An inspection team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is en route to Europe's largest nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, the UN atomic watchdog's director said on Wednesday.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi arrived in Kyiv late on Monday, along with a team of 13, to visit the besieged Zaporizhzhia plant.
"We are now finally moving after six months of ... efforts. The IAEA is moving into the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant," Mr Grossi told reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday morning before departing.
Relentless fighting near the plant has raised fears of a nuclear disaster, with the power station again targeted at the weekend by fresh shelling.
It remains unclear when the IAEA team will reach the nuclear plant and when the inspection will be conducted.
The United States has called for a complete shutdown of the plant and for a demilitarised zone to be established around it.
A Russian-appointed Zaporizhzhia government official was quoted by the Interfax news agency on Wednesday as saying that two of the plant's six reactors were running.
Yevgeny Balitsky, the head of the Russian-installed administration, said the IAEA inspectors "must see the work of the station in one day".
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"The dice are rolling, the curtain has been whipped back. We finally know the secret in the middle, around which we have been dancing," The Telegraph's associate editor Dominic Nicholls writes.
"Ukraine's counter-offensive has begun.
"Weeks of shaping operations, those precursors so vital to a successful military campaign, have given way to the main event."
Read the full analysis here.
Ukraine broke through Russia's defences around Kherson at several points, officials said as Volodymyr Zelensky told enemy soldiers defending the city to "run away" if they want to live.
Fighting was reported along a more than 100-mile stretch of front line in the south of Ukraine after the Ukrainian president announced the operation to retake Kherson on Monday night.
"The occupiers should know we shall oust them to the border, the line of which has not changed," Mr Zelensky said. "If they want to survive, it's time for the Russian military to run away. Go home."
Read the full story here.
Russia is locking conscripts in hot rooms without water until they agree to sign up to fight in Ukraine, a Russian news agency has reported.
The Kremlin has not declared war in Ukraine, so only contract soldiers can legally be sent to the front.
The pressure tactics reportedly applied by military recruiters are a sign they are struggling to fill so-called "volunteer battalions".
Read the full story here.
Before Maxim Lietova deployed to the frontlines against the Russian invasion on Tuesday, the 38-year-old father of two hitchhiked 500 miles across Ukraine to see his family for just one day.
If the visit seemed fleeting, it was significantly longer than the 20 minutes he was able to spend with his wife Olga when she drove a similar distance to see him as he returned from military training in the UK last month.
A video Olga posted of their emotional reunion caught the attention of over two million people online - to the bemusement of Maxim, who does not use social media.
Read the full story here.
Boris Johnson said the Kremlin is "intent on undoing the good" of Mikhail Gorbachev and attempting to "recreate that Soviet empire" with its war in Ukraine, as he paid tribute to the former leader of the Soviet Union who died on Tuesday night.
Speaking outside a police station in Lewisham, south-east London, the Prime Minister said: "Mikhail Gorbachev is one of those people who changed the world and unquestionably changed it for the better. When you look at what he did to make Europe whole, free, to give freedom to the countries of the former Soviet Union - it was quite an extraordinary thing.
"And of course, Mikhail Gorbachev is one of those people who triggered a change, a series of changes, that perhaps he didn't anticipate.
"Maybe he paid his own political price for it but when history is written, he will be, I think, one of the authors of fantastic change for the better in the world.
"And what I worry about today is that the current leadership in Moscow is intent on undoing the good of Mikhail Gorbachev, and is intent on a revanchist attempt, a revenge driven attempt, to recreate that Soviet empire, and you're seeing that in Ukraine - that's the tragedy, something that Mikhail Gorbachev would have thought was absolutely unthinkable, unwarranted."
Ukrainian armoured forces have continued to assault Russia's southern grouping of forces on several axes across the South of the country since Monday, the MoD said.
Ukrainian formations have pushed the Russian front line back some distance in places, exploiting relatively thinly held Russian defences, the ministry said in its daily intelligence bulletin.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday accused Russia of attacking the area near the nuclear plant ahead of a planned visit by UN inspectors.
The IAEA inspection team is currently en route to the nuclear plant.
"Unfortunately, Russia does not stop provocations precisely in those directions from which the mission is supposed to arrive at the station," Mr Zelensky said in his evening address on Tuesday.
"But I hope that the IAEA mission will be able to start its work. The situation at the ZNPP and in Enerhodar, in the surrounding areas, remains extremely threatening.
"The occupiers do not leave the plant, continue shelling and do not take away their weapons and ammunition from the territory of the NPP. They intimidate our plant's staff. The risk of a radiation disaster due to Russian actions does not decrease for a single hour."
Russia halted gas supplies via a major pipeline to Europe on Wednesday, intensifying an economic battle between Moscow and Brussels.
The outage for maintenance on Nord Stream 1 means that no gas will flow to Germany between 1am GMT on August 31 and 1am GMT on September 3, according to Russian state energy giant Gazprom.
Data from entry points linking Nord Stream 1 to the German gas network via the Baltic Sea confirmed flows fell to zero early on Wednesday.
Ukraine broke through Russia's defences around Kherson at several points, officials said as Volodymyr Zelensky told enemy soldiers defending the city to "run away" if they want to live.
Fighting was reported along a more than 100-mile stretch of front line in the south of Ukraine after the Ukrainian president announced the operation to retake Kherson on Monday night.
"The occupiers should know we shall oust them to the border, the line of which has not changed," Mr Zelensky said.
"If they want to survive, it's time for the Russian military to run away. Go home."
Read the full story here
Boris Johnson has praised former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's "tireless commitment" in a tribute, adding he remained an "example to us all" amid Russia's war on Ukraine.
Gorbachev died on Tuesday night at the age of 91.
Mr Johnson was among the many world leaders to make reference to the timing of the former Soviet leader's death, during the worst period of relations between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.
"I always admired the courage and integrity he showed in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion," the Prime Minister said.
He added: "In a time of Putin's aggression in Ukraine, his tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all."
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I'm saddened to hear of the death of Gorbachev.
I always admired the courage & integrity he showed in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion.
In a time of Putin's aggression in Ukraine, his tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all.