Ukraine stepped up its drive to retake Russian-controlled southern Ukraine by trying to bomb and isolate Russian troops in hard-to-resupply areas.
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FIGHTING
* Five people were killed and 25 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a flight school in the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi, the regional governor said.
* Russian-backed separatists in east Ukraine's Donetsk said four civilians had been killed and another 11 by Ukrainian shelling between Wednesday and Thursday.
* Russian forces are undertaking a "massive redeployment" of troops to three southern regions of Ukraine in what appears to be a change of tactics by Moscow, a senior adviser to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
* Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.
* Two people in the seaside town of Koblevo were blown up by a sea mine while swimming despite a ban, Mykolaiv regional governor Vitaliy Kim said. "I repeat - if it is forbidden to swim, it means there are reasons for this," Kim wrote on Telegram.
DIPLOMACY, ECONOMY
* The United States and 37 other countries are establishing an expert mission to review the human rights situation in Russia, the US State Department said.
* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will address the US request for a call with Secretary of State Blinken when he has time, Interfax reported. His schedule now is busy.
*Russia said there was no deal yet with the US on swapping detained US basketball star Brittney Griner and a former marine for a jailed Russian cast by prosecutors as one of the world's most prolific arms dealers.
* United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths on Thursday said he was hopeful that the first shipment of grain from a Ukrainian Black Sea port could take place as early as Friday, but "crucial" details for the safe passage of vessels were still being worked out.
* Russian gas flows to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline and via Ukraine remained steady on Thursday, operator data showed. Russia cut flows on the pipeline to 20 per cent of its capacity on July 27 citing maintenance work.
* The German government's hard line on Russia over the Ukraine war is coming under pressure at home amid growing worries about the resulting soaring energy prices and possible gas shortages in Europe's largest economy when winter comes.
QUOTE
"Apart from the external enemy, we unfortunately have an internal enemy, and this enemy is no less dangerous," the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said in an interview when referring to Russian spies.
Australian Associated Press
