Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

DIPLOMACY, ECONOMY * Ukraine's president visited a Black Sea port on Friday to show his country is ready to start exporting grain under a U.N.-brokered deal aimed at easing global food shortages, and said Kyiv was awaiting the signal for the first shipment.

Dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war appeared to have been killed in a missile strike on Friday, with Moscow and Kyiv accusing each other of carrying out the attack. FIGHTING

* Russia's defence ministry said 40 prisoners were killed and 75 wounded in the attack on the prison in the frontline town of Olenivka, in a part of Donetsk province held by separatists. * North Macedonia plans to donate an unspecified number of Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine as it seeks to modernise its own military to meet NATO standards, its defence ministry said on Friday.

* Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports. DIPLOMACY, ECONOMY

* Ukraine's president visited a Black Sea port on Friday to show his country is ready to start exporting grain under a U.N.-brokered deal aimed at easing global food shortages, and said Kyiv was awaiting the signal for the first shipment. * The Kremlin said on Friday it does not see any change in the West's willingness to make concessions over Ukraine in order to secure a ceasefire, the TASS news agency reported.

* Putting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline into operation was not an option as this would only play into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the German economy minister said on Friday. * Physical flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline remained at 14.4 million kilowatt hours an hour (kWh/h) on Friday after falling from 17.4 million kWh/h on Wednesday.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would soon propose a time for a call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in which Blinken has said he wants to discuss an exchange of prisoners held in Russian and U.S. jails. * Some wounded Russian servicemen are finding that President Vladimir Putin's pledge that injured men could claim compensation of 3 million roubles is not as generous as it initially seemed.

QUOTE "We are ready to export Ukrainian grain... It is important for us to remain a guarantor of global food security. While someone blocking the Black Sea takes the lives of other states, we allow them to survive," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram after visiting the port of Chornomorsk. (Compiled by Hugh Lawson)