Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 185

Here are the key events from Saturday, August 27.

Fighting

• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on late Friday said the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant remains “very risky” after two of its six reactors were reconnected to the grid following shelling.
• The Ukrainian president urged the world to act much faster to force Russian troops to vacate Europe’s largest nuclear power plant after the site was cut from electricity for hours in an incident he said risked an international radiation disaster.
• Ukraine plans to expand the number of districts on the war’s front lines where civilian evacuations will be mandatory, as those areas could be occupied and face central heating problems this winter, the deputy prime minister said on Friday.
• Russia has probably stepped up attacks along the Donetsk sector of the Donbas region over the last five days in a move that could be aimed at sucking in Ukrainian troops and foiling a counterattack, according to Britain’s defence ministry.
• The Ukraine military said its forces had repulsed Russian assaults on the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region and struck ammunition depots and enemy personnel in the southern Kherson region.
• Ukrainian forces used a US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launcher to fire about 10 rockets at the town of Kadiivka in the eastern Donbas region before dawn on Friday, according to pro-Moscow breakaway officials in Luhansk quoted by Russia’s TASS news agency.
• Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield reports of either side.

Diplomacy

• Russia late on Friday blocked agreement on the final document of a four-week review of the UN treaty considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament which criticised its military takeover of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, an act that has raised fears of a nuclear accident.
• The White House said on Thursday that Russia should agree to a demilitarised zone around the nuclear plant and allow the world nuclear body, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to visit as soon as possible to check on the safety and security of the system.
• Turkey says Sweden and Finland renewed their commitment to fighting “terror” at the first meeting aimed at addressing Ankara’s conditions for accepting their NATO membership bids. The two Nordic countries broke with decades-long military non-alignment and asked to join NATO after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine.
• Ukraine has now exported one million tonnes of agricultural products from its Black Sea ports under the terms of a grain deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, President Zelenskyy said on Friday.