Here is a summary of today’s events:
Ukraine has said Russian soldiers who shoot at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant or use it as a base to shoot from would become a “special target”.
The oil giant Saudi Aramco has unveiled record profits of $48.4bn in the second quarter of 2022, after Russia’s war in Ukraine and a post-pandemic surge in demand caused crude prices to skyrocket.
Pope Francis said the war in Ukraine had diverted attention from the problem of world hunger and called for urgent food aid to prevent looming famine in Somalia.
The Ukrainian army’s Operational Command South said the Russian bombardment of populated areas in the Dnipropetrovsk region continued overnight.
The chairman of Germany’s conservative CDU party and opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, said he could not imagine Germany playing a mediating role in the Russian war against Ukraine.
Countries including Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and the Czech Republic have called for the EU to limit or block short-term Schengen visas for Russian citizens, in protest at their country’s invasion of Ukraine. Poland is also considering restrictions for Russian tourist visas.
Ukraine has said Russian troops who crossed the Dnipro River during their offensive in the southern Kherson region were facing growing difficulties after strategic bridges were damaged, Reuters reports.
The UK Ministry of Defence’s update said Russia had probably prioritised reorganising its forces over the past week to reinforce southern Ukraine, but that in the Donbas region in the east, Russian-backed forces had continued to attempt attacks on the north of Donetsk city.
Hungary says Russia has started delivering additional gas to the country after a July visit to Moscow by its foreign minister.
Two more ships carrying grain left Ukraine’s Black Sea ports on Saturday, Turkey’s defence ministry said, bringing the number of vessels to have departed the country to 16 since a UN- and Turkey-brokered deal was agreed in late July, aimed partly at easing a global food crisis.
The Razoni, the first ship to depart Ukraine two weeks ago since grain exports from the country’s Black Sea ports resumed under a UN-brokered deal, was approaching the Syrian port of Tartus on Sunday after the cargo was refused by its original Lebanese buyer, two shipping sources told Reuters.
People in the eastern Ukrainian town of Rubizhne have started exhuming bodies hastily buried in courtyards at the height of battle, to lay them to rest with dignity.
The US has expressed concern to India that it was used earlier this year to break economic sanctions imposed on Russia during a high-seas transfer of fuel made from Russian crude, according to a local central banker.
Updated
The chairman of Germany’s conservative CDU party and opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, cannot imagine Germany playing a mediating role in the Russian war against Ukraine.
Regardless of who would be in charge, he said, “the Federal Republic of Germany has no mediating role in this conflict.”
He told the German Press Agency: “We stand together with Europe on the side of Ukraine and are therefore not neutral in this conflict.” Merz had been asked if he could imagine that former chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, could intervene to bring the war to an end.
The CDU leader accused Germany’s coalition government of prolonging the war through its hesitant action in supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine.
“It still applies that the Federal Republic of Germany could have done more earlier. The government should have quickly done what the German Bundestag decided on 28 April, namely to deliver heavy equipment on a larger scale,” said Merz.
Even now, he stressed, not everything that Germany could contribute was being delivered.
“In this respect, we are still not helping Ukraine to the extent that is necessary. And that is prolonging this brutal war, which is now becoming a gruelling war of attrition with hundreds of victims every day,” Merz said.
