TOP HEADLINES

• Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "for terror" after the operator of the facility, the state nuclear power company Energoatom, reported major damage at the site from shelling. READ MORE BELOW

• However, the Russian-installed authority of the local area said Ukraine hit the site with a multiple rocket launcher, damaging administrative buildings and an area near a storage facility.

• The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) raised grave concerns about the shelling at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, saying the action showed the risk of a nuclear disaster. 

• Four ships carrying Ukrainian grain sailed from Ukrainian Black Sea ports as part of a deal to unblock the country's sea exports, Ukrainian and Turkish officials said. READ MORE HERE

• Russian forces stepped up their attacks north and northwest of Donetsk on Sunday, Ukraine's military said. The Russians attacked Ukrainian positions near the heavily fortified settlements of Piski and Avdiivka, as well as shelling other locations in the Donetsk region, it said.

• Ukraine's chief war crimes prosecutor said almost 26,000 suspected war crimes committed since the attack began were being investigated, with 135 people charged, of whom 15 were in custody. Russia denies targeting civilians.

• An official with the Russian occupying authorities in Ukraine's Kherson region has died after an assassination attempt, local Moscow-backed authorities said. Vitaly Gura, the deputy chief of the Kakhovka district, "died of his injuries," local official Katerina Gubareva, said on Telegram.

• Ukraine's military said that Russian forces had shelled dozens of front-line towns and were trying to attack in six different areas in the Donetsk region, all of which failed to gain any territory and were held back by Ukrainian forces.

• Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that over the past week, the country's forces had "achieved powerful results" in destroying Russia's logistics supplies and rear bases. Every strike on the enemy's ammunition depots, on their command posts, and on accumulations of Russian equipment saves the lives of all of us, the lives of Ukrainian military and civilians."

• British military intelligence has said that Russian forces were almost certainly amassing in the south, anticipating a counter-offensive or in preparation for an assault, and the war was about to enter a new phase, with most fighting shifting to a nearly 217 mile front from near Zaporizhzhia to Kherson, parallel to the Dnieper River.

• Kosovo said it has arrested a Russian journalist at the border on suspicion that she could be a spy, and security authorities were searching "for her intentions." Xhelal Svecla who serves as Kosovo's interior minister named the journalist as Daria Aslamova. "Many countries have proven that she was engaged in espionage for Russian military intelligence and that she pretended to be a journalist," Svecla said.

• President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed that Türkiye will start paying for some of its Russian natural gas imports in rubles. It follows more than four hours of talks between Erdogan and Vladimir Putin in Sochi last Friday.

IN DETAIL

Zelenskyy says Russia using nuclear power plant 'for terror'

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "for terror" after the operator of the facility reported major damage at the site.

Energoatom, operator of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the south of the country, said that parts of the facility had been "seriously damaged" by military strikes and one of its reactors was forced to shut down.

Friday's strikes had damaged a station containing nitrogen and oxygen and an auxiliary building, Energoatom said on the Telegram messaging service.

As hostilities raged on in the east and south of Ukraine, pro-Moscow authorities in the Russian-occupied Kherson region reported the assassination of a senior official.

And the head of Amnesty International's Ukraine office announced she had resigned from the organisation over the group's publication of a controversial report that accused the country's military of endangering civilians.

Kyiv and Moscow have blamed each other for the attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest atomic power complex.

Zelenskyy, in his nightly address on Saturday, once again accused Moscow of terrorism, saying, "Russian terrorists became the first in the world to use the power plant... for terror."

The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog expressed alarm over the shelling at the plant. The strikes underline "the very real risk of a nuclear disaster," said Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"Any military firepower directed at or from the facility would amount to playing with fire, with potentially catastrophic consequences," he added.

The European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell condemned the attack "as a serious and irresponsible breach of nuclear safety rules and another example of Russia's disregard for international norms."