TOP HEADLINES

• Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for striking a jail holding Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russian-held Olenivka, with Moscow saying 40 prisoners and eight prison staff were killed. Russia's defense ministry says Ukraine carried out strikes with US-supplied long-range missiles, in an "egregious provocation" designed to stop soldiers from surrendering. Ukraine's military denies carrying out the attack, blaming Russia's forces for "a targeted artillery shelling" on the detention facility. READ MORE BELOW

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the Black Sea port of Chornomorsk in southern Ukraine to show his country is ready to start exporting grain under a UN-brokered deal aimed at easing global food shortages, and said Kyiv was awaiting the signal for the first shipment.

• Ukraine stepped up its counter-offensive against Russian forces in the south while Moscow bombed Kyiv's outskirts for the first time in weeks. Fifteen people were injured when missiles hit military installations in Vyshhorod district on the edge of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram. READ MORE BELOW

• Five people were killed and 25 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a flight school in the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi, the regional governor said. More than 10 Russian missiles also hit the city of Chernihiv about 120 kilometers northeast of Kyiv, regional governor Vyacheslav Chausov told Ukrainian TV.

• The Kyiv court of appeals reduced a life sentence handed to a Russian soldier in May for pre-meditated murder in the country's first war crimes trial, to 15 years. Russian soldier Vadim Shishimarin, 21 at the time of the ruling, was found guilty of war crimes for killing an unarmed civilian and handed a life sentence, in the first verdict of its kind after the conflict began.

• ​​The Kremlin expressed "solidarity" over the One-China position after Chinese President Xi Jinping warned U.S. leader Joe Biden not to "play with fire" over regional issues. "Certainly we are in solidarity," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel next month to South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, the State Department announced, as Washington ramps up diplomacy in Africa to counter a Russian charm offensive.

• French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman agree to work "to ease the effects" of the Ukraine conflict, Macron's office said after a meeting in Paris. Western leaders snubbed the 36-year-old prince over his suspected role in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

• Belarus ordered its ambassador in the UK to return to the isolated country over London's "hostile" sanctions against Minsk for its suppression of 2020 mass protests and role in Russia's Ukraine offensive. 

• North Macedonia plans to donate an unspecified number of Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine as it seeks to modernize its own military to meet NATO standards, its defense ministry said.

IN DETAIL

Moscow and Kyiv exchange blame for prison bombing

Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of bombing a jail holding Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russian-held territory, with Russia saying 40 prisoners and eight prison staff were killed.

Russia's defense ministry said the Ukrainian strikes were carried out with U.S.-supplied long-range missiles, in an "egregious provocation" designed to stop soldiers surrendering.

It said that among the dead were Ukrainian forces that had laid down their arms after repelling Moscow's assault on the sprawling Azovstal steel works in Mariupol.

Following the strike on the prison, Russian state-television showed what appeared to be destroyed barracks and tangled metal beds but no casualties could be seen.

Ukraine's military denied carrying out the attack saying its forces "did not launch missile and artillery strikes in the area of Olenivka settlement".

It instead blamed Russia's invading forces for "a targeted artillery shelling" on the detention facility, saying it was being used to "accuse Ukraine of committing 'war crimes' as well as to hide the torture of prisoners and executions".

"Russia has committed another petrifying war crime by shelling a correctional facility in occupied" Olenivka where it held Ukrainian POWs, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter. 

Ukraine's forces ended a weeks-long siege of Azovstal in May, with around 2,500 combatants surrendering after calling a halt to their first resistance. 

Moscow's state media has reported that some officers, including those from the controversial Azov regiment, have been taken into Russia. 

Air strikes are Russia 'offering greetings on Ukraine's Day of State Sovereignty'

Ukraine stepped up its counter-attacks against Russian forces in the south while Moscow bombed Kyiv's outskirts for the first time in weeks.

Fifteen people were injured when missiles hit military installations in Vyshhorod district on the edge of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv regional Governor Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram.

Air raid sirens blared as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed parliament alongside visiting Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, as Ukraine marked its Day of Ukrainian Statehood with a public holiday for the first time on Thursday. 

"It doesn't matter with what Russia threatens us; whether it's air-raid sirens or something else, what is important is that we make other countries fall in love with our Ukrainian firmness," Zelenskyy said.

The attack shattered the sense of normalcy that has returned to life in Kyiv since Russian forces abandoned attempts to capture the city in the first weeks of the conflict, in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance.

More than 10 Russian missiles also hit the Chernihiv region northeast of Kyiv, regional governor Vyacheslav Chausov told Ukrainian TV. Like Kyiv, Chernihiv had not been targeted for weeks.

"This was Russia offering greetings on Ukraine's Day of State Sovereignty," he said, adding there were concerns about a "second phase of ground operations by the enemy".

The North district command of the Ukrainian armed forces said more than 20 missiles had been fired at Chernihiv region bordering Russia from a base in Belarus, which is Russia's ally.