LIVE - Updated at 06:02
Eastern town of Balakliia 'encircled' by Ukrainian forces, Russian official says; Kyiv's top general Valeriy Zaluzhnyi warns of 'direct threat' of Russia's use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Ukraine has launched a surprise counterattack in the north-east Kharkiv region, stretching Russian forces who are also facing Ukrainian attacks in the south.
An official representing the Russian-controlled Donetsk People's Republic said on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces "encircled" Balakliia, an eastern town of 27,000 people situated between Kharkiv and Russian-occupied Izium.
"Today, the Ukrainian armed forces, after prolonged artillery preparation . began an attack on Balakliia," Daniil Bezsonov said on Telegram.
"At this time, Balakliia is in operative encirclement and within the firing range of Ukrainian artillery. All approaches are cut off by fire," he said, adding that a successful Ukrainian offensive would threaten Russian forces in Izium, a strategically important town that Russia has been using for its own offensive in eastern Ukraine.
Unverified footage circulating on social media on Wednesday showed what looked like a Ukrainian soldier posing in front of an entrance sign for Balakliia.
Analysts have said that the initial target of the offensive could be the city of Kupyansk, a key road hub for Russian supplies heading south from the border into eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has remained guarded about the military counter-offensive in the east while Ukraine's army has yet to comment on the alleged new battle plan.
Without giving details, Zelenskiy reported "good news" from the Kharkiv region east of Kyiv, implying some settlements had been recaptured from Russian forces but adding that "now is not the right time to name those settlements where the Ukrainian flag has returned".
In a Wednesday evening address, Zelenskiy cited "the extremely successful hits in areas where the occupiers are concentrated", and thanked Ukrainian artillery troops for what he said were successful strikes against Moscow's forces in the south.
One of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy's advisers, Oleksiy Arestovych, said on Tuesday night that "lightning-fast changes are taking place" in the Kharkiv region, in parallel to the southern offensive in the Kherson region announced by Ukraine's military last week.
Related: Ukraine launches surprise counterattack in Kharkiv region
Hello and welcome back to the Guardian's live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
I'm Samantha Lock and I will be bringing you all the latest developments for the next short while. Whether you've been following our coverage overnight or you've just dropped in, here are the latest lines.
Ukraine has launched a surprise counterattack in the north-east Kharkiv region, stretching Russian forces who are also facing Ukrainian attacks in the south.
It is 7.30am in Kyiv. Here is where things stand:
Ukraine has recaptured several settlements in the north-eastern Kharkiv region as part of a surprise counterattack, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has claimed. "This week we have good news from Kharkiv region," he said in his Wednesday evening address, adding that "now is not the right time to name those settlements where the Ukrainian flag has returned". An official representing the Russian-controlled Donetsk People's Republic said on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces "encircled" Balakliia, an eastern town situated between Kharkiv and Russian-occupied Izium.
US intelligence says Ukrainian forces are making "slow but meaningful progress" on the battlefield. "We'll see how things pan out," defence undersecretary Colin Kahl said. "But I certainly think things are going better on the Ukrainian side right now in the south than is true on the Russian side." The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based thinktank, reported on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces probably captured Verbivka, less than two miles (3.2km) north-west of Balakliia, on Tuesday, citing geo-locatable images posted by Ukrainian soldiers.
Shelling resumed near Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Wednesday. Ukrainian officials accused Russian forces of firing on the city of Nikopol, across from the plant, as well as in Enerhodar, where the power plant is located. "Employees of communal and other services simply do not have time to complete emergency and restoration work, as another shelling reduces their work to zero," the Ukrainian mayor of Enerhodar, Dmytro Orlov, said on Telegram.
The UN has accused Moscow of forcing Ukrainians into detention camps and even prisons via a Kremlin-directed "filtration" program, and removing children from the war zone to hand over to adoptive parents inside Russia. "We are concerned that the Russian authorities have adopted a simplified procedure to grant Russian citizenship to children without parental care, and that these children would be eligible for adoption by Russian families," Ilze Brands Kehris, assistant UN secretary-general for human rights, told the security council. The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the council that estimates indicate authorities have "interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported" between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians to Russia since late February in an attempt "to prepare for an attempted annexation".
The body of a British aid worker who was captured by Russian proxies in April has been handed to Ukraine with "possible signs of unspeakable torture", according to the country's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba. Paul Urey, 45, from Warrington, Cheshire, was captured along with another Briton, Dylan Healey. The two men were charged with "mercenary activities" by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, but in July the Russian proxy authorities announced that Urey had died as a result of "illness and stress". Kuleba said Urey's body had been returned, showing possible signs of torture.
Vladimir Putin has threatened to tear up a fragile Ukraine grain deal allowing exports from the Black Sea. During a bellicose speech at an economic conference in Vladivostok, Putin said he would speak with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, about "limiting the destinations for grain exports", claiming that only two of 87 ships leaving Ukraine with grain had gone to developing countries. Data from the UN showed the claim was false by a factor of at least 10.
Putin also threatened to cut off all deliveries of gas, oil, and coal to Europe if they imposed a price cap on Russian energy imports. "Will there be any political decisions that contradict the contracts? Yes, we just won't fulfil them. We will not supply anything at all if it contradicts our interests," he said, according to a Reuters translation of his remarks. "We will not supply gas, oil, coal, heating oil - we will not supply anything." Recalling a Russian fairytale, he said that Europeans could "freeze like the wolf's tail".
Putin declared that Russia had "lost nothing" in launching a war on Ukraine during a belligerent and defiant speech at the Russian Eastern Economic Forum on Wednesday. "We haven't lost anything and we won't lose anything," he said, when asked about the cost of the invasion. "The main gain is the strengthening of our sovereignty."