Russia and Ukraine will sign a deal on Friday to reopen Ukraine's Black Sea ports for grain exports, Turkey said, raising hopes that an international food crisis aggravated by Russia's invasion can be eased.

Russian artillery strikes pounded Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv yesterday after Moscow announced it was expanding its war aims, even as Russian gas flows to Europe resumed through the Nord Stream pipeline.

Russia has already slashed Europe’s amounts of natural gas used to power factories, generate electricity and heat homes in the winter, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned they could keep dwindling.

Russia’s military aims in Ukraine are no longer focused “only” on the country’s east, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, adding that supplies of Western weapons had changed the Kremlin’s calculus.

A senior Russian security official said yesterday that peace in Ukraine when it came would be on Moscow’s terms as Russian forces struck targets across the country with missiles even as their ground offensive stuttered.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered generals to prioritise destroying Ukraine’s long-range missile and artillery weapons after Western-supplied weapons were used to strike Russian supply lines.

Russia is preparing for the next stage of its offensive in Ukraine, a Ukrainian military official said, after Moscow said its forces would step up military operations in “all operational areas”.

Russia has ordered its forces in Ukraine to step up operations, its defence ministry said yesterday, as rockets and missiles pounded the country in the latest of a series of bombardments that Kyiv says have killed dozens of people in recent days.

Western finance chiefs condemned Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine at G20 talks in Indonesia Friday, accusing Russia of sending a “shockwave” through the world economy and its technocrats of complicity in the war’s alleged atrocities.

Russian missiles struck Vinnytsia in central Ukraine yesterday, killing at least 20 people including three children, in what President Volodymyr Zelensky called “an open act of terrorism”.

Russian missiles that struck a city in central Ukraine killed at least 22 people and wounded about more than 100 Thursday, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine’s president alleged the attack deliberately targeted civilians in locations without military value.

Ukraine, the United Nations and Turkey hailed progress at talks in Istanbul that aim to resume Black Sea grain exports blocked by Russia and ease the risk of starvation faced by millions, but an end to the war remained far off as heavy shelling continued.

Russian, Ukrainian and Turkish military delegations met with UN officials in Istanbul yesterday for talks on resuming exports of Ukrainian grain from the major Black Sea port of Odesa as a global food crisis worsens.

The European Union will encourage member countries to cut gas demand by incentivising industries to use less, as it prepares for possible further cuts to Russian supply, according to a draft plan seen by Reuters.

Ukraine yesterday said it had launched artillery barrages that destroyed a Russian arms depot and carried out a “special operation” to free military captives in the Moscow-controlled Kherson region, a territory it eyes to retake in a counter-offensive.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday extending a simplified Russian naturalisation process to all citizens of Ukraine, a document published on the government's website showed.

A major gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was shutting down for annual maintenance on Monday amid German concern that Russia may not resume the flow of gas as scheduled.

A Russian missile struck an apartment building in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least 15 people as Moscow's forces sought to consolidate their control over the Donbas region.

Mufti Sheikh Said Ismahilov, one of the Muslim spiritual leaders of Ukraine, said they would pray for victory and the liberation of the occupied territories.

Western officials yesterday tried to coax Russia into allowing Ukraine to ship its grain out to the world as the four-month-old war threatened to bring hunger to countries far away from the battlefields.