UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Lviv, western Ukraine, on Thursday, nearly six months after the Russian invasion began.

The main thing for Thursday, the 176th day of the war in Ukraine:

08:06The Russians’ new narrative: The strikes they received in Crimea are acts of terrorism / What Moscow wants to achieve by denying that the attacks were the work of Ukrainian partisans and the army

A quick recap of the latest developments on Thursday morning:

• On Wednesday night, as a result of Russian shelling of a residential area of ​​Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, seven people were killed and 16 were injured, the Emergency Situations Service reported.
• Ukrainian security forces destroyed 29 “occupiers”, destroyed artillery, armored vehicles and military equipment, reported the Southern District of the Operational Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
• Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, based in Crimea, has appointed a new commander, the RIA news agency reported on Wednesday, citing sources, after Russian military bases on the peninsula were hit by explosions over the past nine days.
• Ukrainian technicians at the Russian-controlled and bombed-out nuclear power plant are working under the threat of Russian artillery and under enormous pressure, but are staying to make sure Chernobyl doesn’t happen, one of them said.
• UN Secretary General Guterres will meet with Ukrainian President Zelensky in Lviv to discuss the situation at the Zaporizhia NPP, as well as the search for a political solution to the conflict.
• Worried by frustration in some countries that the war is attracting too much global attention six months after the invasion, Western diplomats are trying to bolster international resolve to isolate Russia diplomatically.
• ​The Russian Embassy in the United States has requested visas for the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov and the Russian delegation that wants to participate in the UN General Assembly in September.
• Three more export vessels left Ukraine’s Black Sea ports on Wednesday, a monitoring group said, bringing to 24 the number of vessels that have left Ukraine under the UN-brokered grain export agreement.
• Russia expects the average export gas price to more than double this year to $730 per 1,000 cubic meters before falling gradually until the end of 2025 due to lower pipeline gas exports, according to an Economy Ministry forecast seen by Reuters.
• In Russia, a system of automatic detection of prohibited information is being developed, with the help of which “Oculus” will analyze photos, video images, text on websites, in social networks and messaging services.
• The state nuclear power company of Ukraine, Energoatom, said that Russian hackers carried out a three-hour attack on its website, but did not cause any significant problems.

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• Wednesday’s events surrounding the Russian invasion were broadcast LIVE on HotNews.ro