Here are the key events from Friday, August 19.
Diplomacy
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The United Nations chief Antonio Guterres has expressed grave concern at the situation around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, warning any potential damage to the plant would be “suicide”.
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Guterres called for the demilitarisation of Europe’s biggest nuclear plant, but his proposal was rejected by the Russian foreign ministry.
- The UN secretary-general’s comments came after he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Lviv amid growing fears of a nuclear catastrophe.
- Erdogan renewed his offer to act as a mediator. Turkey, along with the UN, has brokered a deal to allow the resumption of Ukrainian grain exports to address the global food crisis.
- The UN wants to step up grain exports from Ukraine before winter, Guterres said.
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The United States is preparing about $800m of additional military aid for Ukraine and could announce it as soon as Friday, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Fighting
- Russia is keeping up a steady bombardment of the northeastern Kharkiv front to tie down Ukrainian forces and prevent them from being used for counterattacks in other regions, Britain’s defence ministry said on Friday.
- Seventeen people were killed and 42 wounded in two separate Russian attacks on Kharkiv, the regional governor said.
- At least four explosions hit an area near the Russian Belbek military airport north of Sevastopol in annexed Crimea, three local sources said, but a pro-Moscow official said no damage had been done.
- The inhabitants of two villages in southern Russia near the Ukrainian border were evacuated after a nearby ammunition storage depot caught fire, but no one was hurt, an official said.
