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 The Russian government will be able to compel businesses to supply the military with goods and make their employees work overtime under two laws to support Moscow's war in Ukraine that were approved in an initial vote in parliament on Tuesday.

The measures will effectively place Russia on a war economy footing, nearly 19 weeks into the invasion which it describes as a "special military operation".

"The load on the defence industry has increased significantly. In order to guarantee the supply of weapons and ammunition, it is necessary to optimize the work of the military-industrial complex and enterprises that are part of cooperation chains," Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 but was repelled in an initial attempt to take the capital Kyiv and has sustained heavy losses in men and equipment while making only gradual progress in the east of the country, where it completed the capture of the Luhansk region on Sunday.

The West has responded with successive waves of sanctions, stepped up weapons supplies to Ukraine and bolstered NATO forces in eastern Europe - all moves that Moscow sees as part of a "proxy war" against Russia.

"Right now, when the countries of the collective West are building up their military presence on the border with Russia, intensifying sanctions pressure, increasing arms supplies to Ukraine, the importance of passing the bills cannot be overestimated," Borisov told lawmakers.

One of the two bills, both passed unanimously in a first reading by the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said the state could impose "special economic measures" during military operations, requiring firms to supply goods and services to the military.

The second bill would amend the labour code to grant the government the right to regulate working hours and determine off-days at given companies. Employees of businesses providing goods to the military could be compelled to work at night, on weekends and holidays, and without annual leave.

Borisov said the overtime requirement would not be used on a massive scale, and employees would receive extra pay.

Both bills still need to undergo second and third readings in the Duma, where speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said discussion would continue behind closed doors on Wednesday. They must then be reviewed by the upper house of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law. (Reuters)

Norway's government on Tuesday declined to comment on the ongoing strike among Norwegian offshore workers that is reducing the Nordic country's oil and gas output.

"It is the social partners' responsibility to find a solution to any conflict," Deputy Labour Minister Maria Schumacher Walberg told Reuters in an emailed statement, referring to how wage disputes are generally resolved in Norway.

"Thus, the Ministry has no comments to the ongoing conflict." (Reuters)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a call on Tuesday he believed Ukraine's military could retake territory recently captured by Russian forces, a spokeswoman for Johnson's office said.

Johnson also updated Zelenskiy on the latest British military equipment, including 10 self-propelled artillery systems and loitering munitions, which would be arriving in the coming days and weeks, the spokeswoman said. (Reuters)

Ireland should set aside some of the budget surplus it expects to post this year to fund future pensions or to start refilling its currently empty contingency reserve fund, Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Tuesday.

The finance ministry on Monday forecast that Ireland would run a budget surplus of up to 0.5% of gross domestic product this year rather than the small deficit previously anticipated, primarily due to a further surge in corporate tax receipts.

The government has pledged to use the better fiscal position to introduce an unspecified amount of one-off measures above and beyond its already boosted budget day package to help people cope with the highest level of inflation in almost 40 years.

"My view is we shouldn't spend all of that, we should give a lot of that back to people because people need help with the cost of living of course but we should probably set some of it aside as well," Leo Varadkar told national broadcaster RTE.

"A huge amount of that is corporation profit tax receipts, which are going to continue to improve over the next couple of years but they won't forever and it would make sense to put some of that surplus away, whether that's into the rainy day fund or into the social insurance fund for future pensions."

Ireland's fiscal watchdog, which has been warning for some time that excess corporate tax receipts should not be used to fund permanent government spending, said earlier on Tuesday that they should be put into the rainy day fund or a new pension reserve fund.

Ireland opened the rainy day fund in 2019 and had planned to boost it to 8 billion euros over time before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and it used the 1.5 billion euros in the fund to help the economy weather a series of lockdowns.

The finance ministry's chief economist warned on Monday that the reliance on just 10 multinational firms to pay over half of the soaring corporate tax receipts represented an "incredible level of vulnerability" for the economy.

Ireland's large hub of multinational firms employ around one in nine Irish workers and Varadkar said that the state's foreign investment agency would announce the best ever half year of job creation for the sector on Wednesday. (Reuters)