Live blog: Russia does not reject talks with Ukraine - Putin

1952 GMT — Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia did not reject talks on Ukraine and that an African peace initiative as well as a Chinese one could be a basis for peace.

He was speaking at a press conference after meeting African leaders in St. Petersburg on Friday.

He also said that it was hard to implement a ceasefire when the Ukrainian army was on the offensive.

Other updates:

2041 GMT — Russia tries to destroy Odesa's cultural heritage: Ukrainian official

Russia is trying to destroy "not only military elements but also cultural, historical and the religious heritage of Odesa," the province’s Deputy Mayor Oleg Bryndak said Saturday.

Odesa has been subjected to Russian attacks since the first days of the war that Russia launched on Ukraine on Feburary 24, 2022, Bryndak told Anadolu news agency in an exclusive interview. “During this process, the residents of the city were in shock and fear.”

“Many of the citizens did not believe that war was possible,” he said.

2021 GMT — Putin: Russia carried out preventive strikes against Ukraine for attacking the Crimean bridge

Russia has carried out some preventive strikes after what Moscow called a Ukrainian "terrorist attack" that damaged the Crimean Bridge, President Vladimir Putin has said.

A Russian couple was killed and their 14-year-old daughter wounded last week in what Moscow said was a Ukrainian attack that knocked out the road part of the bridge linking Russia to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

2016 GMT — Saudi Arabia plans to host talks on Ukraine war: officials

Saudi Arabia plans to host talks next weekend to discuss a path towards peace in Ukraine, convening representatives from Kiev, Western powers and developing countries, officials have said.

Russia will not attend the meeting in the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah, just as it did not participate in a similar gathering last month in Copenhagen, said three officials based in the Gulf who have been briefed on the plans.

A full list of participants was not available, although countries including Britain and Japan were expected to attend, the officials said.

1615 GMT — Wagner troops on Polish border, towards 'attack' position, says Poland's PM

A group of about 100 soldiers from the Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries has moved towards the Belarusian city of Grodno, near the Polish border, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said.

Morawiecki said that the mercenaries had moved close to the Suwalki Gap, a strategic stretch of Polish territory situated between Belarus and Kaliningrad, a Russian territory separated from the mainland.

Poland is a member of both the EU and NATO, and it has worried about its security with Russian ally Belarus and Ukraine on its eastern border.

Those fears have grown since Wagner group mercenaries arrived in Belarus following the group’s short-lived rebellion earlier this summer.

The Poland-Belarus border has already been a tense place for a couple of years, ever since large numbers of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa began arriving, seeking to enter the EU by crossing into Poland, as well as Lithuania.

Poland's government accuses Russia and Belarus of using the migrants to destabilize Poland and other EU countries. It calls the migration a form of hybrid warfare, and has responded by building a high wall along part of its border with Belarus.

“Now the situation becomes even more dangerous," Morawiecki told reporters.

He added that “this is certainly a step towards a further hybrid attack on Polish territory.”

1611 GMT — Russian missile kills 2 in Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian official says

A Russian missile attack killed two people, injured another and blew out apartment windows in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, Anatoliy Kurtiev, secretary of the city council, said.

"The blast wave knocked out windows in high-rise buildings and damaged the building of an educational institution and a supermarket," Kurtiev said, adding that psychologists and other services were providing support on the ground.

Kurtiev said the blast wave broke windows in 13 high-rise buildings and an educational institution.

1157 GMT — Zelenskyy claims to visit Ukrainian troops deployed near eastern city of Bakhmut

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that he had visited troops near the city of Bakhmut in the east of the country.

In a statement on Telegram, Zelenskyy said he arrived on the occasion of Special Forces Day to personally congratulate Ukrainian soldiers.

On May 21, Russia declared full control over the city of Bakhmut, an important transport and logistics hub in the eastern Donetsk region, situated within the predominantly Russian-speaking industrialized Donbass region.

Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials were quick to deny Russia’s claims.

1038 GMT — Ukraine’s accession to NATO ‘fundamental threat’ to Russia’s security, says Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin said prospects of Ukraine's accession to NATO were "a fundamental threat" to Russia's security.

Speaking with African leaders in St. Petersburg late on Friday, Putin said the advance of the alliance's military infrastructure was "unacceptable."

Putin said Ukraine's military development culminated in 2014 when the Western countries "sponsored unconstitutional armed bloody coup" in Ukraine.

Putin also dismissed accusations that Moscow violated the UN Charter when it launched its "special military operation" in Ukraine in 2022.

"After the coup in 2014, the Ukrainian authorities began fighting, in fact, against part of their people, using aircraft, heavy equipment, tanks against those who did not agree with the coup supported by the West in 2014. Thus, the West started the war in Ukraine. That's exactly how it was, and it's impossible to deny it," he said.

Recalling the signing of the Minsk agreements on the peaceful settlement of the crisis, Putin said that with the West's support, Kiev flouted their part of the accords.

Nevertheless, Russia supports a peaceful settlement of any disputes, Putin underlined.

0850 GMT — African heads of state to join Putin at Russia's Navy Day Parade - Kremlin

Four African heads of state will attend Russia's annual Navy Day Parade in St. Petersburg on Sunday, the Kremlin said on Saturday, with five more African countries also sending other representation.

African leaders pressed Putin on Friday to move ahead with their plan to end the Ukraine conflict and to renew a deal crucial to Africa on the safe export of Ukrainian grain, which Moscow tore up last week.

0651 GMT — Russia's Gazprom to send 42 mcm of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Saturday

Russia's Gazprom said it would send 42 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Saturday, compared to 42.4 mcm on Friday.

0542 GMT — Blinken says Russia's Shoigu looking for weapons in North Korea

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the United States believes Russia's defence minister is in North Korea to secure supplies of weapons to aid the stalled invasion of Ukraine.

Following Sergei Shoigu's arrival on a rare trip to Pyongyang, Blinken said that Russia is scrambling to buy arms from allies across the world.

"I strongly doubt he's there on holiday," Blinken told reporters in Australia.

"We're seeing Russia desperately looking for support, for weapons, wherever it can find them to continue to prosecute its aggression against Ukraine," he s aid.

"We see that in North Korea, we see that as well with Iran, which has provided many drones to Russia that it's using to destroy civilian infrastructure and killed civilians in Ukraine."

The news also comes following reports that Ukraine has put to use North Korean weapons allegedly captured from the Russians.

While in North Korea, Shoigu met the country's leader Kim Jong Un, in what Pyongyang's state media described as "a friendly talk."

0210 GMT — Ukraine uses N Korea rockets to blast Russian forces - report

Ukrainian soldiers were observed using North Korean rockets that they said were seized by a "friendly" country before being delivered to Ukraine, according to a report by the Financial Times.

Ukraine's defence ministry suggested the arms were captured from the Russians, the newspaper said.

The United States has accused North Korea of providing arms to Russia, including alleged shipments by sea, but has not offered proof and North Korean weapons have not been widely observed on the battlefields in Ukraine.

North Korea and Russia deny conducting arms transactions.

The North Korean weapons were shown by Ukrainian troops operating Soviet-era Grad multiple-launch rocket systems near the destroyed eastern city of Bakhmut, the site of la engthy brutal fighting, the report said.

Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu made a rare visit to Pyongyang this week to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, the first visit by Moscow's top defence official since the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.

0201 GMT — Ukraine says nine wounded in Russian missile strike in Dnipro

A Russian missile struck an apartment block in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Friday, Kiev officials said, injuring at least nine people including two children.

"Dnipro. Another terrorist attack," said Sergiy Kruk, head of the Ukrainian State Emergency Service, on Telegram.

"Currently, we know of 9 injured, including two children. Work continues."

Internal Affairs Minister Igor Klymenko earlier reported "a Russian strike on a multistorey building in Dnipro", saying five people had been injured.

Videos posted on social media showed smoke billowing from the top floors of a residential building that had been badly damaged.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said: "Dnipro. Friday evening. A high-rise building and the Security Service of Ukraine's building were hit. Russian missile terror again".

2012 GMT (Friday) — The UN World Food Program (WFP) has said that Russia has not offered any free grain to the organisation since Moscow's withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal, which allowed warring countries to export tens of millions of tons of grains over the past year.

“We have not been approached,” WFP Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.

Earlier on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his country will provide free grain to six African countries in the next three to four months.

The WFP has shipped more than 725,000 tons of grain to alleviate hunger in some of the world’s most impoverished regions, including Afghanistan, Horn of Africa, and Yemen, under the grain deal.

For our live updates from Friday (July 28), click here.