Ukraine-Russia war – live: ‘Powerful explosion’ rocks central Moscow as Ukrainian drone downed near Kremlin

One person was killed and two were injured as a result of Russia shelling of a village near the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Friday, the prosecutor general’s office said.

The prosecutors did not provide details of the incident and did not name the village, but said some private houses were damaged.

In a separate case, the prosecutors said, four people were injured after Russia shelled the residential area of the city of Chasiv Yar, located in the Donetsk region close to Bakhmut.

Roughly 60 per cent of Ukraine‘s grain exports could transit through neighbouring Romania after Russia quit a UN-brokered safe passage deal through the Black Sea, Romanian prime minister Marcel Ciolacu said on Friday.

Ukraine is one of the world’s top grain exporters and Russia has been attacking its agricultural and port infrastructure after refusing to extend the year-old safe passage corridor.

Even before the deal fell through, Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta had emerged as Ukraine‘s biggest alternative shipping route.

Ukraine shipped 8.1 million tonnes of grain through Constanta in the first seven months of the year, and 8.6 million tonnes overall in 2022.

“We hope that over 60 per cent of the total volume of Ukrainian grain exports will transit Romania,” Ciolacu said after meeting Ukraine‘s prime minister Denys Shmyhal in Bucharest.

He said Romania was trying to improve its connecting infrastructure by rail, road, river and sea, as well as at border crossings.

Ukrainian forces do not appear likely to reach and retake the Russian-occupied strategic southeastern city of Melitopol during their counteroffensive aimed at winning back territory from Moscow’s army, a US official said on Friday.

The assessment was first reported by the Washington Post.

The US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, was citing an intelligence report on Melitopol but the prediction is largely in line with Washington’s view that the counteroffensive is going slower than expected.

The official added that despite the report and limited progress towards Melitopol, Washington believed it was still possible to change the gloomy outlook.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday declined to comment but said there had been a number of analyses about the war in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022 and many of them had changed as it unfolded.

Melitopol, which had a pre-war population of about 150,000, has been under Russian control since March 2022 and has roads and railways used by Russian troops to transport supplies to areas they occupy.

Russia has banned entry to 54 British nationals, including the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan, in response to UK sanctions against its citizens and enterprises, the foreign ministry said on Friday.

The ICC issued arrest warrants in March for Russian president Vladimir Putin, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, charges Moscow denies.

Moscow also added Britain’s Minister of State for Defence Annabel Goldie as well as a number of correspondents from the BBC, the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph to the travel ban list.

Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu on Thursday visited Belarus and said his country would increase military cooperation with Russia’s neighbor, where Moscow is deploying tactical nuclear weapons.

Ahead of the first Republican primary debate, to be held on 23 August and which may or may not include Mr Trump, here’s what the qualifying candidates have said about Ukraine:

Canada is imposing sanctions on 15 Russian individuals and three entities in what Ottawa said was a response to rising levels of human rights violations and violence faced by political opponents and critics in Russia, the foreign ministry said on Friday.

The sanctioned individuals and entities are senior officials of the Russian government, judiciary and investigative committee, as well as federally funded courts, the ministry said in a statement.

A Russian court on Friday ordered the liquidation of a human rights organisation that preserved the legacy of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, in the latest move in a widespread crackdown on dissent. Sakharov, who died in 1989, was a key figure in developing the Soviet Union’s hydrogen bomb program but later become renowned for his activism in promoting human rights and freedom of conscience.

He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1975 but was not allowed to travel to Norway to receive it.

In 1980 he was sent into internal exile, which lasted six years.

The organization founded in his honor operated the Sakharov Center museum and archives in Moscow.

Authorities declared it a “foreign agent” in 2014 and this year ordered the eviction of the center from its premises.

The court ordered the organisation liquidated at the request of the Justice Ministry, Russian news agencies reported.

Independent journalists, critics, activists and opposition figures in Russia have come under increasing pressure from the government in recent years, which has intensified significantly during the conflict in Ukraine.

Multiple independent news outlets and rights groups have been shut down, labeled as “foreign agents,” or outlawed as “undesirable.”

Activists and critics of the Kremlin have also faced criminal charges.

A judge in Moscow has formally arrested and detained one of the leaders of a prominent independent election monitoring group on suspicion of being involved with an “undesirable” organisation, his lawyer has said.

The case against Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of Russia’s leading election watchdog Golos, is the latest in the months-long crackdown on Kremlin critics and rights activists ratcheted up by Vladimir Putin’s regime after sending troops into Ukraine.

Mr Melkonyants was charged and detained Thursday in Moscow and appeared in the city’s Basmanny District Court on Friday, his lawyer told The Associated Press. Russian media report he has been detained until 17 October, and faces up to six years in prison if convicted.