TOP HEADLINES

• The governor of Russia's Belgorod region has accused Ukraine of firing cluster munitions at a village near the Ukrainian border, but said there were no casualties or damage. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv, which received the controversial bombs from the U.S. this month. READ MORE BELOW

• Prominent Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who publicly accused President Vladimir Putin and top army officials of not executing Moscow's assault on Ukraine harshly or effectively enough, has been arrested for inciting extremism. The charge, which Girkin denies, carries a maximum prison sentence of five years. READ MORE BELOW

• Ukraine attempted to launch a drone attack on the Crimean peninsula on Saturday, the region's governor has announced, while road traffic on the bridge linking Russia to the Crimean peninsula was temporarily blocked.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had said a day earlier that the bridge "brings war not peace" and therefore was a legitimate military target. An attack on the overpass earlier this week killed two civilians.

• Putin has accused NATO member Poland of having territorial ambitions in the former Soviet Union after Warsaw announced it was moving its troops close to the Belarusian border. He added that any aggression against Moscow's ally would be considered an attack on Russia.

• The Russian leader also pointed to what he called the Ukrainian army's huge losses, depleted Western arsenals and a change in public mood in Ukraine and Europe as the consequences of Kiev's "loudly trumpeted" but seemingly fruitless counteroffensive.

• The U.S. is set to announce a new military package for Ukraine worth up to $400 million, primarily made up of artillery, air defense missiles and ground vehicles in a bid to bolster Kyiv's counter assault. 

• Russia attacked Ukrainian food export facilities for a fourth day in a row on Friday and practised seizing ships in the Black Sea after Kyiv vowed to defy Russia's naval blockade on its export ports.

• Moscow views the infrastructure of Ukraine's Black Sea ports as places of deployment of the Ukrainian army, a Russian representative to the UN said, while its foreign ministry accused Ukraine of using the grain export corridor to launch "terrorist attacks" against Russian interests.

• The number of ships looking to pick up grain cargoes from the Black Sea area has fallen 35 percent this week versus the previous week with growing uncertainty over whether commercial traffic could be hit.

• A spike in grain prices since the breakdown of the Black Sea grain export deal "potentially threatens hunger and worse for millions of people," the UN's aid chief has said, adding that "some will starve, many may die as a result of these decisions."

• Russia's Foreign Ministry said it understood Africa's concerns and was now communicating with countries on the continent to address their fears over the termination of the grain deal.

IN DETAIL

Russian journalist killed by cluster strike

A Russian war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev, was killed in a Ukrainian strike in the southern Zaporizhzhia region on Saturday, the Russian military announced.  

"As a result of a strike by the Ukrainian army using cluster munitions, four journalists were wounded in various levels of severity," the Russian army said in a statement. "During an evacuation, the RIA Novosti journalist Rostislav Zhuravlev died from his wounds that resulted from the cluster munitions exploding." 

It comes as the Belgorod governor claimed Ukraine also hit the Russian border village of Zhuravlevka with cluster munitions on Friday. 

"In the Belgorod region, 21 artillery shells and three cluster munitions from a multiple rocket launcher were fired (by the Ukrainian army) at the village of Zhuravlevka," governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram, referring to attacks the previous day.

Top Kremlin critic arrested for inciting extremism

Prominent Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who has criticized the effectiveness of Russia's campaign in Ukraine, was remanded in custody on Friday on charges of inciting extremism. The arrest follows a failed mutiny last month led by another outspoken critic of Russia's top military brass, Yevgeny Prigozhin, boss of the Wagner mercenary force.

A Moscow court remanded Girkin, 52, in investigative custody until September 18 after he was seized by his ex-employer, the FSB state security service. The charge brought by prosecutors carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Girkin denies the accusations against him and is refusing to cooperate with investigators, the Interfax news agency reported. His lawyer told reporters that he would appeal the decision.

The UK's defense ministry, in a regular intelligence update on Saturday, said the arrest was "likely to infuriate fellow members of the military blogger community, who largely see Girkin as an astute military analyst and patriot."

Girkin, a former FSB officer and battlefield commander also known as Igor Strelkov, helped Russia to take control of Crimea in 2014 and, soon after, to organize pro-Russian militias who wrested part of eastern Ukraine out of Kyiv's control.

Ukrainian officials and Western human rights groups have accused him of committing war crimes there, something he denied.

He was handed a life sentence in absentia by a Dutch court in 2022 for his alleged role in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, with the loss of 298 passengers and crew. He denied wrongdoing at the time.

Police detained at least two of his supporters outside the court building where he was charged, according to Reuters. One of them had been repeating Girkin's own criticisms of the Ukraine conflict and a woman who had been holding a sign saying "The Truth is Power."

Girkin announced in May that he and others had set up the "Club of Angry Patriots" to save Russia from what he said was the danger of systemic turmoil, due to military failures in Ukraine and jostling in the elite to eventually succeed Putin.

In one of his most outspoken tirades, in a post on July 18 on his Telegram channel, followed by more than 760,000 people, Girkin attacked Putin with personal insults and urged him to pass power "to someone truly capable and responsible."

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