TOP HEADLINES

• Ukraine's Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has come back online, the state operator Energoatom said, after Kyiv said it was cut from the national power grid by Russian shelling. As of 2:04 p.m. (1104 GMT) the plant "is connected to the grid and produces electricity for the needs of Ukraine" once again, it said. READ MORE BELOW

• More than 18,000 people in 72 settlements in Zaporizhzhia region were without electricity as of Friday due to damage caused to power lines, the regional administration said, without specifying which lines it was talking about.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the cut-off was caused by Russian shelling of the last active power line linking the plant to the network. "Russia has put Ukrainians as well as all Europeans one step away from radiation disaster," he said in his nightly address.

• Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces had destroyed a U.S.-made M777 howitzer which it said Ukraine had used to shell the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. In its daily briefing, the Defense Ministry said that the howitzer had been destroyed west of the town of Marganets, in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region.

• ​​The Czech presidency of the European Union says it will convene urgent talks to deal with the current energy crisis following Russia's military offensive in Ukraine. Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Twitter the meeting of the 27-nation bloc's energy ministers will "discuss specific emergency measures to address the energy situation". The move comes as the EU is trying to shed dependence on supplies of Russian oil and gas. 

• The Ukraine military said its forces had repulsed Russian assaults on the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region and struck ammunition depots and enemy personnel in the southern Kherson region.

• Ukrainian forces used a U.S.-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launcher to fire about 10 rockets at the town of Stakhanov in the eastern Donbas region, according to pro-Moscow breakaway officials in Luhansk quoted by Russia's TASS news agency.

• Russia is burning off large amounts of natural gas which experts say would previously have been exported to Germany, BBC News reported. They say the plant, near the border with Finland, is burning an estimated $10m worth of gas every day. 

• German security forces have "indications" that Russian secret services spied on Ukrainian soldiers who are in Germany to receive training on Western weapons, Spiegel magazine reported. German military forces have spotted suspicious vehicles outside two sites where Ukrainian recruits were being trained. 

• French energy company TotalEnergies says it is divesting its stake in a Russian gas field that was reported this week to be providing fuel that ends up in Russian fighter jets. The firm said it had signed a deal with its local Russian partner Novatek to sell its 49 percent in the Termokarstovoye gas field "on economic terms enabling TotalEnergies to recover the outstanding amounts invested in the field".

• Poland and Slovakia inaugurated a gas pipeline linking their networks that could boost their energy security after Russia's war in Ukraine sparked a European energy crunch.

IN DETAIL

Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is reconnected to national grid

Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant occupied by Moscow's troops came back online on Friday afternoon, the state operator said, after Kyiv claimed it was cut from the national power grid by Russian shelling.

The plant - Europe's largest nuclear facility - was severed from Ukraine's power network for the first time in its history on Thursday due to "actions of the invaders", Energoatom said.

In an update, the operator said that as of 2:04 pm (1104 GMT) the plant "is connected to the grid and produces electricity for the needs of Ukraine" once again.

French President Emmanuel Macron warned "civil nuclear power must be fully protected".

"War in any case must not undermine the nuclear safety of the country, the region and all of us," he said during a visit to Algeria.

In recent weeks, Kyiv and Moscow have traded blame for rocket strikes in the vicinity of the facility.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Thursday the cut-off was caused by Russian shelling of the last active power line linking the plant to the network. 

"Russia has put Ukrainians as well as all Europeans one step away from radiation disaster," he said in his nightly address.

Kyiv suspects Moscow intends to divert power from the Zaporizhzhia plant to the Crimean peninsula, taken by Russian troops in 2014.

On Thursday, Washington issued a direct warning against any such move.

"The electricity that it produces rightly belongs to Ukraine," State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters. "Any attempt to disconnect the plant from the Ukrainian power grid and redirect to occupied areas is unacceptable."