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The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EDT.
10:09 p.m.: The fighting in eastern Ukraine comes amid an ongoing offensive around Kherson in the south, the Associated Press reported. Analysts suggest Russia may have taken soldiers from the east to reinforce around Kherson, offering the Ukrainians the opportunity to strike a weakened front line.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the television channel Ukraina that the Russians had no food or fuel for their troops in the area as Kyiv had cut off their supply lines.
“It will be like an avalanche,” he said, predicting a Russian fallback. “One line of defense will shake and it will fall.”
The Ukrainian military was more circumspect about the reported gains, claiming Saturday to have taken “more than 1,000 square kilometers” from pro-Kremlin forces this week. It said “in some areas, units of the Defense Forces have penetrated the enemy’s defenses to a depth of 50 kilometers,” matching the British assessment, but did not disclose geographical details.
9:18 p.m.: The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, referencing the sweeping Ukrainian gains, estimating that Kyiv has seized around 2,500 square kilometers in its eastern breakthrough, the Associated Press reported.
The institute said it appeared that “disorganized Russian forces (were) caught in the rapid Ukrainian advance.” They cited social media images of apparent Russian prisoners seized in the advance around Izyum and surrounding towns.
8:34 p.m.: The success of a counter-offensive against Russia shows Ukraine can beat Moscow's forces, but Kyiv needs more weapons from its partners, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Saturday, according to Reuters.
Kuleba, speaking at a news conference with visiting German counterpart Annalena Baerbock, said some allies had initially been hesitant to send weapons, citing the risk of antagonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Now, thank God, we are no longer hearing this argument. ... We have demonstrated we are capable of defeating the Russian army. We are doing that with weapons given to us," he said.
"And so I reiterate: the more weapons we receive, the faster we will win, and the faster this war will end."
7:25 p.m.: Russian troops are regrouping from the Balakliya and Izyum areas to the eastern Donetsk region, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said, the Associated Press reported.
Konashenkov said the Russian move was being made “in order to achieve the stated goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbas,” an eastern area home to two separatist regions that Russia has declared sovereign.
Igor Girkin, a Russian who was an early leader of a Moscow-backed separatist uprising in Donetsk in 2014, sneered at the portrayal of the pullback being strategic.
On the messaging app Telegram, he acidly called it “the brilliant (clearly within the framework of the plan and even ahead of schedule) operation to transfer the cities of Izyum, Balakliya and Kupiansk to respected Ukrainian partners.”
6:50 p.m.: In Hrakove, one of dozens of villages recaptured in the Ukrainian advance, Reuters reporters saw burned-out vehicles bearing the "Z" symbol of Russia's invasion. Boxes still full of ammunition were scattered with strewn rubbish in positions the Russians had abandoned in evident haste.
"Hello everyone, we are from Russia," was spray painted on a wall. Three bodies lay in white body bags in a yard.
The regional chief of police, Volodymyr Tymoshenko, said Ukrainian police had moved in the previous day, and had checked the identities of local residents who had lived under Russian occupation since the invasion's second day.
"The first function is to provide help that they need. The next job is to document the crimes committed by Russian invaders on the territories which they temporarily occupied."
5:37 p.m.: Ukrainian officials stopped short of confirming they had recaptured Izyum, Reuters reported, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's chief of staff Andriy Yermak posted a photo of troops on its outskirts. Earlier, he tweeted an emoji of grapes. The city's name means raisin.
The Russian withdrawal announcement came hours after Ukrainian troops captured the city of Kupiansk further north, the sole railway hub supplying Russia's entire frontline across northeastern Ukraine. That left thousands of Russian troops abruptly cut off from supplies across a stretch of front that has seen some of the most intense battles of the war.
There were signs of trouble for Russia elsewhere along its remaining positions at the front in the east, with pro-Russian officials acknowledging difficulties at other locations and Ukrainians hinting at more advances to come.
4:40 p.m.: Moscow abandoned, Izyum, its main bastion in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, in a sudden collapse on one of the war's principal front lines after surging Ukrainian forces threatened to encircle the area in a shock advance, Reuters reported.
The swift fall of Izyum in Kharkiv province was Moscow's worst defeat since its troops were forced back from the capital Kyiv in March, and could prove a decisive turning point in the six-month war, with thousands of Russian soldiers abandoning ammunition stockpiles and equipment as they flee.
The state-run TASS news agency quoted Russia's defense ministry as saying it had ordered troops to leave the vicinity to reinforce operations elsewhere in neighboring Donetsk.
3:51 p.m.: Earlier Saturday, the British Defense Ministry told reporters it believed the Ukrainians had advanced as much as 50 kilometers south of Kharkiv, and described Russian forces around Izyum as “increasingly isolated,” the Associated Press reported.
“Russian forces were likely taken by surprise. The sector was only lightly held and Ukrainian units have captured or surrounded several towns,” the British military said, adding that the loss of Kupiansk would greatly affect Russian supply lines.
2:45 p.m.: Ukraine's armed forces have liberated around 2,000 square kilometers of territory since a counter-offensive against Russia started earlier this month, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address Saturday.
1:05 p.m.: Residents in Russian-controlled parts of the Kharkiv region have been advised to evacuate to Russia, according to the state-run news agency Tass.
The area’s Russian-installed administrator Vitaly Ganchev reportedly said doing so would “save lives.”
The advisory comes after Russia's defense ministry said it was pulling troops out of two key towns in the region as Ukrainian forces made rapid advances. The towns, Izyum and Balakliya, have been crucial military supply hubs for the Russians.
Andrey Turchak, a senior official in the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, said a volunteer corps had been deployed to help those fleeing Ukraine for Russia, and reported more than 400 vehicles at the border.
12:30 p.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he has spoken with French President Emmanuel Macron about the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, among other issues.
“Our position is the only way to protect Europe from a nuclear disaster is to demilitarize the plant,” Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter.
11:30 a.m.: Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Saturday that it was “regrouping” its forces in the eastern Kharkiv region of Ukraine following Kyiv’s claims its troops had made sweeping gains in the territory held for months by Russia’s army.
“To achieve the goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbas, a decision was made to regroup Russian troops stationed in the Balakliya and Izyum regions, to bolster efforts along the Donetsk front,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
11:08 a.m.: Ukrainian troops were also advancing further east near the village of Hrakove, near the Russian border, in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, reports Agence France-Presse.
A military spokesperson said Ukrainian solders pushed dozens of kilometers into territory captured by Russian troops at the beginning of the invasion.
Russian news agencies meanwhile reported six large explosions in Nova Kakhovka, a town held by Russian troops in the southern Kherson region.
10:25 a.m.: Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense released video showing Ukrainian military members raising Ukraine's national flag and singing the national anthem, in Balakliya, in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, partially occupied by Russian forces, reports Reuters.
The news agency was able to verify the location of video from the buildings and statues seen in the video which matched file imagery of the area. Reuters was not able to establish when the video was recorded. Earlier, Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov said troops had advanced up to 50 kilometers behind Russian lines and recaptured more than 20 villages in the Kharkiv region.
If the advances are confirmed, it would be a serious blow for Russia, which Western intelligence services say has suffered huge casualties. It would also represent a big boost for Ukraine, which is keen to show its Western backers that it is capable of changing the situation on the ground by force and deserves continued support.
9:40 a.m.: Two young soldiers who died fighting for Russia in Ukraine were honored with the unveiling of memorial plaques at the school they attended in Crimea, reports Reuters.
Relatives, students and local officials held a ceremony to commemorate Denis Varavin and Yevgeny Petelko, with young people marching in an honor guard with a Russian tricolor flag and shots fired into the air to salute the two men's memory.
The inscriptions on both plaques read: “True to his oath, he perished while fulfilling his military duty in the course of the special military operation” - the term used by President Vladimir Putin to describe Russia's military campaign in Ukraine.
8:10 a.m.: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arrived in Kyiv Saturday on a surprise visit, reports Agence France-Presse.
It is her second trip to Ukraine and comes a week after Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal's trip to Berlin where he had repeated Kyiv's call for weapons.
“I have travelled to Kyiv today to show that they can continue to rely on us. That we will continue to stand by Ukraine for as long as necessary with deliveries of weapons, and with humanitarian and financial support,” Baerbock said in a statement.
Over the last weeks, Germany has sent howitzers, rocket launchers and anti-aircraft missiles to Kyiv. Heavier weapons like anti-aircraft systems, rocket launchers mounted on pick-ups and anti-drone equipment are also due in a further military aid package.
7:35 a.m.: Ukrainian forces report they have entered the town of Kupiansk in eastern Ukraine, a key supply hub that had been held by invading Russian forces for several months, reports Agence France-Presse. Ukrainian special forces Saturday published images on social media, which they said showed their officers “in Kupiansk, which was and will always be Ukrainian.” A regional official separately posted an image of Ukrainian soldiers in the town of around 27,000 people.
5:30 a.m.: The latest Ukraine assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said the Kremlin is rushing resources to Kharkiv Oblast in response to effective Ukrainian operations.
Ukrainian forces, the update said, may have advanced north of Hrushivka towards a Russian logistics hub in Velykyi Burluk, northeastern Kharkiv Oblast. Ukrainian forces are also continuing counteroffensive operations in southern Ukraine, including interdicting Russian GLOCS, degrading Russian morale.
4:30 a.m.: The United States is working with the United Nations to address Russian complaints that sanctions are hindering its food and fertilizer shipments, even though there has been no disruption to Moscow's exports of the commodities, a senior U.S. official said Friday, according to Reuters.
The United Nations, Turkey, Ukraine and Russia agreed on July 22 on what was described by U.N. chief Antonio Guterres as a package deal to restart Ukraine's Black Sea grain and fertilizer exports and facilitate Russian shipments.
"We're seeing no disruption in Russia's ability to send food to market," James O'Brien, head of the State Department's Office of Sanctions Coordination, told reporters. "The fertilizer is still reaching markets at the same rate that it always has."
While the United States and others have stressed that Russian food and fertilizer is not subject to sanctions imposed over Moscow's Feb. 24 invasion of its neighbor, Russia has asserted there has been a chilling effect on its exports.
O'Brien said the United States would do "everything we can" to address specific complaints and "Russia and the U.N. are just now engaged on some specific requests that it has under the U.N. agreement, and I think we'll see progress in that over the next few weeks."
3:32 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry said a Russian force around Izium is likely increasingly isolated. Ukrainian units are now threatening the town of Kupiansk; its capture would be a significant blow to Russia because it sits on supply routes to the Donbas front line, the update said.
With Ukrainian operations also continuing in Kherson, the update said, the Russian defensive front is under pressure on both its northern and southern flanks.
2:24 a.m.: The United States is deeply concerned by the Russian government's treatment of jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Friday, according to Reuters.
Russian prison authorities have interfered with Navalny's preparation of his defense and communication with his lawyer, Price said in a statement. He also said Navalny has been repeatedly placed in solitary confinement for minor alleged infractions.
Price said Navalny's treatment was "evidence of politically motivated harassment," and he reiterated U.S. calls for the opposition leader's immediate release.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic inside Russia, is serving an 11½-year sentence after being found guilty of parole violations and fraud and contempt of court charges. He says all charges against him were fabricated as a pretext to smother dissent and thwart his political ambitions.
1:19 a.m.: The European Commission on Friday urged EU member states to reassess the terms on which they grant visas to Russian travelers and to root out applicants that pose a security threat, Agence France-Presse reported.
"We should not be naive, Putin's aim is to destroy the EU and he would like to attack us where we are weakest," warned EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson.
She told a news conference in Nuijamaa near Finland's border with Russia, that Moscow was responsible for an unprovoked war in Ukraine and warned that civilians could act as spies, saboteurs or provocateurs.
On Friday, the EU formally suspended a 2007 visa facilitation pact that had made it easier and cheaper for Russians to travel to Europe but stopped short of the full travel ban demanded by some member states.
12:02 a.m.: The Kremlin said on Friday that President Vladimir Putin will discuss with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a landmark deal allowing grain exports from Ukraine that Russia has repeatedly criticized, Agence France-Presse reported.
The agreement between Russia and Ukraine, which was brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July, designated three ports for Kyiv to send much-needed grain supplies through a Russian blockade.
But Russia has voiced increasing criticism of the deal, saying its own exports have suffered. Putin this week claimed most of the consignments were arriving in Europe, not poor countries where grain was needed most.
Ukrainian officials have denied the claim and data compiled by a monitoring group as part of the accord does not reflect Putin's assertion.
Some information in this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
