Russia risked causing a “nuclear and radioactive catastrophe” by launching attacks in which all Ukraine’s nuclear power plants were disconnected from the power grid for the first time in 40 years, Ukraine’s nuclear energy chief said.

More than 15,000 people have gone missing during the war in Ukraine, an official in the Kyiv office of The Hague-based International Commission on Missing Persons said.

Foreign ministers from the G7 will discuss how to further support Ukraine in ensuring its energy supply during a meeting in Bucharest next week, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said.

The European Union is pressing ahead with a 9th sanctions package on Russia in response to Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, the European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, said during a visit to Finland. She said the EU would “hit Russia where it hurts to blunt even further its capacity to wage war on Ukraine”.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said Russia’s new strategy to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure would not weaken the country’s resolve to liberate all occupied land, describing the conflict, in an interview with the Financial Times, as a “war of strength and resilience”.

Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of incessantly shelling Kherson. 7 people were killed and 21 wounded in a Russian attack on Thursday, local authorities said.

Russia and Ukraine have carried out the latest in a series of prisoner of war exchanges, with both sides handing over 50 people, officials in Kyiv and Moscow confirmed

Ground battles continue to rage in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is pressing an offensive along a stretch of frontline west of the city of Donetsk, which has been held by its proxies since 2014.