First shipment of Ukrainian grain reaches Turkish waters; Kremlin accuses US of direct role in war – as it happened

Ukraine’s ministry of defence quoted Scots poet Robert Burns’ Scots Wha Hae this morning while issuing what it claims are the latest casualty figures that it has inflicted on Russian forces.

They claim to have killed approximately 41,170 Russian troops, as well as destroying more than 1,750 tanks, 4,014 armoured combat vehicles, 223 jets and 191 helicopters. The claims have not been independently verified.

The Agence France-Presse news agency is carrying some quotes this morning from people in occupied areas of Ukraine. It says that all have had their names changed to protect them from retribution, and AFP was unable to verify their accounts independently.

One person spoken to was “Oleksandr”, a 25-year-old teacher in a village close to Kherson city. He told the agency:

Liberating the city is one thing, but liberating the whole Kherson region is something else. We know it won’t happen now, but still have hope.

The roads of the region are dotted with numerous checkpoints, and you can always hear bombing raids. There are many soldiers in the cities.

In Kherson itself, it is very depressing. There is no more medicine at all and many elderly people have died because of lack of treatment. For the elderly, it’s hell.

If I had to describe the situation in one word, I would say ‘difficult’. There is a total collapse of public services. The ruble is not circulating. Passports are not being issued – nobody wants them anyway.

We have enough food, although there is very little delivery of humanitarian aid. Many people are left without work, and often only unskilled labourers are left.

In the first weeks of the occupation, a lot of activists were kidnapped. There were big demonstrations against the occupation, but after a month it stopped, because there is no internet, no communication.

And all the activists are either hiding or have been kidnapped or killed, I don’t know.

If the Russians hear you speaking Ukrainian, they think you are a Nazi. They check social networks, tattoos, if you have Ukrainian symbols on your body, you are in trouble. I know that some people have had their tattoos removed.

A ship carrying Ukrainian grain left the port of Odesa for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion on Monday under an internationally brokered deal to unblock Ukraine’s agricultural exports and ease a growing global food crisis.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the shipment as “the first positive signal that there is a chance to stop the development of a world food crisis” while the Kremlin called the departure “very positive” news.

Zelenskiy’s said that while it is “too early to draw any conclusions”, the shipment was the “first positive signal” to curb a global food crisis in his latest national address.

The implementation of the initiative on the export of Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products from our ports in the Black Sea began today. The first vessel carrying 26,000 tons of corn left the port of Odesa.

As of now, it is too early to draw any conclusions and predict further events. But the port started working, the export traffic started, and this can be called the first positive signal that there is a chance to stop the spread of the food crisis in the world.

Currently, everything depends on the implementation of the security parameters of the initiative, which is the responsibility of the partners, primarily the United Nations and Turkey.

We cannot have the illusions that Russia will simply refrain from trying to disrupt Ukrainian exports.

The US announced Monday a new tranche of weapons for Ukraine’s forces fighting Russia, including ammunition for increasingly important rocket launchers and artillery guns.

The $550m package will “include more ammunition for the high mobility advanced rocket systems otherwise known as Himars, as well as ammunition” for artillery, national security council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

The assistance includes 75,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition, a statement from the Pentagon said.

“To meet its evolving battlefield requirements, the US will continue to work with its allies and partners to provide Ukraine with key capabilities,” the statement said.

This brings the total of military assistance committed to Ukraine since President Joe Biden took office to more than $8.8bn, according to the Pentagon.

Previous weapons assistance from Washington to Kyiv has included counter-artillery radars, Javelin anti-tank missiles, Soviet-made helicopters, shells and light armoured vehicles.

The reported strike on the Russian Black Sea fleet headquarters in Sevastopol on Navy Day is the latest setback for the Black Sea Fleet in the five-month-old war against Ukraine, which included the loss of its flagship, the cruiser Moskva, in April, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

The United Nations’ secretary general, António Guterres, has warned that a misunderstanding could spark nuclear destruction, as the United States, Britain and France urged Russia to stop “its dangerous nuclear rhetoric and behaviour”.

At the opening of a key nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference in New York, Guterres warned that the world faced “a nuclear danger not seen since the height of the cold war”.

Citing Russia’s war with Ukraine and tensions on the Korean peninsula and in the Middle East, Guterres said he feared that crises “with nuclear undertones” could escalate.

“Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” Guterres told the 10th review conference of the NPT, an international treaty that came into force in 1970 to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

“We have been extraordinarily lucky so far. But luck is not a strategy. Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions boiling over into nuclear conflict,” he added, calling on nations to “put humanity on a new path towards a world free of nuclear weapons”.

Here are some of the latest images out of Ukraine to come through our news wires today.

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Ukraine’s state security service says it is investigating 752 cases of treason and collaboration.

According to the agency, the greatest amount of cases have been documented in the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office also released a statement, saying:

An investigation is underway into more than 600 prosecutor’s office employees who crossed the border after February 24, 2022.

The work of detecting traitors during the war is a question of the security of our state.”

The office added that five prosecutors and three public officials have so far been reported of suspicion.

Ukraine has also opened 1,451 criminal proceedings investigating crimes against children, deputy prosecutor general Igor Mustetsa said.

At least 668 of the opened proceedings involve violence against children and include injury, murder and sexual violence. Another 777 cases regard attacks on facilities that concern children, Mustetsa added.

Three people have reportedly been killed by Russian shelling while evacuating in a minibus near Kherson, Ukraine’s military is reporting.

Ukraine’s Operational Command ‘South’ reported that three people died from the attack on the bus near Dovhove.

The minibus was reportedly carrying seven people evacuating from the temporarily occupied village of Starosillia in the Kherson region.

The remaining survivors have been hospitalised, according to local media reports.

Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.

I’m Samantha Lock and I will be bringing you all the latest developments for the next short while.

Three people have reportedly been killed by Russian shelling while evacuating in a minibus near Kherson, Ukraine’s military is reporting.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said it is “too early to draw any conclusions” after a ship carrying Ukrainian grain left the port of Odesa for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion on Monday.

“We cannot have the illusions that Russia will simply refrain from trying to disrupt Ukrainian exports,” he cautioned.

It is 8.30am in Ukraine. Here is everything you might have missed:

• The United Nations chief has warned that nuclear annihilation is just one miscalculation away. At the opening of a key nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference in New York, António Guterres warned that the world faced “a nuclear danger not seen since the height of the cold war.” “Humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” he said citing the war in Ukraine as a significant factor.
  
  
• On Monday Russian President Vladimir Putin said there could be “no winners” in a nuclear war and it should “never be unleashed” in a letter sent to attendees of the NPT conference. In February, Putin pointedly referred to Russia’s nuclear arsenal and warned outside powers that any attempt to interfere would “lead you to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history”. Days later, he ordered Russia’s nuclear forces to be put on high alert.
  
  
• The US will send $550m in a new tranche of weapons to Ukraine, including ammunition for increasingly important rocket launchers and artillery guns. Ukraine received a batch of four more US-made high mobility artillery rocket systems (Himars), Ukraine’s defence minister said on Monday.
  
  
• The US has accused Russia of using Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant as a “nuclear shield”. US secretary of state Antony Blinken said Washington was “deeply concerned” that Moscow was now using the plant as a military base and firing on Ukrainian forces from around it and called Russia’s actions around the plant “the height of irresponsibility”.

• A ship carrying Ukrainian grain left the port of Odesa for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion on Monday under an internationally brokered deal to unblock Ukraine’s agricultural exports and ease a growing global food crisis. The Sierra Leone-flagged ship Razoni was carrying 26,000 tons of corn and destined for Lebanon. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the shipment as “the first positive signal that there is a chance to stop the development of a world food crisis” while the Kremlin called the departure “very positive” news.

• The daily gas production of Russia’s Gazprom dropped in July to its lowest level since 2008, figures suggest, amid fears that Moscow could cause an energy crisis in Europe by shutting off supply. The state-owned energy firm pumped 774m cubic metres a day last month – 14% less than in June – according to analysis by Bloomberg of data released on Monday. Overall total output for the year was 262.4bn cubic metres, a 12% fall compared with the same period last year.

• Food inflation has soared across much of the developing world since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has trapped several richer countries in a cycle of rising prices, a report by the World Bank has found. The organisation said the war would hit many countries with an increase in food bills worth more than 1% of their annual national income (GDP), while others would fail to contain the impact and be plunged into a full-blown debt crisis.

• France will donate a mobile DNA lab to Kyiv authorities in a bid to ensure war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine do not go unpunished, President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday.

• Spanish businesses, restaurants, museums and public transport will be required to adhere to strict temperature requirements under emergency measures the government announced on Monday to save energy. The plan establishes a minimum temperature of 27C (80F) in summer and a maximum of 19C (66F) in winter.

• The Russian economy has been deeply damaged by sanctions and the exit of international business since the country invaded Ukraine, according to a new report by Yale University business experts and economists. Largely unpublished data shows that much of its domestic economic activity has stalled since the invasion. “Not only have sanctions and the business retreat worked, they have thoroughly crippled the Russian economy at every level,” the 118-page report read. “Russian domestic production has come to a complete standstill with no capacity to replace lost businesses, products and talent.”

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