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The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EDT.
10:16 p.m.: A cargo ship bound for Ukraine to pick up grain under a U.N.-brokered deal had a brief engine failure as it was transiting Istanbul's Bosphorus Strait overnight, a shipping company said Saturday, marking a second incident this week.
The Briza's engine failed around 2330 GMT on Friday and it anchored near Istanbul's Kandilli region, Tribeca Shipping said. The ship lifted anchor at 0120 GMT on Saturday and was to proceed to an anchorage area in the southern Bosphorus by tug boats, it said.
The Lady Zehma, a cargo ship carrying more than 3,000 metric tons of corn from Ukraine, was towed to anchorage in Istanbul after briefly running aground because of a rudder failure on Thursday night.
The Istanbul-based Joint Coordination Center, which oversees the agreement and includes United Nations, Russian, Ukrainian and Turkish officials, said Friday the Briza was inspected and cleared to sail to Ukraine along with seven other ships.
7 p.m.: For Marek Kaszewek, 63, there's no better way to spend a Friday evening than watching a film, riding a bike and doing something good for the planet all at once.
"We are learning how to operate in a new world," he told Reuters as he pedaled a static bike with an eye on a screen showing him how much charge he was generating to show a film in Warsaw's central Pole Mokotowskie park.
He was one of dozens of Poles who showed up at the event to watch the film "Knives Out." A row of bikes had been set up behind fold-out chairs in front of a big screen on a clear, late summer's night in the Polish capital.
The bikes were plugged into a generator that would provide at least 50% of the power required to show the film.
The initiative is part of a series set up by services company Impel that has toured Polish cities this summer, with the aim of encouraging Poles to think about more environmentally friendly ways of living.
5:45 p.m.: The Joint Coordination Center authorized the movement on Saturday of eight outbound vessels carrying a total of 196,285 metric tons of grain and other food products under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
The eight commercial vessels are:
- Maina from Yuhzny/Pivdennyi to Tarragona, Spain, carrying 56,500 metric tons of corn.
- Canopus from Yuhzny/Pivdennyi to Jawaharlal Nehru, India, carrying 42,000 metric tons of sunflower oil.
- BC Callisto from Chornomorsk to Damietta, Egypt, carrying 31,400 metric tons of wheat.
- Sea Dolphin C from Yuhzny/Pivdennyi to Amsterdam, Netherlands, carrying 31,098 metric tons of rapeseed.
- Lady Perla from Yuhzny/Pivdennyi to Porto Marghera, Italy, carrying 20,500 metric tons of corn.
- Sara from Odesa to Tekirdag, Turkey, carrying 6,600 metric tons of wheat.
- Lady Eva from Chornomorsk to Patras, Greece, carrying 6,117 metric tons of wheat.
- Sealock from Chornomorsk to Mersin, Turkey, carrying 2,070 metric tons of peas.
In addition, two more vessels whose scheduled departure on Friday was delayed are expected to move this weekend.
- Mubariz Ibrahimov from Odesa to Tekirdag, Turkey, carrying 6,600 metric tons of sunflower oil is expected to sail Saturday.
- Nord Virgo from Yuhzny/Pivdennyi to Huangpu, China, carrying 62,340 metric tons of corn, is expected to sail Sunday.
Destinations indicated are based on information received at the JCC and may change based on commercial activity.
As of Friday, total amount of grain and other foodstuffs exported from the three Ukrainian ports is 1,766,531 metric tons. A total of 160 voyages (86 inbound and 74 outbound) have been enabled so far.
4:30 p.m.: Sweden will offer several hundred billion Swedish crowns in liquidity guarantees to energy firms to help avert a financial crisis after Russia's Gazprom shut the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, the prime minister said on Saturday.
The government will put forward a proposal that allows it to issue credit guarantees, Finance Minister Mikael Damberg said, adding that all of the country's parliamentary parties and the speaker had been informed.
The announcement by Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson came after Russia scrapped a Saturday deadline to resume gas flows via Nord Stream 1, which runs under the Baltic Sea, deepening Europe's difficulties in securing winter fuel.
3:25 p.m.: Kyiv’s long-discussed counteroffensive in southern Ukraine is underway and, as Reid Standish of RFE/RL reports, is making limited gains.
1:03 p.m.: The U.N. nuclear watchdog said Saturday that Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which was captured by Russia in March, has been disconnected from its last remaining main power line.
"Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) has once again lost the connection to its last remaining main external power line, but the facility is continuing to supply electricity to the grid through a reserve line, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed at the site today," the agency said in a statement.
Three other power lines were lost earlier in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the agency said. IAEA inspectors arrived at the site of the power plant earlier this week.
11:43 a.m.: Russia says it has rebuffed Ukrainian efforts to capture the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in a Friday night attack, Reuters reports. In its daily briefing Saturday, Russia's defense ministry said Ukrainian naval forces tried to land on the coast of a lake near the Zaporizhzhia plant in southern Ukraine. The alleged attack occurred while representatives from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were at the plant. The Russian claim has not been independently confirmed.
10:55 a.m.: The largest nuclear plant in Ukraine and Europe stopped supplying electricity to territories held by Ukraine, Kremlin-backed authorities said Saturday, the Associated Press reports. Russian-backed local officials in Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia plant is located, alleged that a Ukrainian shelling attack on Saturday morning destroyed a key power line.
10:05 a.m.:
9:45 a.m.: Europe is “well prepared” if Russia decides to stop all gas deliveries, a top EU leader said Saturday amid an intensifying energy battle between Russia and the West over the war in Ukraine.
"We are well prepared to resist Russia's extreme use of the gas weapon," EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told reporters on the sidelines of an economic forum in Italy, Agence France-Presse reported.
Gentiloni said gas storage in the EU is currently at about 80% but added that the situation varies from country to country.
The EU official's remarks came a day after Russia declined to restart a major pipeline to Germany, citing technical problems.
8:32 a.m.: Russia missed a Saturday deadline to resume operation of a major gas supply route to Germany, Reuters reports. The stoppage is making it difficult for Europe to stockpile enough fuel for the winter. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which runs under the Baltic Sea, was supposed to resume running on Saturday after a 3-day stoppage to fix an oil leak. Moscow has blamed Western sanctions, imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine, for hindering routine pipeline operations. European leaders accuse Russia of using gas as an economic weapon to retaliate against sanctions.
8:03 a.m.: Several thousand mourners lined up in Moscow Saturday to pay their final respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union best remembered for helping end the Cold War. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not attend, citing a busy work schedule. Gorbachev, who was 91, tried to transform the Soviet Union by instituting democratic reforms, but the USSR eventually collapsed. Gorbachev was celebrated in the West but hated by many Russians who blamed him for the loss of global influence that followed the demise of the USSR.
7:48 a.m.: Turkey's president is offering to mediate the standoff at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which is currently controlled by Russian troops, Agence France-Presse reported. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the offer while meeting with Russia leader Vladimir Putin on Saturday.
"President Erdogan stated that Turkey can play a facilitator role in the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, as they did in the grain deal," the Turkish presidency said.
Ukraine is one of the world's largest grain exporters, but all deliveries were stopped after Russia invaded the country in February. Turkey helped facilitate a deal to resume Ukraine grain exports in July.
Turkey has friendly relations with both Russia and Ukraine, supplying drones to Ukraine while also declining to join Western sanctions against Russia.
5:44 a.m.: The latest Ukraine assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said Russian forces conducted ground attacks south and northeast of Bakhmut and along the western and northern outskirts of Donetsk City.
Russian forces continued targeting Ukrainian rear areas along ground lines of communications and may be reinforcing the Southern Axis by reallocating equipment from Russian rear areas in Donbas and Crimea, the update said.
Ukrainian officials, the update said, reported that positional battles are under way in unspecified areas of Kherson Oblast and that Ukrainian forces are continuing to strike Russian ground lines of communications, logistics nodes, and reinforcement efforts throughout southern and central Kherson Oblast.
4:38 a.m.: The latest Ukraine intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry said that with fighting continuing in the Donbas and Kharkiv sectors, a key decision for Russian commanders in coming days will be where to commit any operational reserve force they can generate.
3:22 a.m.: Russia has asked for 56 visas from the United States to allow Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his delegation to travel to New York for the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations this month, but so far has received none.
In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, seen by Reuters on Friday, Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said this was alarming because for the past several months Washington had "been constantly refusing to grant entry visas" to a number of Russian delegates for other U.N. events.
The United States takes seriously its obligations as U.N. host country, said a State Department spokesperson, adding that visa records are confidential under U.S. law so it could not comment on individual cases.
Under the 1947 U.N. "headquarters agreement," the United States is generally required to allow access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats. But Washington says it can deny visas for "security, terrorism, and foreign policy" reasons.
2:32 a.m.: A power grid stress test has shown that extending the lifespan of two of Germany's nuclear power plants could avert an energy shortage this winter, sources told Reuters on Friday, though the government said the results of the tests were not finalized.
Germany has three nuclear power plants still in operation but they are scheduled to be shut down by the end of this year. Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition has grappled with whether to keep them running to counter the effects of soaring gas prices and decades-high inflation following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The stress test showed two plants in the south would help avert an energy crisis if, for example, coal power stations were not producing enough and there was high electricity demand in neighboring France, the sources said. A third nuclear plant in Lower Saxony was not required, the sources said.
1:15 a.m.: U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan will attend the funeral of the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow on Saturday, a State Department spokesperson said Friday.
Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died Tuesday at 91 at a Moscow hospital.
12:02 a.m.: A senior Russian diplomat warned Washington on Friday against supplying long-range weapons to Ukraine, noting that the U.S. is balancing on the edge of direct involvement in the conflict.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also pointed to the country's military doctrine that envisages the use of nuclear weapons in case of a threat to the existence of the Russian state.
"We have repeatedly warned the U.S. about the consequences that may follow if the U.S. continues to flood Ukraine with weapons," Ryabkov said. "It effectively puts itself in a state close to what can be described as a party to the conflict."
He emphasized that Russia will push its offensive in Ukraine until it reaches its aims.
Some information in this report came from Reuters.
