Moscow-backed separatists confirmed that British man Paul Urey died in detention on July 10 after being captured by pro-Russian forces in Donetsk. The EU, meanwhile, proposed to “slap a sanctions regime on gold” from Russia, the deputy head of the European Commission said on Friday, in what would be the seventh sanctions package against Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February. Read about the day's events as they unfolded on our liveblog. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).
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7:09pm: Ukraine receives first delivery of M270 rocket-launcher system, Kyiv says
Ukraine said Friday it had received its first delivery of a sophisticated rocket-launcher system, adding to a growing arsenal of Western-supplied long-range artillery Kyiv says is changing dynamics on the battlefield.
"The first MLRS M270 have arrived," Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov wrote on social media, without mentioning what country had sent them.
"They will be good company for HIMARS on the battlefield," he added, referring to US precision rocket systems recently deployed in the conflict.
>> Can US-supplied HIMARS be a game changer for Ukraine?
5:15pm: UK says Russia ‘will be held to account’ for reported death of Briton in Ukraine
Russia bears “full responsibility” over the reported death of Paul Urey, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Friday, after Moscow-backed separatists in Ukraine said the captured Briton had died in detention.
“I am shocked to hear reports of the death of British aid worker Paul Urey while in the custody of a Russian proxy in Ukraine,” she said. “Russia must bear the full responsibility for this.”
Truss said that Urey “was in Ukraine to try and help the Ukrainian people in the face of the unprovoked Russian invasion.
“The Russian government and its proxies are continuing to commit atrocities.
“Those responsible will be held to account. My thoughts are with Mr Urey's family and friends at this horrendous time,” added the minister, who is in the running to become the UK's next leader.
Darya Morozova, a representative of the Russia-backed, self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said on the messaging app Telegram that Urey "died on July 10" and that he had diabetes.
4:27pm: Search for missing continues in Vinnytsia after missile strike on Thursday
The search for missing people continued in the aftermath of a Russian missile strike in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Friday, as some brought flowers and children's toys to a makeshift memorial to the victims, FRANCE 24's Gulliver Cragg reports.
In the aftermath of the strike, Russia's military claimed that Ukraine's air force was holding high-level meetings in one of buildings that was hit.
"It's not the kind of building where the Ukrainian military would be holding high-level meetings," Cragg reports. "Technically it is a building that belongs to Ukraine's defence ministry, but it's a building that was used for cultural events, classes."
4:03pm: Russian court sentences opposition activist to four years in jail
A Russian court sentenced opposition activist Andrei Pivovarov to four years in jail on Friday for running an outlawed political movement, the court's press service said in a statement.
Pivovarov is a former director of Open Russia, a now defunct opposition group linked to exiled former oil tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Pivovarov's supporters also said he was sentened to four years of imprisonment.
"Andrei Pivovarov was sentenced to four years in a standard-regime penal colony," they wrote on Facebook.
3:34pm: Russia sanctions more than 350 Japanese MPs for ‘anti-Russian’ positions
Russia on Friday imposed sanctions against 384 members of Japan's parliament, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Moscow said the measures were taken against those who had "taken an unfriendly, anti-Russian position".
Tokyo has hit Russia with sanctions, joining the G7 in freezing the central bank's assets, since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on February 24.
14:33pm: Agreement 'close' on resuming Ukrainian grain exports, says Russian defence ministry
Russia's proposals on how to resume Ukrainian grain exports were "largely supported" by negotiators at talks this week in Istanbul and an agreement is close, the Russian defence ministry said on Friday.
The ministry said that work on what it calls the "Black Sea Initiative" will be finalised soon.
"Russia has proposed measures to ensure the transportation of food to foreign countries, including Russian partners, to rule out the use of supply chains to supply the Kyiv regime with weapons and military equipment, as well as to prevent provocations," it said.
Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations are due to sign a deal next week aimed at resuming Black Sea grain exports from Ukraine, which have been severely hampered by the war there.
Russia's February 24 invasion has stalled exports from Ukraine's ports, leaving dozens of ships stranded and some 20 million tonnes of grain stuck in Odesa silos.
Ukraine and Russia are major global wheat suppliers, while Ukraine is a significant producer of corn and sunflower oil.
11:33am: Briton captured by pro-Russian forces in Donetsk dies in detention
Paul Urey, a British man captured by pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, has died in detention, Moscow-backed separatists said on Friday.
"He died on July 10," Darya Morozova, a representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said on Telegram, adding that he had diabetes.
Non-governmental organisations describe Urey as a humanitarian who worked as an aid volunteer in Ukraine, while Moscow-backed separatists insist he was a "professional" soldier.
10:20am: EU to target Russian gold in next sanctions package
The European Union will target Russian gold exports in its next sanction package and seek to "close exit routes" for those bypassing its earlier packages, an EU commissioner said Friday.
The EU has so far approved six sanction packages against Russia. The last one passed in June imposed a ban on most Russian oil imports.
The EU will look into "ways we could slap a sanction regime on gold, which is an important commodity for exports from Russia", Maros Sefcovic, deputy head of the European Commission, said in Prague.
"As soon as we reach an agreement at the level of member states, we will publish it," he said ahead of an informal meeting of EU affairs ministers held by the Czech presidency of the 27-nation bloc.
The move follows a ban on gold exports from Russia agreed by the world's most industrialised nations at a G7 meeting at the end of June.
09:02am: Prosecutors gather evidence after Russian strikes in Vinnytsia
As the clean-up begins in a square in Vinnytsia hit by Russian attacks on Thursday morning, prosecutors are gathering evidence of what they have described as a "war crime".
The strikes killed 23 people in the city in central Ukraine, hundreds of kilometres away from the frontlines. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "appalled" by the attack, while the EU slammed it as an "atrocity."
FRANCE 24's Gulliver Cragg reports from Vinnytsia.
07:00am: Sharp increase in burials in Russian-held Ukraine, NGO reports
Satellite photos and on-the-ground images reveal a sharp increase in burials in Russian-held areas of Ukraine, according to a report released Friday.
The non-government Centre for Information Resilience analysed images of burials in six areas -- two of them previously held by Russian forces and the rest still under Moscow's control in southern Ukraine.
"Open source information can give unprecedented reach behind the frontlines of the war in Ukraine and into areas occupied by Russian forces," said Benjamin Strick, director of investigations at CIR.
At the Starokrymske cemetery in Mariupol, the report's authors said that around 1,000 new graves could be seen over a period of around five months between October 21 and March 28.
The rate of burials grew sharply after that, with 1,141 new graves seen in satellite images between March 28 and May 12 and over 1,700 more between May 12 and June 29, the authors said.
The figures could not be independently verified.
03:54am: Hosts call for G20 members to focus on "building bridges" rather than politics
G20 finance leaders meeting in Bali must make progress tackling the global economic threats sparked by Russia's war in Ukraine or the humanitarian consequences would be catastrophic, host Indonesia said on Friday.
Some Western ministers blasted Russian officials attending the talks, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying Russia's "brutal and unjust war" was solely responsible for the economic crisis the world now faced.
Finance leaders from the Group of 20 major economies are meeting on the resort island, as host Indonesia tries to find common ground in a group frayed by the Ukraine war and rising economic pressures from soaring inflation.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin calls a "special military operation", has overshadowed recent G20 meetings, including last week's gathering of foreign ministers.
Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the world had high hopes the group could find a solution to the threat of war, rising commodity prices and the spillover effects on the ability of low-income countries to repay debt.
"We are acutely aware that the cost of our failure to work together is more than we can afford. The humanitarian consequences for the world, and especially for many low income countries would be catastrophic," she said.
Mulyani called for G20 members to talk less about politics and "build bridges between each other" to deliver more technical decisions and concrete action.
(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP and REUTERS)
