Ukraine

KYIV, Aug 23 (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed on Tuesday Ukraine would recapture its annexed peninsula of Crimea from Russia when it chooses and that Kyiv will not consult other countries before doing so.

Zelenskiy made the comments at a news conference in Kyiv after the leaders of dozens of countries and international organisations took part - most of them by video - in Crimea Platform, a forum hosted by Ukraine focused on the peninsula.

KIEV, August 22. /TASS/: Roger Waters, one of the founders of the British rock band Pink Floyd, has been blacklisted by Ukraine’s notorious website Mirotvorets (Peacemaker) over his statements about Crimea.

The website publishes the data of individuals whom the Ukrainian authorities see as enemies of the country.

According to a statement on the website, its administrators interpreted the musician’s remarks about Crimea as "an attack on the territorial integrity of Ukraine."

NIKOPOL, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which hits the half-year mark this week, has already killed some 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers, a general said, and the fighting Monday showed no signs that the war is abating.

At a veteran’s event, Ukraine’s military chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said Ukraine’s children need to be taken care of because “their father went to the front line and, perhaps, is one of those almost 9,000 heroes who died.”

Aug 20 (Reuters) - New blasts resounded in the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula on Saturday and a Russian missile hit a residential area of a southern Ukrainian town not far from a nuclear power station, wounding 12 civilians, Russian and Ukrainian officials said.

That strike at the Pivdennoukrainsk (South Ukraine) nuclear station and fresh shelling near the Zaporizhzhia station, Europe's largest such facility, prompted new fears of a nuclear accident during the war, Ukrainian officials said.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian authorities on Saturday reported shooting down Ukrainian drones in Crimea, while Ukrainian officials said Russian forces pressed ahead with efforts to seize one of the few cities in eastern Ukraine not already under their control and kept up their strikes on communities in the north and south.

LVIV, Ukraine, Aug 18 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Russia and Ukraine on Thursday to show a "spirit of compromise" to ensure the continued success of a U.N. brokered deal that enabled Ukraine to resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports.

Guterres said after talks in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv that 21 ships had departed from Ukrainian ports under the deal in less than a month, and 15 vessels had left Istanbul for Ukraine to load up with grain and other food supplies.

LVIV, Ukraine, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he agreed the parameters of a mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant at talks on Thursday with the U.N. secretary-general and Turkey's leader.

Zelenskiy told a news conference after the talks in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv that Russia should immediately withdraw its forces and stop shelling from the nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — It was early one morning when life under Russian occupation became too much for Volodymyr Zhdanov: Rocket fire aimed at Ukrainian forces struck near his home in the city of Kherson, terrifying one of his two children.

His 8-year-old daughter “ran in panic to the basement. It was 2 o’clock in the morning and (she) was really scared,” said Zhdanov, who later fled the city on the Black Sea and has been living in Kyiv, the capital, for the past three weeks.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — As a potential power broker, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will use his first visit to Ukraine since the war started nearly six months ago to seek ways to expand the export of grain from Europe’s breadbasket to the world’s needy while U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres will focus on containing the volatile situation at a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — It was early one morning when life under Russian occupation became too much for Volodymyr Zhdanov: Rocket fire aimed at Ukrainian forces struck near his home in the city of Kherson, terrifying one of his two children.

His 8-year-old daughter “ran in panic to the basement. It was 2 o’clock in the morning and (she) was really scared,” said Zhdanov, who later fled the city on the Black Sea and has been living in Kyiv, the capital, for the past three weeks.