Russian shells rain down on Kherson evacuees

Russian shelling has hit evacuation points in Kherson as people flee widespread flooding, with reports of civilian deaths.

Video recorded in the area captured fire bursting from apartment blocks as locals drop to the ground to shelter.

Photographs showed water flying into the air as shelling hit.

The death toll is yet to be confirmed.

The attacks follow widespread flooding in the region caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station and dam on Tuesday, displacing thousands of people.

Earlier today President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Kherson, praising the rescuers and volunteers evacuating trapped residents.

03:00 PM

Today's live coverage has ended

Today’s live coverage has ended. Here is a roundup of the day’s main events:

• Flooding from the Kakhovka dam breach extends over 600 square kilometres on the Ukrainian-held right bank of the Dnipro River and the Russian-held left bank, the region’s governor said.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday he had visited the flooded southern region of Kherson and discussed the situation after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.

• Overnight Russian shelling killed three people, including a four-year-old boy, in the town of Ukrainsk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, the regional governor said on Thursday.

• The UK announced a new sanctions package against Belarus on Thursday for its role in facilitating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including import bans and new measures aimed at preventing internet propaganda.

• Russian shelling has hit evacuation points in Kherson as people fled widespread flooding, with reports of civilian deaths.

02:44 PM

Kakhovka dam collapse blocks 'gateway for Ukrainian exports'

he destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine has made it impossible to navigate parts of the Dnipro River and deprived Kyiv of an important agricultural export route, shipping authorities said.

The loss of the route is another problem for Ukraine as uncertainty hangs over the future of a U.N.-brokered deal allowing the safe export of grain from three Ukrainian ports.

Ukraine is an important global grain and oilseeds producer, but its exports have fallen significantly since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The navigable Dnipro is traditionally a fast and cheap route to deliver grain and oilseeds, either by barge to Black Sea seaports or directly to consumers using river-sea vessels.

“The Dnipro River is the main artery of river navigation in Ukraine. And the Kakhovka lock was the last Dnipro lock that let all ships out to the open sea,” Ukraine’s state Shipping Administration said in a statement late on Wednesday.

“In fact, the gateway for Ukrainian exports has been blocked,” it said.

02:26 PM

Russia says repelled Ukrainian offensive in Zaporizhzhia region

Russia said Thursday it had repelled an offensive by Ukrainian forces involving 1,500 soldiers in the southern Zaporizhzhia region after a two-hour battle.

“Today at 1:30 am (2230 GMT) in the Zaporizhzhia area... there was an attempt to break through our defences,” Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said, “the enemy was stopped and retreated after heavy losses.”

02:04 PM

Watch: Zelensky visits flood-hit Kherson

01:24 PM

Kherson governor says Russian forces shelling city

Russian forces shelled the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson and nearby coastal areas on Thursday, the regional governor said on Thursday.

Governor Oleksandr Prokudin made the remark on the Telegram messaging app as emergency workers tried to evacuate people following flooding caused by the destruction of the nearby Kakhovka dam on Tuesday.

A Reuters reporter in Kherson said he could hear what appeared to be artillery fire but was unable immediately to provide any details of the circumstances. Russia has accused Ukrainian forces of shelling rescue workers in Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson region.

12:58 PM

UK steps up sanctions against Belarus for its support of Russia

The UK announced a new sanctions package against Belarus on Thursday for its role in facilitating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including import bans and new measures aimed at preventing internet propaganda.

Belarus is Russia’s staunchest ally among ex-Soviet states and allowed its territory to be used to launch the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Last month Russia moved ahead with a decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.

“This new package ratchets up the economic pressure on Lukashenko and his regime which actively facilitates the Russian war effort and ignores Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in a statement.

The new package includes banning the import of gold, cement, wood and rubber from Belarus and blocking exports to Belarus from Britain of banknotes and machinery, as well as goods, technologies and materials that could be used to produce chemical and biological weapons.

The UK said it would also be able to prevent designated Belarusian media companies from “spreading propaganda in the UK”.

The British government will also take steps to crack down on those circumventing sanctions, including through limiting the funds Belarus is able to raise by further restricting Belarusian access to UK financial markets.

12:39 PM

Kremlin says ammonia pipeline blast is negative for Black Sea grain deal

The Kremlin said on Thursday that a blast which damaged a pipeline that used to transport ammonia fertiliser from Russia via Ukraine which Moscow wants restarted would have a negative impact on the Black Sea grain deal.

The Togliatti-Odesa pipeline, which once pumped up to 2.5 million tonnes of ammonia annually for global export to Ukraine’s Pivdennyi port on the Black Sea from Togliatti in western Russia, has lain idle since the start of the war.

Russia has accused Ukrainian forces of blowing up a part of the pipeline, the world’s longest carrying ammonia, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Monday night. The regional Ukrainian governor said Russia was the one who had shelled the pipeline on Tuesday evening. Neither side provided evidence to back their allegations.

Asked by reporters about the impact the damaged pipeline would have on the fate of the Black Sea grain deal, which facilitates agricultural exports from Ukraine via the Black Sea, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It can only have a negative impact.”

12:22 PM

Russia says Ukrainian shelling killed two evacuees in flood zone

Russia said Thursday that Ukrainian strikes killed two people at an evacuation point for civilians from the Kherson region, which was flooded after a dam in Russian-held territory was destroyed.

“Fighters from the Kyiv regime committed a heinous crime. They shelled a civilian evacuation point in Gola Prystan. Two people were killed, including a 33-year-old pregnant woman. Two more people were wounded,” the Moscow-installed head of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, said on Telegram.

12:00 PM

Ukraine warns over reservoir level after Kakhovka dam collapse

he water level at a reservoir in southern Ukraine is approaching a dangerous low after the destruction of the dam at the nearby Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station, the state company overseeing the facility said on Thursday.

Moscow and Kyiv blamed each other for the collapse of the dam on Tuesday, which unleashed flood water from the Dnipro River on a wide area of southern Ukraine.

Ihor Syrota, general director of Ukrhydroenergo, told Ukrainian television that a drop below the current water level at the Kakhovka Reservoir could affect the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station and water supply to other regions.

“We are reaching this dead zone, which is 12.70 (meters), after which there will be not be any water intake either for the cooling ponds at the Zaporizhzhia station...or...for all regions.”

11:39 AM

Watch: Severe flooding leaves southern Kherson underwater

11:21 AM

Russia says top UN court should dismiss Ukraine's case over Crimea and terrorism funding

Russia urged judges at the United Nations’ highest court on Thursday to throw out a case brought by Ukraine against Moscow over the 2014 and the arming of rebels in eastern Ukraine before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“We appear before you today in order to demonstrate that Ukraine’s application must be dismissed because it is without any legal foundation. Nor does it have any factual evidence to back it,” Russian Ambassador to the Netherlands Alexander Shulgin told judges at the International Court of Justice.

Lawyers for Ukraine said as hearings in the case opened Tuesday that Russia bankrolled a “campaign of intimidation and terror” by rebels in eastern Ukraine starting in 2014 and sought to replace Crimea’s multiethnic community with “discriminatory Russian nationalism.”

Ukraine filed the case in 2017, asking the world court to order Moscow to pay reparations for attacks and crimes such as the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 by a Russian missile fired from territory controlled by Moscow-backed rebels on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

The Ukrainian government alleges that Russia breached two treaties: the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

10:57 AM

Zelensky visits flood-hit Kherson

10:38 AM

Three killed in Russian attack in eastern Ukraine

Overnight Russian shelling killed three people, including a four-year-old boy, in the town of Ukrainsk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, the regional governor said on Thursday.

Five people, including three children, were also wounded in the same attack, and two were wounded in attacks elsewhere in the region, governor Pavlo Kirilenko wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

10:18 AM

Russia tells UN top court Ukraine attacked dam with artillery

Moscow accused Kyiv at the UN’s top court Thursday of destroying a dam in Russian-held southern Ukraine with “massive” artillery strikes, rejecting Ukraine’s claims that Russia was responsible.

“The Kyiv regime not only launched massive artillery attacks against the dam on the night of June 6, but it also deliberately raised the water level of the Kakhovka reservoir to a critical level” beforehand, Russian diplomat Alexander Shulgin told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

09:59 AM

In pictures: Kakhovka dam flooding

09:42 AM

Zelensky visits flood-hit Kherson region

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday he had visited the flooded southern region of Kherson and discussed the situation after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.

“Many important issues were discussed. The operational situation in the region as a result of the disaster, evacuation of the population from potential flood zones, elimination of the emergency caused by the dam explosion, organisation of life support for the flooded areas,” he said in a Telegram post.

“Also, the prospects for restoring the region’s ecosystem and the operational military situation in the man-made disaster area.”

09:24 AM

Five dead after Ukraine dam burst

The Russian-installed mayor of Nova Kakhovka said on Thursday that five people had died after the nearby Kakhovka dam burst on Tuesday, Russian state-owned news agency RIA reported.

08:58 AM

'Limited number' of Russians to compete at rowing world championships

World Rowing said it will allow a “limited number” of Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate as neutrals at the world championships in September, which is a qualifying event for next year’s Paris Olympics.

The IOC issued recommendations in March for athletes from the two countries to return to international competition since their ban last year in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Belarus has been used a staging point for the invasion.

Rowing’s governing body said on Wednesday Russian and Belarusian athletes would only be allowed to return if background checks proved they are not associated with the war or military in any form.

They will compete without flags, anthems and national emblems and be subjected to “enhanced” anti-doping procedures, it said.

08:36 AM

Ukrainian army delivers water via drone to flood-trapped civilians

The Ukrainian army has released footage from a drone delivering water supplies to civilians trapped by major flooding following the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Kherson.

Ukrainians can be seen hanging out of windows and clinging to boats as flood waters rush around them.

In the footage the drone moves to hover lower, hanging onto a bottle of water before dropping it into a person’s waiting arms as they lean out of a window on top of their roof.

08:14 AM

Biden and Sunak to focus on Ukraine in Washington meeting

President Joe Biden is welcoming Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for wide-ranging talks on Thursday as Mr Sunak makes his first White House visit as premier.

The leaders’ Oval Office talks are expected to cover the war in Ukraine, China, economic security, international cooperation on regulating the growing field of artificial intelligence, and more.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the 15-month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine will be “top of mind.”

“The two leaders will review a range of global issues including our economic partnership or shared support of Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s war of aggression, as well as further action to accelerate the clean energy transition,” Jean-Pierre said.

The US and UK are the two biggest donors to the Ukraine war effort and play a central role in a long-term effort announced last month to train, and eventually equip, Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets.

07:54 AM

Flooding over 600 square kilometres after Kakhovka dam breach

Flooding from the Kakhovka dam breach extends over 600 square kilometres on the Ukrainian-held right bank of the Dnipro River and the Russian-held left bank, the region’s governor said on Thursday.

“The average level of flooding is 5.61 metres. 600 square kilometres of the Kherson region are under water, of which 32 percent is the right bank and 68 percent is the left bank,” Kherson region governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on social media.

“The average level of flooding is 5.61 metres,” he said, adding that “despite the danger and heavy Russian shelling, the evacuation from the flooded area continues”.

Prokudin said the situation in Russian-held areas was “extremely difficult”.

The state emergency service of Ukraine said 1,995 people had been evacuated from flooded areas, including 103 children.