Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

Reuters was unable to independently verify the battlefield reports. NUCLEAR PLANT * Russia's Defence Ministry said the radiation situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant remains normal, after accusing Ukrainian forces of firing two artillery shells into the territory of the facility.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged Russian troops to flee for their lives after his forces launched an offensive to retake southern Ukraine, but Moscow said it had halted the attack in its tracks and inflicted heavy losses on Kyiv. FIGHTING

* Ukrainan forces are shelling ferries used by Russia to supply its forces on the west bank of the Dnipro river, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said. * Ukraine's armed forces have heightened the rate of artillery fire across southern Ukraine, and long-range precision strikes have continued to disrupt Russian resupply, Britain's defence ministry said.

* At least five people have been killed and seven wounded in Russian shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. Reuters was unable to independently verify the battlefield reports.

NUCLEAR PLANT * Russia's Defence Ministry said the radiation situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant remains normal, after accusing Ukrainian forces of firing two artillery shells into the territory of the facility. Reuters could not immediately confirm the Russian reports.

* A team from the U.N. nuclear watchdog IAEA is heading to the Zaporizhzhia plant this week, the agency's chief said. * Thousands of people fleeing Russia-occupied areas of south Ukraine are arriving in a city near the Zaporizhzhia site despite fears of a radiation leak.

DIPLOMACY, ECONOMY * European Union defence ministers have agreed to start the work necessary for setting up an EU military assistance mission for Ukraine, the bloc's top diplomat Josep Borrell said.

* France accused Russia of using energy supply as a "weapon of war" as Russian gas giant Gazprom reduced deliveries to one of its main utilities and prepared to halt flows along a major pipeline to Germany. * Technological problems caused by Western sanctions on Russia are all that are hampering the smooth flow of Russian gas exports to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

* EU foreign ministers are likely to agree to suspend a visa facilitation agreement with Moscow and make Russians wait longer and pay more for their visas, diplomats said on Tuesday, while the bloc remained split over an outright EU travel ban. * A ship carrying wheat from Ukraine to the drought-stricken Horn of Africa has docked in Djibouti, the United Nations said, the first to make the journey since Russia's invasion six months ago.

* United Nations cultural agency UNESCO said on Tuesday it supported a bid by Ukraine to put its port city of Odesa on the UNESCO World Heritage List. * Ilya Ponomaryov, a Russian former lawmaker who now opposes the Kremlin from exile in Ukraine, is under investigation for spreading false information about the Russian army, TASS news agency cited a Moscow court as saying on Tuesday.

QUOTES "He walked 50 metres away and they shot him," said 81-year-old Taisia Herasymenko, repeating an account she was given by her son in his final hours in Borodianka, a town in the Bucha district, northwest of Kyiv.

"That's it. I've lost my child," she said, weeping as she clutched his death certificate and demanded his killers be held to account. (Compiled by Gareth Jones and Nick Macfie)