Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 196

Here is the situation as it stands on Wednesday, September 7.

Energy

• United Nations chief Antonio Guterres has urged Russia and Ukraine to agree to a demilitarised perimeter around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

• Russia’s Gazprom says it has signed an agreement to start switching payments for gas supplies to China to yuan and roubles instead of dollars.

• Myanmar has started buying Russian oil products and is ready to pay for deliveries in roubles; the RIA news agency cited military ruler Senior General Min Aung Hlaing as saying.

Fighting

• The Russian-installed commandant of a southern Ukrainian city was seriously wounded in a blast, an official said, the latest in a series of apparent assassination attempts in occupied areas.

• Ukrainian forces attacked the Russian-held eastern town of Balakliia in the Kharkiv region, according to a senior pro-Moscow separatist official, as Ukrainian officials were coy about how a counteroffensive was faring.

• Speaking to Ukrainian television, the governor of the Luhansk region said, without giving locations, that a “counterattack is under way and … our forces are enjoying some success. Let’s leave it at that.”

Diplomacy and politics

• Russia could be about to buy “literally millions” of artillery shells and rockets from old Cold War ally North Korea, the White House has said.

• Russia questioned a UN-brokered deal with Ukraine to boost grain and fertiliser exports by both countries, accusing Western states of failing to honour pledges to help facilitate Russia’s shipments.

• The United Kindgom’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in her first call with a foreign leader and accepted an invitation for her to visit Ukraine.

• Russia has not taken any steps to change an UN-brokered deal to facilitate grain exports, Ukraine’s agriculture minister said after Russian President Putin suggested routes should be changed.

• Putin also called Western sanctions imposed on his country a “threat to the entire world” while saying efforts to isolate Russia were in vain amid a pivot towards Asia.

Economy/Markets

• The head of Russia’s VTB Bank has said the banking sector had largely overcome the most serious effects of Western sanctions and that systemic capitalisation of Russian banks was likely not needed.

• The United States Treasury is seeking to design a simple compliance regime for enforcing a price cap on Russian oil exports and hopes that China and India join the coalition or at least take advantage of it, Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said.