Kursk incursion

• Ukraine’s army chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, said Kyiv controls about 1,000sq km (386sq miles) of the Russian region of Kursk after launching a surprise incursion across the border on August 6.
• Kursk Governor Alexei Smirnov told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Ukrainian ground attacks on his region had resulted in the loss of 28 settlements and that the incursion was about 12km deep and 40km wide.
• Smirnov said 12 civilians have been killed and 121 injured as a result of the fighting. Some 121,000 residents have been evacuated.
• Putin, who held a meeting with senior officials on the situation, said Ukraine was trying to destabilise Russia and that there would be a “worthy response“. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
• Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which also lies on the border with Ukraine, said some residents were being evacuated amid increased Ukrainian military activity. Russia’s state news agency TASS later reported that 11,000 people had been evacuated from the Krasnaya Yaruga district.

Fighting in Ukraine

• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its experts were unable to determine what caused a fire at a dormant cooling tower at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine. Moscow and Kyiv have each blamed the other for the fire.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces had taken control of the settlement of Lysychne in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

Politics and diplomacy

• China urged de-escalation amid Ukraine’s Kursk incursion. “China will continue to maintain communication with the international community and play a constructive role in promoting a political solution to the crisis,” a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said in a statement.
• Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis signed a joint declaration with his Italian counterpart Antonio Tajani expressing “deep concern” over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, but said that Moscow should be present at the next peace summit. The first summit was held in June and Moscow was not invited.
• State prosecutors and anticorruption police in Ukraine said they had arrested one of the country’s four deputy energy ministers and three other suspects as they were caught “red-handed” receiving part of a $500,000 bribe.
• A Russian court sentenced Uzbek community leader Usman Baratov to four years in a penal colony for a social media post mocking troops fighting in Ukraine, the RIA Novosti state news agency reported.

Weapons

• The United States warned Iran against sending ballistic missiles to Russia, saying it would invoke a “severe” US response and undermine efforts by Tehran to improve relations. The Reuters news agency, citing European officials, reported on Friday that Iran was planning to deliver hundreds of Fath-360 close-range ballistic missiles to Moscow.