President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday appointed security veteran Nikolai Patrushev to head a new body in charge of Russia's naval policy.

The new Maritime Board will include councils responsible for developing Russian naval activity and its military fleet, and defending Russian interests in the Arctic, according to a decree issued by Putin.

Russia has a massively more powerful navy than Ukraine but has suffered a number of embarrassing setbacks at sea in the course of the two-and-a-half-year war, starting with the loss in April 2022 of its Moskva missile cruiser, the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet.

Patrushev, 73, is a former head of the FSB security service who has been close to Putin since they worked together in the Soviet KGB in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) in the 1970s.

The Kremlin said in May that he would take up new responsibilities related to shipbuilding after he was removed as head of Russia's Security Council in a reshuffle at the start of Putin's fifth term as president.