A prominent Russian nationalist writer, Zakhar Prilepin, was wounded in a car bombing that killed his driver on Saturday, an attack that Russia immediately blamed on Ukraine and the West.

* Russia’s main mercenary group announced plans on Friday to withdraw from the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, but Ukraine said the fighters were reinforcing positions to try to seize it before Russia marks World War Two Victory Day next week.

* Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin published an expletive-ridden video on Friday personally blaming top defence chiefs for losses suffered by his fighters.

* Prigozhin’s extraordinary announcement looks like an exercise in blame avoidance and disinformation, Russia specialists and military analysts say.

* Ukrainian air defences shot down a Russian hypersonic missile for the first time during an attack on Kyiv this week, the Air Force said on Saturday, in a potentially major setback for the Kremlin’s campaign of long-range air strikes.

* Engineers have reduced the risk of a dam bursting and damaging the large Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine, a senior Russian official was quoted as saying by TASS news agency on Friday.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet responded to proposals from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the Black Sea grain deal, TASS quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Saturday.

* Poland will demand European Union sanctions on imports of Russian farm products, its ambassador to the EU Andrzej Sados was quoted as saying on Saturday by PAP news agency

* The pace of grain shipments from Ukraine under a U.N.-backed initiative has slowed as concerns grow over ships getting stuck if a deal is not renewed later this month, according to sources and data.

* Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations on Friday failed to authorize any new ships under the deal.

* Switzerland’s parliament has approved a request from Ukrainian authorities for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to address it, according to a statement late on Friday,

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