Almost 500,000 troops killed or injured so far in Ukraine war, US officials say – as it happened

Russia’s foreign ministry said it had banned entry to several unnamed Moldovan officials on Friday, Reuters reports, citing the Russian state news agency RIA.

Relations between Russia and Moldova, which has a pro-European government, have worsened sharply since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moldova, a tiny ex-Soviet republic, shares a border with Ukraine and also with the Nato member Romania.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said he spoke with Bahrain’s Foreign Minister, Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Alzayani, to “express [his] gratitude for Bahrain’s participation in the Peace Formula talks in Jeddah.”

On Twitter, which is now known as X, he added: “We discussed the next steps for implementing the Formula and agreed on the next bilateral contacts.”

• Russian forces have destroyed Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow and its Black Sea Fleet. Russia’s defence ministry said its air force had downed a Ukrainian drone over the capital at about 4am (1am GMT) on Friday. Footage showed damage to an expo centre on the Krasnopresnenskaya embankment of the Moskva River, 100 metres (328 ft) from Moscow city. Meanwhile, along the Black Sea, Russian navy patrol ships shot down a drone late Thursday night about 237km (147 miles) south-west of Sevastopol, the base of its Black Sea Fleet on the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula.
  

• A coalition of 11 countries is due to start training Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16 jets this month in Denmark. The training was agreed a day after Ukraine said that, based on current timelines, it would not be able to operate the jets by autumn or winter.
  

• A large fire is burning at the Russian Novorossiysk fuel oil terminal in Novorossiysk, one of the largest ports on the Black Sea that is located about 107 miles (172km) from Crimea. It is unclear as of now if the fire was caused by a Ukrainian drone strike.
  

• The thermal power plant in the Donetsk oblast was operating today at a reduced capacity due to shelling that damaged the electricity line, said Ukraine’s energy ministry. More than 14,000 consumers remain without electricity in the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts. In the Kherson oblast, about 11,000 consumers remain without power after Russians destroyed the Kahovska dam two months ago.
  

• The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces is estimating that Russian troops lost 460 personnel yesterday, bringing Ukraine’s total estimate of Russian personnel killed since the invasion to 256,510.
  

• One civilian was injured and private houses, farm buildings and gas pipelines were damaged in the Russian shelling of the Kherson oblast in the early hours of Friday, Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said.
  

• Russian Telegram channels are reporting that a Ukrainian flag was hoisted in front of the Federal Security Service building in Nizhny Nogorod, a city located about 264 miles (425 km) east of Moscow. The flag was quickly removed.
  

• Sweden has approved a €270m security assistance package for Ukraine, said Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s minister of defence.

Explosions are being reported in the Zaporizhzhia oblast.

The thermal power plant in the Donetsk oblast was operating today at a reduced capacity due to shelling that damaged the electricity line, said Ukraine’s energy ministry.

Russian shelling disconnected 110 kV overhead lines twice, leading to limited electricity production at one of the region’s thermal power plant. Russian activity also forced workers to turn off lower-capacity overhead lines, leaving more than 14,000 consumers remained without electricity.

In the Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts, some consumers also remain without electricity. In the Kherson oblast, about 11,000 consumers remain without power after Russians destroyed the Kahovska dam two months ago.

Two months after Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovskaya dam, killing power to parts of the Kherson oblast, electricity is now being restored to parts of the region, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram.

The return of electricity comes ahead of the school year, in which 68,500 children will have to continue their schooling remotely due to constant shelling. “We cannot start the school year offline,” Prokudin said.

The Korabel district was the hardest hit in this outage, but Prokudin said workers have already reconnected the first houses to a power supply.

A large fire is burning at the Novorossiysk fuel oil terminal in Novorossiysk, one of the largest ports on the Black Sea that is located about 107 miles (172 km) from Crimea.

The terminal, which has a capacity of 119,000 cubic metres and a throughput of 5 million tons a year, is Russia’s main oil export hub in the region.

It’s unclear as of now if the fire was caused by a Ukrainian drone strike, of which there have been several on Russian territory in the past day.

Russian Telegram channels are reporting that a Ukrainian flag was hoisted in front of the Federal Security Service building in Nizhny Nogorod, a city located about 264 miles (425 km) east of Moscow.

The flag was quickly removed.

Ukrainian forces attacked the Belgorod oblast in Russia heavily over the past day, said regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

The Belgorod oblast, which shares the border with the Kharkiv oblast in eastern Ukraine, had 16 artillery shells and 67 mortar shells fired across the region yesterday, Gladkov said.

Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for any of the attacks on Belgorod. The general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said the Ukrainian air force yesterday launched seven air strikes on a concentration of troops, weapons and military equipment, as well as two more air strikes on anti-aircraft missile systems.

As well, the Ukrainian missile and artillery troops hit four Russian artillery systems at their firing position, two ammunition depots, and one electronic warfare.

Sweden has approved a €270m security assistance package for Ukraine, said Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s minister of defence.