov has said that Gerasimov will stay on, Belousov will likely want his own person in there.”

A 1968 missing person case has finally been put to rest after authorities were able to positively identify remains that were discovered nearly 40 years ago at a beach in St. Augustine, Florida.

The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office announced last week that remains found in a shallow grave on Crescent Beach in 1985 were positively identified as Mary Alice Pultz, a woman who went missing nearly two decades prior to the remains’ discovery.

“This investigation is a powerful example that we will never give up,” said St. Johns County Sheriff Rob Hardwick. “The combination of highly skilled detectives and advanced DNA technology has given Mary Alice’s family some answers about her disappearance close to 40 years ago.”

Pultz was born in Rockville, Maryland, and was 25 years old when she was last seen by her family. She became estranged from her family after leaving home with her boyfriend at the time, a man named John Thomas Fugitt.

Fugitt, who also went by the alias Billy Joe Wallace, was convicted in the 1981 murder of his male roommate in Georgia. Though he was sentenced to death, he died in prison before he could be executed, according to the sheriff’s office.

Exactly how Pultz died remains unclear but detectives are investigating her death as a homicide and named Fugitt as a person of interest in the case.

The skeletal remains were found by construction workers who were digging at Crescent Beach on April 10, 1985, and the victim was believed to be a white woman between the ages of 30 and 50. But it wasn’t possible to identify her at the time.

In 2011, some of the remains were sent to the Florida Institute for Forensic Anthropology and Applied Science at the University of South Florida. Experts there created a facial reconstruction of the victim in the hopes it may lead to some tips, but nothing came to fruition.

Then in 2023, the sheriff’s office said detectives partnered with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on the case. A decision was made to send the remains to a private lab in Texas, which extracted DNA from the remains and created a genetic profile.

That profile then led genealogists to Pultz’s living relatives, who agreed to provide DNA samples to match against the profile.

Pultz’s remains were examined by medical examiner Dr. Wendolyn Sneed, according to the sheriff’s office. Sneed observed multiple injuries, including fractures of the nasal bones, multiple ribs, and on the lower legs. Some of those fractures were healed, and additionally there were three surgical burr holes drilled into Pultz’s skull.

Burr holes are used by surgeons, according to John Hopkins Medicine, to relieve pressure on the skull due to a build-up in fluid. Among the most common reasons to use burr holes is to relieve pressure from a subdural hematoma, or brain bleed, that can occur after a head injury.

Interviews with Pultz’s family indicated that the burr holes were likely done after her disappearance from their lives in 1968, according to the sheriff’s office press release.

“Dr. Sneed advised these injuries, in addition to the surgical burr holes, are indicative of severe trauma that would have required hospitalization such as being involved in a vehicle crash or being struck by a vehicle,” the release said.

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Israel has fought fresh battles with Hamas in northern Gaza and ordered tens of thousands more people to flee Rafah as it expands its assault on the densely populated southern city despite international condemnation.

The Israel Defense Forces said on social media on Saturday that Palestinians should leave three districts close to the centre of Rafah and two refugee camps in the city. It instructed them to move to what Israel described as a “humanitarian area” on the coast.

“Our operations against Hamas in Rafah remain limited in scope and focus on tactical advances, tactical adjustments, and military advantages — and have avoided densely populated areas,” Daniel Hagari, the chief IDF spokesperson, said on Saturday night.

The UN estimates that about 150,000 people have already fled Rafah since Israel sent ground troops to the eastern edge of the city on May 6 and seized the critical border crossing with Egypt. The IDF claims that 300,000 people have so far evacuated the area, which previously housed more than 1mn displaced Palestinians.

The IDF also said it was continuing operations against “Hamas terror targets” in the northern city of Jabalia and the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, with fierce fighting reported on Israeli and Palestinian social media accounts.

In local media, Israeli military analysts criticised the need for the fresh offensives into the two neighbourhoods after Hamas forces moved back into the areas. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has refused to put forward a realistic plan for an alternative postwar governing regime in Gaza that would replace Hamas rule.

The IDF offensive on Rafah has complicated diplomatic efforts to broker a deal to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and halt the war, while straining Israel’s relations with the Biden administration.

US President Joe Biden has told Israel that Washington will not supply certain offensive weapons if it proceeds with a full-scale assault on Rafah.

The US has already paused the delivery of some arms to Israel, including 3,500 bombs, over concerns about how they could be used in the city. That marks the first time the US has placed any conditions on arms deliveries to Israel since the war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 attack.

UK foreign secretary Lord David Cameron on Sunday again warned Israel over the impact of the Rafah operation on civilians, but rejected calls for an arms embargo on the Jewish state.

“I still don’t think it would be a wise path,” Cameron said about halting weapons sales in an interview with Sky News. “It would strengthen Hamas, it would weaken Israel, and it would make a hostage deal less likely.”

Western states and UN aid agencies have repeatedly warned that an attack on Rafah, teeming with tent cities and those displaced from fighting in other parts of the enclave, would have disastrous humanitarian consequences. The war between Israel and Hamas has devastated Gaza, forced an estimated 80 per cent of the strip’s 2.3mn population from their homes and raised the spectre of famine and disease.

Israel insists it has no choice but to continue with its campaign against Hamas, saying the militant group’s last four intact battalions are in the southern city.

Netanyahu, who faces calls from far-right members of his governing coalition to press on, has publicly shrugged off US pressure to consider an end to the fighting even as Israel becomes more isolated internationally.

The prime minister said last week that Israel would “stand alone”, adding that “if we have to, we will fight with our fingernails”.

Netanyahu has vowed to eradicate Hamas and pursue “total victory” after the militant group launched its October attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and seizing 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials. About 130 Israelis and foreign nationals remain in captivity, but several dozen of those are already confirmed by Israeli intelligence to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive on Gaza has killed almost 35,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials.

Talks mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt to broker a hostage and ceasefire deal broke down earlier this week after mediators failed to narrow the gaps between the warring parties over the terms of an agreement and after Israel attacked Rafah.

Netanyahu has insisted that Israel needs to maintain military pressure on Hamas alongside diplomatic efforts to secure a hostage deal.

But John Kirby, US national security spokesman, said on Thursday Washington believed “that any kind of major Rafah ground operation would actually strengthen” the hand of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader.

“If I’m Mr Sinwar and I’m sitting down in my tunnel . . . and I’m seeing innocent people falling victim to major significant combat operations in Rafah then I have less and less incentive to want to come to the negotiating table,” Kirby said.

“I can cast Israel in the worst possible way . . . It just gives him more ammunition for his twisted narrative.”