P owerful explosions have rocked a Russian airbase following a string of blasts deep in occupied Crimea.
Plumes of black smoke were seen on Tuesday at the base near Gvardeyskoye in the centre of the annexed peninsula, according to reports in Russia's Kommersant newspaper.
Earlier on Tuesday, Russia's Defence Ministry separately blamed a series of explosions around Dzhankoi in northern Crimea on "sabotage", state-owned news agency RIA reported.
A military storage facility, power plant, railway track and residential buildings were damaged, the ministry claimed in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.
It comes a week after Ukrainian special forces were said to have blown up nine warplanes at an airstrip near the Saki air base in western Crimea.
Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the recent series of blasts in the peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Follow the latest updates in Wednesday's live blog.
T oday's top stories included:
E stonia will this week become the first EU country to close its borders to more than 50,000 Russians with previously issued visas.
The ban comes just four days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued a fresh call for EU states to ban visas for Russian nationals to keep the bloc from becoming a "supermarket" open to anyone with the means to enter.
Like many of the hundreds of Russians crossing the border each day at the Estonian town Narva, Anna is worried she will not be able to keep coming to Estonia, where she visits the graves of relatives.
"We hope that countries will come up with some solution. Maybe they can agree on something. I keep myself away from politics but since my relatives are buried here I would like to keep coming," she said.
"But what can you do. For us, regular people we can't solve this. This has to be negotiated and I hope our countries at some point will reach agreement and find compromise".
T he UN's Secretary-General is to discuss a political solution to the war and shelling at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant with Volodymyr Zelensky and Tayyip Erdogan.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Antonio Guterres will meet the presidents of Ukraine and Turkey in Kyiv on Thursday before visiting the Black Sea port of Odesa on Friday, where crucial grain exports have resumed following a wartime deal between Russia and Ukraine brokered by Turkey and the UN.
On Saturday, he will visit the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul, which is made up of Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and UN officials overseeing the Black Sea exports of Ukraine grain and fertiliser.
Ukraine and Russia have exchanged blame for shelling at Europe's largest nuclear plant.
⚡️ 1 person killed, 10 injured in Russian shelling of Nikopol in Dnipropetrovska Oblast, Orikhiv in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. In both cities, residential areas were targeted, according to reports from the governors of the two oblasts.
O ne person was killed and ten others were injured in Russian shelling of two Ukrainian cities, their governors have said.
The attacks in south Ukraine happened in Nikopol in Dnipropetrovska Oblast and Orikhiv in Zaporizhia Oblast.
A Ministry of Defence source has denied claims by Russia that it had asked for permission to fly a spy plane over the country, Reuters reports.
A new record of daily traffic is recorded on the Crimean bridge that connects Crimea and Russia. Around 40K cars passed in both directions yesterday. Russians are leaving the peninsula 💙💛.
V ladimir Putin's vanity project and Europe's longest bridge is reportedly seeing record numbers of Russians fleeing Crimea for the mainland.
Volodymyr Zelensky's former spokeswoman tweeted 40,000 cars passed in both directions of the 12mi Kerch Bridge on Monday, which was built by Russia after it annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
"The Crimean bridge was built taking into account possible risks, Russia will not allow it to be destroyed under any circumstances," said the Russian Vice-Speaker Konstantin Kosachev.
Also known as the Crimean Bridge, Putin personally opened it to traffic and a Russian rom-com about its construction, called 'The Crimean Bridge. Made with Love!' was released to cinemas in the country in 2018.
R ussia's Defence Ministry has said a MiG-31 fighter jet was scrambled to intercept a British RC-135 spy plane on Monday.
It said that it had crossed its border near the Syvatoi Nose cape between the Barents and the White Seas.
Today the ministry warned Britain against a planned spy plane flight over Russian territory, saying the country's air force has been given orders to prevent an intrusion.
It claimed the UK had sent a notice informing about a planned flight of an RC-135 reconnaissance plane along a route that partly passes over Russian territory.
"We regard this action as a deliberate provocation," the ministry said, adding that the Russian air force has been "given the task to prevent the violation of the Russian border."
"All possible consequences of this deliberate provocation will lie entirely with the British side," the ministry said in a statement, without specifying when and where the British flight was planned.
M oscow has branded London's request for permission for its RC-135 spy plane to fly over Russia "a deliberate provocation".
Russia's Defence Ministry added that its airforce had been tasked with preventing any violations of Russian airspace.
NEW: Russian forces have assaulted Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, with repeated unlawful attacks that killed and wounded civilians and damaged healthcare facilities and homes. At least 1,019 civilians, including 52 children, have been killed. https://t.co/N1ko9vIxkV pic.twitter.com/sFuHvITaqg
Swiss chocolate maker Lindt & Spruengli has decided to exit the Russian market because of the invasion of Ukraine, the company has said.
F amous for its Lindor chocolate balls and golden foil-wrapped Easter rabbits, a spokesman said it had decided in March to close its shops and suspend deliveries to Russia temporarily.
"Following its announcement on March 9, 2022, the Lindt & Spruengli Group decided to exit the Russian market," it said on Tuesday. "We will support our employees in Russia and act in accordance with local regulations."
R ussia's spy service has claimed Ukrainian saboteurs blew up power lines from the Kursk nuclear power plant in western Russia.
RIA Novosti news agency said the FSB was now looking for saboteurs and their possible accomplices after the alleged attack led to "a violation of the technological process of the operation of the nuclear power plant".
"Ukrainian sabotage groups blew up six towers of high-voltage power lines through which the Kursk nuclear power plant supplies power both to the region and neighbouring entities," the FSB said in a statement.
Following multiple explosions, long queues are forming outside of train stations in Crimea as people try to flee. However, 🇷🇺authorities have cancelled rail travel in response to 'sabotage attacks'. For the time being, no trains are scheduled to leave.#Ukraine #Russian pic.twitter.com/8R094LuU3k
S treaming service Twitch has been fined two million roubles (£27,350) for hosting a short video containing so-called "fake" information about alleged war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, reports Russian media.
Moscow has repeatedly threatened to fine sites - including Google, Twitter and Wikipedia - it accuses of hosting "fake" content related to its military campaign in Ukraine.
A Russian court accused Twitch, a US-based live-streaming service popular with video gamers, of failing to remove a 31-second clip of a girl from the town of Bucha, the Kommersant newspaper reported. It did not specify the content of the video.
Ukraine and its allies accuse Russian forces of committing atrocities in Bucha, a satellite town of Kyiv, after Moscow launched its invasion in February. Russia denies the charge.
1/28 Putin's war with Ukraine has been going on for 6 months now. From Day 1, Western leaders firmly stated that Putin's oligarchs and bribe-takers would face imminent sanctions and wouldn’t get away this time. But they did. This is a rage thread about almost nothing being done. pic.twitter.com/vJ45Ytzhpq
J ailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has said Western sanctions against Putin's oligarchs and allies amount to "almost nothing being done".
A Russian court found 80s Soviet rock legend Yuri Shevchuk guilty of "discrediting" the Army when he condemned the invasion of Ukraine.
DDT's frontman, 65, was fined the maximum 50,000 rubles (£677), the press service of a court in the central city of Ufa said on the Telegram messenger.
According to the statement, Shevchuk made a speech during his concert that contained “public calls to prevent the use of Russia’s Armed Forces”.
Online videos showed him telling his audience in Ufa that it “is not the president’s ass that needs to be licked and kissed” on May 18.
“Now people are being killed in Ukraine. Why? Our guys are dying in Ukraine. Why?” he told a cheering crowd.
Shevchuk, who did not attend the hearing in person as he was isolating for Covid, said in a statement: "I, Yuri Shevchuk have always been against war, in any country, at any time... I think all problems and difficulties of a political nature between countries and people should be resolved through diplomacy."
He has publicly criticised Vladimir Putin and opposed the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
M argarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russia's state-broadcaster RT, has said on Twitter: "A person has every moral right to be against war.
"Against wars in general, against any war. And he also has the full moral right to speak out against the war, to express, so to speak, his civic position, like Leo Tolstoy."
All Ukraine under an air raid alert now. Explosions as a result from missile strikes reported in the northern Zhytomyr region, bordering Belarus. In the last days, Russia brought a lot of equipment and weapons to Belarusian airfields with a plan to launch more missiles on Ukraine
M issile strikes are reported in the northern Zhytomyr region near the Belarusian border, after the Kremlin amassed weapons in its ally's airfields.
🇷🇺 do not comply with fire safety. - Yuri Ignat, speaker of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of 🇺🇦. Details: "Dzhankoy (Crimea) is another airfield where the 🇷🇺 have concentrated attack helicopters and other military equipment." Dzhankoy today ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/SsG1DrIIae
The Ukrainian Air Force has tweeted a video of the explosion at the ammunition depot near Dzhankoy in occupied Crimea.
I t quoted Yuri Ignat, speaker of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, saying: "Dzhankoy (Crimea) is another airfield where the have concentrated attack helicopters and other military equipment."
T he first Ukraine grains shipment chartered by the UN World Food Programme has set off for Africa carrying 23,000 tonnes of wheat.
The MV Brave Commander left the Black Sea port of Pivdennyi and will sail to Djibouti "for delivery to Ethiopia", the infrastructure ministry said on Telegram.
The government has said it hopes two or three similar shipments will follow soon.
The WFP says a record 345 million people in 82 countries face acute food insecurity and up to 50 million people in 45 countries are on the brink of famine and risk being tipped over the edge without humanitarian support.
The Ukrainian port authority said that five boats in total with an overall cargo volume of 110,000 tonnes left Ukraine on Tuesday.
A total of 21 ships have left Ukrainian ports since the start of the war.
The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, which was the first to set sail on August 1 under a wartime deal to unlock Black Sea export routes, was pictured in Syria on Monday.
Brave Ukrainian mother Lena Kulakovska holds her newborn Nicole after fleeing her home in Bucha while heavily pregnant.
S he gave birth in Derriford hospital in Plymouth, Devon, last month.
She, her son Kyryl Kulakovskyi, seven, and daughter Arina Kulakovska, five, are being hosted by Nick Shutt, the Archdeacon of Plymouth and his wife Corinne.
Lena said: "It's different having a baby in Britain - the medicine is different.
"Corinne helped me go to hospital and a midwife came to visit me once.
"It was a very hard decision to leave Ukraine while heavily pregnant.
"I didn't want to go anywhere - I stayed in Ukraine until June hoping the war would end. "But I didn't want to give birth in a basement so I decided to go."
Lena and her husband Sergii were just about to move into their new home in Bucha when the war began.
She believes Russian forces destroyed her flat.
E stonia will remove all public Soviet memorials in Navra amid fears of rising ethnic divisions in the majority Russian-speaking city.
Prime Minister Kaja Kallas cited "tensions are rising in and around" the city after authorities abruptly removed a WW2-era Soviet tank by crane, without giving details of any potential interference.
While Estonia is a member of Nato and the EU and has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia, nearly a quarter of its population of 1.3 million are ethnic Russians, and the government has been anxious of the minority falling under influence of its former overlord.
In its statement on Tuesday the Estonian government also said it would remove more Soviet monuments in Narva, such as a Soviet-era monument to war victims, which would be replaced by "a neutral grave marker".
Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu also said that any foreigner opposing the removals would have their residence permit revoked, news agency BNS reported.
Estonians have a mixed view of their history: invaded by both Nazi German and Soviet forces in the war, they had men on both sides of the conflict.
The Soviet era also saw the deportation of tens of thousands of Estonians to Siberian labour camps. Its north-eastern Ida-Viru county, which borders with Russia and includes Narva, is three-quarter ethnic Russian, according to official statistics.
Former Chelsea FC striker Andriy Shevchenko and Hollywood actor Liev Schreiber on Monday spoke to the media in front of homes destroyed by shelling in Borodianka, near Kyiv.
S hevchenko, currently the coach of the Ukrainian national football team, has previously said sport has a major role to play in uniting people behind his country.
"Personally, it's very hard for me. I still feel frustrated about what happened," he said.
"I sometimes asked the same question and couldn't find the answer, but now we only have one direction. We need to win this war and start to rebuild the country."
Schreiber, whose maternal grandfather, Alex Milgram, emigrated to the US from Ukraine, starred in the first three Scream horror films and played comic villain Sabretooth in the X-men movies.
The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing. The map below is the latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 16 August 2022 Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/x42xdnOdvu 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/j05CkcFL8O
S eparatist militias are reportedly refusing to fight in eastern Ukraine.
A widely-shared online video shows soldiers from the Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) protesting against taking part in offensives outside Luhansk.
Several Ukrainian channels shared the unverified video of soldiers from LNR Battalion 2740 refusing to fight for the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) on Monday.
Luhansk and Donetsk form part of the Donbas region of Ukraine, parts of which are respectively held by the Russian-backed LNR and DNR.
US think tank the Institute for the Study of War said: "Its message reflects a larger trend of diminished LNR investment in and morale to support the Russian war in Ukraine... This trend is particularly dangerous to Russian forces seeking to recruit still more new soldiers from Luhansk Oblast to make up for recent losses.
"Further division within Russian-led forces also threatens to further impede the efficiency of the Russian war effort.
"DNR units have previously recorded similar appeals when operating in Luhansk, Kharkiv, and Kherson Oblasts, which may indicate that proxy troops might not fully support the Kremlin’s expansive invasion plans."
Гарний феєрверк як ні крути. Окупований Крим. Джанкой. Слава Україні та її воїнам 🇺🇦 Telegram - https://t.co/GLExONwKU2 https://t.co/41fyVb8yaV pic.twitter.com/CmKsns6DHC
M oscow has claimed the latest major explosion in occupied Crimea was the result of sabotage.
A major fire broke out at a military warehouse near the town of Dzhankoi in the north of the peninsula today.
Russia's Defence Ministry said that civilian infrastructure, including an electricity supply station had been damaged as a result of "sabotage".
It comes after Ukrainian special forces were said to have blown up warplanes behind enemy lines in western Crimea.
Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the string of recent explosions in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
F inland will reduce the number of visas issued to Russians to 10 per cent of the current amount, foreign minister Pekka Haavisto said.
He said the Finnish foreign ministry will cut the number of available visa application appointments from September 1, which will effectively lead to fewer visas issued to Russians.
E uropean Union member states would show solidarity if there were to be energy supply shortages in light of the war in Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told a news conference in Stockholm.
T wo-thirds of people on the planet would die from starvation within two years of a nuclear war between the US and Russia, researchers have concluded.
Modelling by Rutgers University, in the US, suggested nuclear weapon detonation would cause massive fires and inject soot into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight from reaching the surface and devastating crops.
The biggest war would bring starvation to three-quarters of people and kill up to five billion within two years.
You can read the full report from our Science Editor Sarah Knapton here.
Sweden will live up to the conditions of a memorandum of understanding agreed with Ankara to overcome Turkey's objections to Swedish membership of Nato, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has said.
S he also told a news conference that the decision to extradite a man to Turkey wanted for fraud made last week was made "according to Swedish and international law, and we will continue to work that way".
R ussian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a speech at the Moscow international security conference on Tuesday that the Aukus bloc of Australia, the United Kingdom and United States had the potential to develop into "a political-military alliance".
R ussian President Vladimir Putin has accused Washington of seeking to prolong the conflict in Ukraine and of fuelling conflicts elsewhere in the world, including with the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.
"The situation in Ukraine shows that the US is trying to prolong this conflict. And they act in exactly the same way, fuelling the potential for conflict in Asia, Africa and Latin America," Mr Putin said in televised remarks.
"The American adventure in relation to Taiwan is not just a trip of an individual irresponsible politician, but part of a purposeful, conscious US strategy to destabilise and make chaotic the situation in the region and the world," he added.
He said the visit was a "brazen demonstration of disrespect for the sovereignty of other countries and for its (Washington's) international obligations".
"We see this as a carefully planned provocation," Mr Putin said.
R ussian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a speech at the Moscow international security conference that Russia had no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Mr Shoigu also alleged that Ukrainian military operations are being planned by the United States and Britain, and that NATO had increased its troop deployment in Eastern and Central Europe "several times over".
R ussian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Western countries were seeking to extend a "NATO-like system" into the Asia-Pacific region.
Delivering the welcome address at the Moscow international security conference, Putin said that the United States was trying to "drag out" the conflict in Ukraine, and that U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan earlier this month had been "a thoroughly planned provocation".
R ussia's Defence Ministry said on Tuesday there were no serious casualties in an explosion at an ammunition depot in the town of Mayskoye in Russian-controlled Crimea earlier on Tuesday, state-owned news agency RIA reported.
Interfax quoted the defence ministry as saying that a fire had broken out in the temporary storage area of the ammunition depot.
A UN-chartered vessel laden with grain set off from Ukraine for Africa on Tuesday following a deal to relieve a global food crisis, the ministry in charge of shipments said.
The MV Brave Commander, which is loaded with 23,000 tonnes of wheat, departed from the Black Sea port of Pivdennyi and will sail to Djibouti "for delivery to Ethiopia", the infrastructure ministry said on Telegram.
A transformer substation caught fire after a blast in the town of Dzhankoi in Crimea, Russia's RIA Novosti news agency reported on Tuesday citing Crimean law enforcement.
R ussia’s Black Sea Fleet is struggling to exercise effective sea control, despite continuing to use long-range cruise missiles in offensives, the Ministry of Defence said.
The ministry added Russia had lost its Moskva flagship, a significant portion of its naval aviation combat jets and control of Snake Island.
"The Black Fleet’s current limited effectiveness undermines Russia’s overall invasion strategy, in part because the amphibious threat to Odesa has now been largely neutralised," the ministry said on Twitter on Tuesday.
"This means Ukraine can divert resources to press Russian ground forces elsewhere."
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 16 August 2022 Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/jrmLUD5Osz 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/lWN6wkwQh1
T he ship Brave Commander has departed the Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi, carrying the first cargo of humanitarian food aid bound for Africa from Ukraine since Russia's invasion began.
Earlier, a joint coordination centre, set up by Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations, said it had approved the ship's departure.
A spokesman for the United Nations advised it had the logistics and security capacity to support a visit by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, but a Russia diplomat imposed conditions.
Russian news agencies quoted a senior diplomat as saying that no such mission could pass through Kyiv, as it was too dangerous.
"Imagine what it means to pass through Kyiv - it means they get to the nuclear plant through the front line," Igor Vishnevetsky, deputy head of the foreign ministry's nuclear proliferation and arms control department, said.
"This is a huge risk, given that Ukraine's armed forces are not all made up in the same way."
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, speaking on Monday, also said: "The UN Secretariat has no authority to block or cancel any IAEA activities."
Both countries have said they want IAEA inspectors to visit. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said he was ready to lead a mission and called on Russia and Ukraine to cooperate.
T he Ukrainian military on Monday said that it had repelled more than a dozen Russian attacks in the country's east and north, including attempts to advance on key cities in the eastern industrial Donbas region.
The military's general staff on Facebook revealed that Russian troops had attempted to push towards Kramatorsk, one of two major cities in the eastern Donetsk province that remain under Ukrainian control, but "they failed completely and chaotically retreated to their previous positions."
Russian forces had also staged an unsuccessful assault on Bakhmut, a strategic town in the Donetsk region.
In the same update, the military claimed that Russia had tried and failed to break through Ukrainian defence lines in the northern Kharkiv region, but were "met harshly and thrown back".
T errifying footage has emerged of two children accidentally setting off a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on a deserted street in southern Ukraine.
The footage, captured by a CCTV system in Russian-occupied Kherson, appears to show one of the youngsters with the cylindrical weapon, while the other seemingly holds an AK-47 assault rifle.
Close-up shots of the boys show them aiming the weapons as if they were unaware of them being loaded.
Read the full story by Joe Barnes here
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