Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Russian troops to flee for their lives after his forces launched an offensive to retake southern Ukraine, but Moscow said it had halted the attack and inflicted heavy losses on Kyiv. FIGHTING

* Ukrainian forces are shelling ferries used by Russia to supply its forces on the west bank of the Dnipro river, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said.

* Ukraine's armed forces have heightened the rate of artillery fire across southern Ukraine, and long-range precision strikes have continued to disrupt Russian resupply, Britain's defence ministry said.

* Russia's defence ministry said Ukrainian forces, after trying to go on the offensive in three different directions in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions, had lost over 1,200 military personnel as well as 139 tanks, armoured vehicles and trucks.

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Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield reports.

NUCLEAR PLANT

* A team from the U.N. nuclear watchdog IAEA is heading to the Zaporizhzhia plant this week.

* Russia's Defence Ministry said the radiation situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant remains normal.

* Ukraine accused Russia of deliberately shelling a corridor that IAEA officials would need to use to reach the plant in an effort to get them to travel via Russian-annexed Crimea instead. There was no immediate response from Moscow.

DIPLOMACY, ECONOMY

* Russia will halt gas supplies via a major pipeline to Europe, intensifying an economic battle between Moscow and Brussels.

* France accused Russia of using energy supply as a "weapon of war" as Gazprom reduced deliveries to one of its main utilities.

* The U.S. government has assessed that Moscow is preparing to stage sham referenda in areas of Ukraine under its control to claim that the Ukrainian people want to join Russia, the State Department said.

* EU foreign ministers are likely to agree to suspend a visa facilitation agreement with Moscow and make Russians wait longer and pay more for their visas, diplomats said, while the bloc remained split over an outright EU travel ban.

* A ship carrying wheat from Ukraine to the drought-stricken Horn of Africa has docked in Djibouti, the United Nations said.

Reuters