Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

Ukraine ruled out a ceasefire or any territorial concessions to Moscow as Russia stepped up its attack in the country's east and south, pounding the Donbas and Mykolaiv regions with air strikes and artillery fire. FIGHTING * Russia's defence ministry said its forces pummeled Ukrainian command centres, troops and ammunition depots in Donbas and the Mykolaiv region in the south with air strikes and artillery.

Ukraine ruled out a ceasefire or any territorial concessions to Moscow as Russia stepped up its attack in the country's east and south, pounding the Donbas and Mykolaiv regions with air strikes and artillery fire. FIGHTING * Russia's defence ministry said its forces pummeled Ukrainian command centres, troops and ammunition depots in Donbas and the Mykolaiv region in the south with air strikes and artillery. * The heaviest fighting focused around the twin cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko said. The cities form the eastern part of a Ukrainian-held pocket that Russia has been trying to overrun since mid-April. *Reuters could not independently verify those battlefield reports.

DIPLOMACY * Only Ukraine has the right to decide its future, the Polish president told lawmakers in Kyiv, as he became the first foreign leader to give a speech in person to the Ukrainian parliament since the invasion. * Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy renewed a plea for stronger economic sanctions against Moscow, telling the same parliamentary session: "Half-measures should not be used when aggression should be stopped". * Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak ruled out agreeing to a ceasefire with Russia and said on Saturday Kyiv would not accept any deal with Moscow that involved ceding territory. * Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who has objected to Sweden and Finland joining NATO, held phone calls on Saturday with the leaders of the two countries on Saturday and discussed his concerns about terrorist organisations. ECONOMY * Russia's Gazprom halted gas exports to neighbouring Finland, the Finnish gas system operator said on Saturday, the latest escalation of an energy payments dispute with Western nations.

QUOTE * "Everything what's happened here, it's something that would not belong in Ukraine - the peaceful life... We have (an) opposite reality," Ukrainian director Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk describing the sensation of being at the Cannes Film Festival while his country is at war. (Compiled by Frances Kerry)

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