Volodymyr Zelenskiy urges officials to keep quiet on military strategy; calls for demilitarised zone around Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant amid fresh shelling

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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told officials to stop talking to reporters about Kyiv’s military tactics against Russia, saying such remarks were “frankly irresponsible”. The president’s comments come after news organisations cited unidentified officials saying Ukrainian forces were responsible for blasts that destroyed a Russian air base in Crimea on Tuesday, despite Kyiv declining to say whether it was behind the explosions.

The devastation at the Russian air base in Crimea suggests Kyiv may have obtained new long-range strike capability with potential to change the course of the war. The base is well beyond the range of advanced rockets that western countries acknowledge sending to Ukraine so far, with some western military experts saying the scale of the damage and the apparent precision of the strike suggested a powerful new capability with potentially important implications.

The UN has urged a demilitarised zone around Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant as Russia and Ukraine trade accusations over more shelling of the plant on Thursday. Ukraine’s nuclear energy company said it had been shelled five times by Russian forces on Thursday, resulting in staff being unable to change shifts. However, Russian news agency Tass reported that the local Russian-imposed authorities in occupied Zaporizhzhia said the plant had been fired upon by Ukrainian forces. Ukraine’s Energoatom agency said the plant was operating normally.

The United States supports calls for a demilitarised zone around the Zaporizhzhia plant after fighting involving Russian and Ukrainian forces in the vicinity of the plant, a State Department spokesperson said on Thursday. “Fighting near a nuclear plant is dangerous and irresponsible and we continue to call on Russia to cease all military operations at or near Ukrainian nuclear facilities and return full control to Ukraine, and support Ukrainian calls for a demilitarised zone around the nuclear power plant,” the spokesperson said.

The British defence secretary has said Vladimir Putin is now unlikely to succeed in occupying Ukraine. Ben Wallace said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had “faltered” and was “starting to fail”, as he pledged more financial and military support to the eastern European nation’s defence.

Russia has doubled the number of air strikes on Ukraine’s military positions and civilian infrastructure compared with the previous week, Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov said on Thursday. “The enemy’s planes and helicopters avoid flying into the range of our air defences, and therefore the accuracy of these strikes is low,” he told a news conference.

Ukraine aims to evacuate two thirds of residents from areas it controls in the eastern battleground region of Donetsk before winter, partly out of concern people won’t be able to stay warm amid war-damaged infrastructure, the deputy prime minister said on Thursday. The government plans to evacuate some 220,000 people out of around 350,000, including 52,000 children, Iryna Vereshchuk told a news conference.

Ukraine expects a ship to arrive on Friday to load grain for delivery to Ethiopia under a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, Reuters reports.

Ukraine expects $3bn of US financial aid to arrive in August and a further $1.5bn in September, its finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, said on Thursday. Marchenko said the payments were part of the $7.5bn financial aid package agreed by Ukraine and the US at the start of the summer and would be used to finance “critical spending” such as healthcare and pension costs.

Belarus has said that blasts heard overnight at one of its military bases 19 miles from Ukraine were caused by a “technical incident”. At least eight explosions were heard after midnight near Zyabrovka military airport, according to reports on Telegram messenger. Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports.

McDonald’s will start reopening some of its restaurants in Ukraine in the coming months, in a show of support after the American fast-food chain pulled out of Russia. The burger giant closed its Ukrainian restaurants after Russia’s invasion nearly six months ago but has continued to pay more than 10,000 McDonald’s employees in the country.

Russia blamed for targeting the town of Marhanets calculating it would be risky to return fire

Ukraine has accused Russia of firing rockets from around a captured nuclear power plant, killing at least 13 people and wounding 10, in the knowledge that it would be risky for Ukraine to return fire.

The town Ukraine says Russia targeted – Marhanets – is one Moscow says its foes have used in the past to shell Russian soldiers at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which they seized in March.

The claim by Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces comes after widely reported explosions at Russia’s Saki air base. This live blog is now closed

• What we know on day 168 of the invasion

Ukrainian officials are reporting that 11 people were killed and 13 wounded by Russian shelling in the Nikopol district in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region overnight.

Residential homes were reportedly damaged in the attack and as many as 1,000 people are without gas, the regional regional military administration said.

Russia likely plans to resource a large proportion of 3 AC from newly formed ‘volunteer’ battalions, which are being raised across the country, and which group together recruits from the same areas.

Russian regional politicians have confirmed that potential 3 AC recruits are being offered lucrative cash bonuses once they deploy to Ukraine.