Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

Satellite pictures released on Thursday showed devastation at a Russian air base in Crimea, hit in an attack that suggested Kyiv may have obtained new long-range strike capability with the potential to change the course of the war.

Satellite pictures released on Thursday showed devastation at a Russian air base in Crimea, hit in an attack that suggested Kyiv may have obtained new long-range strike capability with the potential to change the course of the war. FIGHTING

* Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists blamed each other for renewed shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Thursday. * Western military experts said the scale of the Crimean air base damage and apparent precision of the strike suggested a new capability with potentially important implications. Moscow had said the explosions were detonations of stored ammunition.

* Russia has doubled the number of air strikes on Ukraine's military positions and civilian infrastructure compared with the previous week, Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov said on Thursday. Reuters was unable to verify battlefield reports.

* Britain and Denmark will provide more financial and military aid to Ukraine, they said. DIPLOMACY

* Russia said it had rejected a Swiss offer to represent Ukrainian interests in Russia and Moscow's interests in Ukraine because it no longer considers Switzerland a neutral country. * Russia condemned a resolution by Latvia's parliament that designated Russia as a "state sponsor of terrorism".

* China's ambassador to Russia called the United States the "main instigator" of the crisis in Ukraine, accusing Washington of backing Moscow into a corner with repeated expansions of the NATO defence alliance and support for forces seeking to align Ukraine with the European Union. ECONOMY

* Ukraine's overseas creditors backed its request for a two-year freeze on payments on almost $20 billion in international bonds, helping it avoid a default. * A grain-carrying ship scheduled to depart from Ukraine's Chornomorsk port under a U.N.-brokered deal on Thursday was unable to set sail due to bad weather, Turkey's defence ministry said.

* Gas flows eastbound through the Yamal-Europe pipeline to Poland from Germany were steady on Thursday, data showed, as were flows via Nord Stream 1 from Russia, which has cut the pipeline to 20% of its capacity, citing maintenance work. QUOTE

"Officially, we are not confirming or denying anything; there are numerous scenarios for what might have happened... bearing in mind that there were several epicentres of explosions at exactly the same time," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters regarding the air base in Crimea. (Compiled by Hugh Lawson)