Russia reported fresh Ukrainian drone attacks on Friday evening, a day after explosions erupted near military bases in Russian-held areas of Ukraine and Russia itself, apparent displays of Kyiv's growing ability to pummel Moscow's assets far from front lines.
FIGHTING
-Britain's latest military intelligence assessment said there had been "only minimal changes in territorial control along the front line" over the past week.
-In the eastern Donbas region, Russian forces have approached the outskirts of the town of Bakhmut, but have not yet broken into the built-up area, the UK defense ministry said.
-It added Russia had not made any major efforts to advance in the Zaporizhzhia or Kharkiv sectors, while in the southwest, neither Ukrainian nor Russian forces have made advances on the Kherson front line.
-Russian forces continued offensive operations in the direction of Kramatorsk and Bakhmut, west of the Luhansk area held by pro-Russian separatists, Ukraine's General Staff said.
-Blasts at the Saky air base in the annexed Crimean peninsula this month have put more than half the Russian Black Sea fleet's naval aviation combat jets out of use, a Western official said on Friday.
-The fleet is to receive 12 new vessels alongside additional aviation and land-based vehicles this year, newly appointed commander Vice Admiral Viktor Sokolov said on -Friday, state-owned TASS news agency reported.
-Reuters could not confirm battlefield reports independently.
DIPLOMACY
- Russia has no moral right to sit at the Group of 20 nations while it presses on with its invasion of Ukraine, Britain's foreign ministry said on Friday, hours after G20 host Indonesia said President Vladimir Putin would attend the group's November summit in Bali.
- Putin warned his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, on Friday that shelling of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, which he blamed on Kyiv, could result in a large-scale disaster. According to Macron's office, Putin agreed to an International Atomic Energy Agency mission to the plant.
- President Joe Biden's latest security assistance package for Ukraine includes surveillance drones and for the first time mine-resistant vehicles, a senior US a defense official said.
ECONOMY
- Two more ships carrying grain have left Ukraine's Chornomorsk port, Türkiye’s Defense Ministry said, bringing the total number of vessels to leave Ukraine's Black Sea ports under a UN-brokered grain export deal to 27.
- China's imports of Russian coal jumped 14% in July from a year earlier to their highest in at least five years, as a looming EU ban over the war forced Moscow to sell at a discount to buyers like China and India. Russia remained China's top oil supplier for a third month.
