Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

Residents of the Ukrainian town of Izium searched for dead relatives in a nearby wooded grave site as emergency workers continued to exhume what they said were hundreds of bodies found after Russian forces were driven from the region.

Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

Fighting

• US President Joe Biden urged Russian President Vladimir Putin not to use tactical nuclear or chemical weapons in the wake of setbacks in Ukraine. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. It would change the face of war unlike anything since World War Two,” he told “60 Minutes” in a clip released by CBS.

• One of the four main power lines at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been repaired and is supplying the plant with electricity from the Ukrainian grid two weeks after it went down, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said.

• Russia has likely extended the locations it is prepared to strike, including targeting civilian infrastructure, in a move to undermine the morale of the Ukrainian government and people, the British military said on Sunday.

• Five civilians were killed in Russian attacks in the Donetsk region over the past day, while in Nikopol several dozen high-rise and private buildings, gas pipelines and power lines were damaged by Russian strikes, the regional governors said separately on Sunday.

• Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had launched strikes on Ukrainian positions in several parts of Ukraine, and accused Kyiv of shelling near the Zaporizhzhia plant. Ukraine denied shelling near the plant.

• Both sides reported injuries in fighting in Donetsk in the east of Ukraine.

• Russian security forces fired on an armed gang of criminals in the centre of the occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson and “neutralised” them, Tass news agency reported.

• Reuters could not verify battlefield reports.

• Oleksandr Shapoval, a leading Ukrainian ballet dancer who died last week fighting on the frontline was honoured with a memorial service in the National Opera of Ukraine.

Diplomacy

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a global food crisis aggravated by the war will be the focus of world leaders when they convene for the United Nations General Assembly this week, a gathering that is unlikely to yield any progress toward ending the conflict.

Quote

• “One of the bodies has evidence of a ligature pattern and a rope around the neck, tied hands,” Oleksandr Ilienkov, the chief of the prosecutor’s office for the Kharkiv region, told Reuters at the Izium burial site.