US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that he does not believe in the “real prospect” of Vladimir Putin using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The US President spoke during a press conference with the President of Finland Sauli Niiniste in Helsinki after the summit of American-Scandinavian leaders.

Biden also said he was “serious about prisoner swaps” when asked about Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Hershkovich, who has been held in a Moscow jail for more than 100 days.

SUMMARY OF THE DAY

• US President Joe Biden sent a clear message to Ukraine on Thursday, saying no country can join NATO during war because it “guarantees” a third world war. He also stated that he does not believe in the “real prospect” of Vladimir Putin using nuclear weapons in Ukraine

• About 200 soldiers and the commander of the Russian-occupied city of Tokmak were killed in a recent attack on a Russian base, a Ukrainian official said.

• The European Commission is helping the United Nations and Turkey try to extend a deal to allow Ukrainian grain exports to the Black Sea and is open to “exploring all solutions,” an EU spokesman said Thursday, ahead of the deal’s possible expiration on Monday.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that weapons supplied to Ukraine from the West would not change anything on the battlefield and would only escalate the conflict further, adding that foreign-made tanks were a “priority target” for Moscow’s forces, Reuters reported.

• President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi announced on Thursday evening in his speech to his compatriots that six countries have already joined the framework agreement proposed by the G7 – a group of democratic countries with the strongest economies – announced at the NATO summit in Vilnius, through which Kyiv provides security guarantees before actually joining the Western military alliance.

• The Wagner mercenary group is no longer significantly involved in Russian military operations in Ukraine, the Pentagon said on Thursday, more than two weeks after the group staged a brief armed insurgency in Russia, Reuters reported.

• CEO of Rosatom: “You have to be a complete idiot” to blow up the Zaporizhzhia plant

Highlights of the war in Ukraine, day 506, LIVETEXT:

06:17The Verkhovna Rada allocated UAH 573.883 million (about 14 million euros) for the completion of the National Genocide Museum.

06:10Hours after Russian paramilitary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin began a short march on Moscow last month, the country’s internal security service, the FSB, detained several high-ranking military personnel, including General Sergei Surovykin, head of the Aerospace Directorate, people familiar with the situation said. . The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

06:03 In July, the Russian occupiers took 280 children from the Antratsytiv district of the temporarily occupied Luhansk region to the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, reports the Center of National Resistance

05:45China denies the accusations against Beijing at the NATO summit in Vilnius, said the Permanent Representative of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations Zhang Jun. “NATO is a product of the Cold War, which plays the role of destabilizing the situation in the world,” he said, according to Pravda.ru.

01:18Cluster munitions “will be used only to clear the occupied territories”

The US-supplied cluster munitions will be used purely to clear the area of ​​concentrated Russian defensive positions, Valery Shershen, spokesman for the Tavria strategic operational group, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Sky News reports.

He added that the disputed missiles will not be used in cities, densely populated areas or on the territory of Russia.