A top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow would not stop its military campaign in Ukraine even if Kyiv formally renounced its aspirations to join Nato.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday signed a decree introducing financial benefits for people who left Ukrainian territory to come to Russia, including pensioners, pregnant women and disabled people.

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant occupied by Moscow’s troops came back online yesterday afternoon, the state operator said, after Kyiv claimed it was cut from the national power grid by Russian shelling.

Russia is wasting large volumes of natural gas by burning it in a huge orange flare near the Finnish border at a time when it has sharply cut deliveries to the European Union, scientists and analysts said on Friday.

On a hot, humid East Coast day this summer, a massive container ship pulled into the Port of Baltimore loaded with sheets of plywood, aluminum rods and radioactive material – all sourced from the fields, forests and factories of Russia.

Russia’s Defence Ministry yesterday said its forces had struck a railway station in eastern Ukraine, confirming an attack which Kyiv says also hit a residential area and killed 25 civilians as the nation marked its Independence Day.

President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday vowed that Ukraine will resist the Russian invasion “until the end” without “any concession or compromise”, as the nation marked its Independence Day as well as the six-month anniversary of the start of the war.

The United States yesterday urged its citizens to leave Ukraine, saying it believed Russia was preparing to target civilian and government infrastructure in the next few days as the war reaches the six-month mark.

Nearly 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia invaded, the country’s top military officer said yesterday, as Moscow accused Kyiv over the assassination of the daughter of a leading hardliner.

President Volodymyr Zelensky urged vigilance ahead of Wednesday’s celebrations of 31 years of Ukraine’s independence from Soviet rule, as shells rained down near Europe’s biggest nuclear plant and Russian forces struck in the south and east.

Russia yesterday said it has shot down a drone over the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in annexed Crimea, as President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow independent inspectors to travel to the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

Russia has failed to gain ground in cyberspace against Ukraine almost six months after its invasion of the country, the head of Britain’s GCHQ intelligence service said on Friday.

Explosions erupted overnight near military bases deep in Russian-held areas of Ukraine and Russia itself, an apparent display of Kyiv’s rapidly growing ability to wreak havoc on Moscow’s logistics far from front lines.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has reached a ‘strategic deadlock’ a senior presidential adviser said yesterday as strikes battered the northeast Ukrainian region of Kharkiv.

Russia’s Black Sea fleet based in annexed Crimea has installed a new commander, RIA news agency cited sources as saying yesterday, after Russian military bases on the peninsula were rocked by explosions in the past nine days.

Ukrainian forces reported heavy Russian shelling and attempts to advance on several towns in the eastern region of Donetsk that has become a key focus of the near six-month war, but said they had repelled many of the attacks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned Russian soldiers who shoot at Europe’s largest nuclear power station or use it as a base to shoot from that they will become a “special target” for Ukrainian forces.

Any possible seizure of Russian assets by the United States will completely destroy Moscow’s bilateral relations with Washington, TASS quoted the head of the North American Department at the Russian foreign ministry as saying yesterday.

Ukraine and Russia yesterday accused each other of risking nuclear disaster by shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian forces in a region expected to become one of the next big front lines of the war.

Russia and Ukraine accused each other of shelling Europe's biggest nuclear power plant as the U.N. chief proposed a demilitarised zone at the site amid fears of a catastrophe.