Putin says he tried but failed to oust Prigozhin after Wagner mutiny

President tells newspaper he met mercenary chief to negotiate terms for fighters’ continued participation in Ukraine war

Vladimir Putin has said that he sought and failed to have Yevgeny Prigozhin replaced as the leader of Wagner’s fighters in Ukraine after the mercenary chief rebuffed his proposal during a meeting at the Kremlin this month.

Putin’s version of events, which appeared in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper, was a surprise admission that the Russian president was still negotiating a takeover of the Wagner mercenary group.

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Jacob Zuma in Russia for ‘health reasons’, spokesperson says

Ex-president of South Africa receives medical treatment day after court rules he should return to prison

The former South African president Jacob Zuma is receiving medical treatment in Russia, his spokesperson has said, a day after the country’s highest court upheld a ruling that he should return to prison.

“Zuma travelled to Russia last week for health reasons,” Mzwanele Manyi said on Friday.

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Kyiv accepts counteroffensive not advancing quickly; Moscow plays down grain deal claim – as it happened

Andriy Yermak says West are not pressuring Ukraine to go faster ; Kremlin denies Turkish claim deal will be renewed. This live blog is closed

Oleg Kiper, governor of Odesa region, reports on Telegram this morning that several settlements within the region are currently without power. However, he states this is due to adverse weather conditions overnight, rather than action by Russian Federation forces, who struck the port city earlier this week with drones causing a fire in a grain facility.

In Russia the Interfax news agency reports that three Ukrainian drones (UAVs) were intercepted in the Voronezh region.

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Syria reopens key aid corridor after Russian veto of UN deal

British UN security council chair fears lack of monitoring will ‘hand control’ of aid to Assad

Syria will let humanitarian aid flow through its main border crossing into rebel-held areas, reopening a conduit that had closed after a stalemate on the United Nations security council, the country’s UN ambassador has said.

Damascus had made a “sovereign decision” to let aid move overland from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing in north-west Syria for six months starting on Thursday, ambassador Bassam Sabbagh told reporters.

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Cluster munitions from the US arrive in Ukraine

The bombs, which open in air to deploy scores of deadly bomblets, are banned in 120 countries, but not in the US, Ukraine or Russia

Cluster munitions provided by the United States have now arrived in Ukraine, the Pentagon confirmed on Thursday.

The munitions – bombs that open in the air and release scores of smaller bomblets – are seen by the US as a way to get Kyiv critically needed ammunition to help bolster its offensive and push through Russian frontlines. US leaders debated the thorny issue for months, before President Joe Biden made the final decision last week.

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Biden ‘serious’ on prisoner swap for US reporter Evan Gershkovich

Biden says process ‘under way’ to free Wall Street Journal reporter held in Russia and accused without evidence of spying

Joe Biden has said he is serious about pursuing a prisoner exchange for the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in Russia for more than 100 days, and claimed the process was “under way”.

“I’m serious on a prisoner exchange,” Biden told reporters on Thursday when asked about Gershkovich’s continued detention in Russia.

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Biden says ‘no real prospect’ of Putin using nuclear weapons – as it happened

US president plays down worries during Finland visit when asked about whether Russian president could escalate action in Ukraine. This live blog is now closed

Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, has posted an operational update listing a number of settlements that suffered bombardment and “massive artillery shelling” damaging houses and residential buildings. He stated that “In total, the Russians wounded 8 residents of Donetsk region in one day.”

The claims have not been independently verified. Donetsk is one of the partially occupied regions of Ukraine which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed.

In the Darnytskyi district of Kyiv, during a night attack, a fragment of a downed drone hit the 25th floor of a building, destroying one of the apartments.

The man whose apartment was hit was at home – he was wounded by shrapnel, he was given help, now he is in a stable condition, reports our correspondent, who managed to talk to him.

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Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 505 of the invasion

Biden labels Putin ‘craven’ as Nato summit ends; G7 signs declaration outlining support for Ukraine

US president Joe Biden concluded a Nato summit on Wednesday denouncing Russian president Vladimir Putin as “craven” and promising Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy full support even without membership in the military alliance. Biden, who has made unifying Nato countries a foreign policy priority, said Putin had badly underestimated their resolve.

“This is very important. For the first time since our independence, we have established a foundation of security for Ukraine on its path to Nato,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “These are concrete security guarantees confirmed by the world’s top seven democracies. Never before have we had such a security base and it is at the level of the G7.” Zelenskiy reaffirmed statements he made at the summit in Lithuania that “we have removed any doubts or ambiguity about whether Ukraine will be in Nato. It will be.”

Ben Wallace, the British defence secretary said “people want to see a bit of gratitude” and Ukraine needed to put more emphasis on saying thank you for western help when he was asked about president Zelenskiy’s complaints on Tuesday that the country had not been issued a firm timetable or set of conditions for joining Nato. Wallace said Ukrainians’ haste to get all the help they could meant they did not always say they were grateful for the help received.

UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, distanced himself from Wallace’s comments, saying Zelenskiy has expressed gratitude for UK support. He highlighted that president Zelenskiy had expressed gratitude on multiple occasions, including his address to parliament earlier this year. “I know he and his people are grateful to the UK,” said Sunak.

Zelenskiy said he “didn’t understand” Wallace’s comments. He also said “we could express our words of gratitude personally to the minister”.

The G7 signed a declaration outlining support for Ukraine and help towards governance reforms needed for ‘Euro-Atlantic aspirations’. The member nations said they would provide security and economic support, including modern military equipment, across land, air, and sea, intelligence sharing and the training of Ukrainian forces in exchange for Ukraine committing to reforms “to underscore its commitments to democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and media freedoms”, “put its economy on a sustainable path” and strengthen “democratic civilian control of the military”.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Sweden’s Nato accession will not be put to Turkish parliament until autumn when it reopens. Speaking at a news conference after the Nato summit in Vilnius, Erdogan said that Sweden would provide a roadmap for Turkey regarding the steps to take against purported terrorism before the ratification.

UN secretary-general António Guterres has proposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he extend a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of grain from Ukraine in return for connecting a subsidiary of Russia’s agricultural bank to the SWIFT international payment system, sources told Reuters. The last two ships traveling under the Black Sea agreement are currently loading cargoes at the Ukrainian port of Odesa ahead of the deadline.

An 81-year-old man was killed after shelling in Kherson. His 82-year-old wife was wounded in shelling of the southern city of Kherson, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram on Wednesday.

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Russian spy chief confirms call to CIA director after Wagner revolt

Sergei Naryshkin says he and Bill Burns discussed the mutiny and ‘what to do with Ukraine’ in phone call last month

Russia’s foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin has said that he and his CIA counterpart discussed the shortlived mutiny a week earlier by Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and “what to do with Ukraine” in a phone call late last month.

Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, told Russia’s TASS new agency on Wednesday that Bill Burns had raised “the events of June 24” – when fighters from the Wagner mercenary group took control of a southern Russian city and advanced towards Moscow before reaching a deal with the Kremlin to end the revolt.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy ‘doesn’t understand’ complaint from UK minister about Kyiv’s lack of gratitude – as it happened

This live blog has now closed, you can read more on this story here

In the last few moments an air alert that had been in place across some of southern Ukraine has been lifted, however there is still a warning in place about artillery fire in Nikopol.

This is not unusual, as the city lies on the right-bank of the Dnipro, opposite Russian occupied territory near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and occupied city of Enerhodar.

This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com

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Zelenskiy forced to recalibrate to avert Nato summit falling-out

Ukrainian president’s frustration threatened to overshadow meeting – and did not go unnoticed by other leaders

It was, by the standards of international summits, an undiplomatic intervention. A clearly frustrated Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted that Nato allies were showing Ukraine disrespect, that they were discussing his country’s hopes of joining the military alliance without him. “It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to Nato nor to make it a member of the alliance,” he wrote.

The outburst was certainly last minute, coming less than an hour before Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and Nato other’s 29 leaders were due to sign off a final summit declaration on the topic. It turned out to be a communique that did not spell out a timeline by which Ukraine could join, nor a list of conditions it would have to meet, nor even extend an invitation to join at an unspecified future date once the war with Russia is over.

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Putin v Prigozhin: is Wagner too valuable to crush? – podcast

When Wagner forces turned their guns against Russian forces it led to panic in Moscow. But after the coup was aborted and its leader accused of treachery, it was business as usual for the group’s lucrative Africa operations. Pjotr Sauer and Jason Burke report

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow caused panic and led Vladimir Putin to go on the airways to condemn the head of Wagner. He decried the ‘treachery’ and vowed to ‘liquidate’ what remained of Wagner – and many assumed Prigozhin himself.

In the days that followed, something more subtle happened. As our correspondent Pjotr Sauer tells Nosheen Iqbal, while Russian state TV has called Prigozhin corrupt and traitorous, it emerged that he had been invited for a face-to-face meeting with the Russian president.

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Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 504 of the invasion

G7 members signed a joint declaration outlining long-term security and economic support for Ukraine; Stoltenberg said Ukraine is ‘now closer to Nato than ever before’

Ben Wallace, the British defence secretary said “people want to see a bit of gratitude” and Ukraine needed to put more emphasis on saying thank you for western help when he was asked about President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s complaints on Tuesday that the country had not been issued a firm timetable or set of conditions for joining Nato. Wallace said Ukrainians’ haste to get all the help they could meant they did not always say they were grateful for the help received. “Whether we like it or not, people want to see a bit of gratitude,” the minister said at a briefing in the margins of the Nato summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.

UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, distanced himself from Wallace’s comments, saying Zelenskiy has expressed gratitude for UK support. Sunak addressed reporters and appeared not to support the defence minister’s characterisation. He highlighted that President Zelenskiy had expressed gratitude on multiple occasions, including his address to parliament earlier this year. “I know he and his people are grateful to the UK,” said Sunak.

Zelenskiy said he “didn’t understand” Wallace’s comments. He also said “we could express our words of gratitude personally to the minister”.

The G7 signed a declaration outlining support for Ukraine and help towards governance reforms needed for ‘Euro-Atlantic aspirations. The member nations said they would provide security and economic support, including modern military equipment, across land, air, and sea, intelligence sharing and the training of Ukrainian forces in exchange for Ukraine committing to reforms “to underscore its commitments to democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and media freedoms”, “put its economy on a sustainable path” and strengthen “democratic civilian control of the military”.

Nato unveiled a three-part package to bring Ukraine ‘closer’ to the alliance. Speaking on Wednesday morning, Jens Stoltenberg said the plan will establish “a new Nato-Ukraine council, reaffirming that Ukraine will become a member of Nato and removing the requirement for the membership action plans”.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Sweden’s Nato accession will not be put to Turkish parliament until autumn when it re-opens. Speaking at a news conference after the Nato summit in Vilnius, Erdogan said that Sweden would provide a roadmap for Turkey regarding the steps to take against purported terrorism before the ratification.

An 81-year-old man was killed after shelling in Kherson. His 82-year-old wife was wounded in shelling of the southern city of Kherson, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram on Wednesday.

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has told CNN that Ukraine joining Nato now “would mean war with Russia” during a media round where he expressed support for the alliance’s caution. Speaking to MSNBC, Sullivan said the US president, Joe Biden, will be “straightforward” with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who are due to meet each other today.

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Zelenskiy fails in effort to secure invitation to join Nato at Vilnius summit

Leaders of military alliance sign off on declaration that does not give Ukraine firm membership timetable

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has failed in a last-ditch effort to secure an invitation for Ukraine to join Nato after leaders of the 31 countries signed off on a declaration that did not give a firm timetable or clear conditions for its eventual membership.

The frustrated Ukrainian president had accused Joe Biden and other leaders present at a summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, of showing disrespect and complained that there was “no readiness” to invite his country to join.

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Cross-border aid to Syria blocked in ‘act of utter cruelty’ by Russia at UN vote

Use of veto threatens operations on route from Turkey that supports millions of people in north-west

Russia has been accused of “an act of utter cruelty” after it used its veto at the UN security council to block a nine-month renewal of cross-border aid designed to help 4 million people living in rebel-held north-west Syria.

The vote throws into doubt the continued existence of the key aid route into Syria from Turkey, and represents another hammer blow to a population still reeling from the devastating earthquake that struck the region in February.

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Russian ex-submarine commander shot dead while running in park

Russia’s FSB arrests man, 64, on suspicion of killing Stanislav Rzhitsky, who was accused by Ukraine of deadly strikes in war

A senior Russian draft officer and former submarine commander accused by Ukraine of deadly strikes on its territory has been shot dead while jogging in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar.

Stanislav Rzhitsky, 42, was killed on Monday by an unidentified gunman during a morning run in a park near the Olimp sports centre, local police said.

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Zelenskiy says he has faith in Nato but not confidence after failure to secure invitation to join – as it happened

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg says alliance will issue invitation after ‘conditions are met’. This live blog is now closed

Jen Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general, has had some words for the media this morning. Reuters quotes him saying that Ukraine has come much closer to Nato, and that should be reflected in all Nato decision-making.

He said the wording of the final communique from the summit was being worked upon, and he was confident it would send a positive message on Ukraine’s path to membership.

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Russia-Ukraine war live: Nato chief ‘absolutely certain’ summit will have ‘unity and a strong message’ on Ukraine membership

General secretary Jens Stoltenberg comments made at press conference in Vilnius ahead of Nato summit

Russia’s ministry of defence has published an image of Valery Gerasimov for the first time since the failed Wagner uprising of 24 June. Gerasimov was one of the military leaders that Yevgeney Prigozhin had been railing against for weeks before ordering his mercenaries to march on Moscow.

In a video clip posted to the ministry’s official social media channels, Gerasimov is seen receiving reports about claimed attempts by Ukrainian forces to strike targets in Crimea, Rostov and other regions.

This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.

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