TOP STORIES

• Group of Seven leaders said in Hiroshima they had ensured Ukraine had the budget support it needed for this year and early 2024 as they renewed their commitment to back Kyiv in its fight against Russia. READ MORE BELOW

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will travel to Japan for the G7 summit, according to a top security official and EU source.

• Leaders from the G7 agreed new sanctions they said would "starve Russia of G7 technology, industrial equipment and services that support its war machine."

• Ukraine said Russian forces were trying to recapture land they had lost around the devastated eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, but that Ukrainian troops were repelling the attacks.

• Russia said Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited a command post in Ukraine's southern region of Zaporizhzhia and inspected troops.

• Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said Bakhmut was unlikely to fall to his mercenary forces in the next two days as fighting raged around Ukrainian soldiers holed up in a makeshift "fortress."

• Russia launched a new wave of air strikes on Ukraine on Thursday night, setting ablaze several buildings in Zelenskyy's hometown of Kryvyi Rih (central Ukraine) and seriously wounding a 64-year-old woman, Kyiv said.

• Russian military forces have been enhancing defensive positions in and around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine in recent weeks, four witnesses said.

• The UK announced a new wave of sanctions against Russia, targeting companies connected to the theft of Ukrainian grain and those involved in the shipment of Russian energy.

• Russian metals producer Severstal said British sanctions against it will not affect the company, reports TASS. 

IN DETAIL

G7 leaders unite on supporting Ukraine

Group of Seven (G7) leaders said they had ensured Ukraine had the budget support it needed for this year and early 2024 as they renewed their commitment to provide financial and military support in its fight against Russia.

The move comes after the U.S., UK and the European Union all announced fresh efforts to turn the screws on Moscow, 15 months after the start of the conflict.

The bloc, meeting in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, said that they would move to further restrict Russia's access to G7 economies.

"We will broaden our actions to ensure that exports of all items critical to Russia's aggression... are restricted across all our jurisdictions," they said in a statement.

"We will starve Russia of G7 technology, industrial equipment and services that support its war machine," added the bloc, which includes the UK, the U.S., Japan, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the EU.

The grouping said they would step up efforts to prevent circumvention of their existing sanctions regime, "including targeting entities transporting material to the front."

Earlier on Friday, the U.S. and other members announced their own new measures, with London taking aim at Russia's $5 billion annual trade in diamonds with a ban on imports.

EU member Belgium is among the largest wholesale buyers of Russian diamonds, along with the United Arab Emirates and India, whose Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join the G7 talks this weekend.

On the battlefield, Russian forces are trying to recapture land they have lost around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, according to Ukraine's Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar. 

However, he added that Kyiv's forces were repelling the attacks. He also said that Russian forces had gained some ground inside the city itself, but they did not control it as fighting rages on.

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