Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

* Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports. DIPLOMACY, ECONOMY * Russia on Thursday said there was no deal yet with the United States on swapping detained U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner and a former marine for a jailed Russian cast by prosecutors as one of the world's most prolific arms dealers. * Russian gas flows to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline and via Ukraine remained steady on Thursday, operator data showed.

Ukraine stepped up its drive to retake the Russian-controlled south of the country by trying to bomb and isolate Russian troops in hard-to-resupply areas, but said it saw evidence that Moscow was redeploying its forces to defend the territory. FIGHTING

* Five people were killed and 25 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a flight school in the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi, the regional governor said. * Russian-backed separatists in east Ukraine's Donetsk said four civilians had been killed and another 11 by Ukrainian shelling between Wednesday and Thursday.

* Russian forces are undertaking a "massive redeployment" of troops to three southern regions of Ukraine in what appears to be a change of tactics by Moscow, a senior adviser to Zelenskiy said. * Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.

DIPLOMACY, ECONOMY * Russia on Thursday said there was no deal yet with the United States on swapping detained U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner and a former marine for a jailed Russian cast by prosecutors as one of the world's most prolific arms dealers.

* Russian gas flows to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline and via Ukraine remained steady on Thursday, operator data showed. Russia cut flows on the pipeline to 20% of its capacity on July 27 citing maintenance work. * U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Thursday he was hopeful that the first shipment of grain from a Ukrainian Black Sea port could take place as early as Friday, but "crucial" details for the safe passage of vessels were still being worked out.

* Ukraine appointed experienced investigator Oleksandr Klymenko as the head of its Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office on Thursday, answering a European Union request as it seeks EU membership. * The EU decided to renew sanctions against Russia for a further six months, until the end of January 2023.

* The German government's hard line on Russia over the Ukraine war is coming under pressure at home amid growing worries about the resulting soaring energy prices and possible gas shortages in Europe's largest economy when winter comes. * Former Russian TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova was fined 50,000 roubles ($820) after being found guilty of discrediting the country's armed forces in social media posts condemning Russia's actions in Ukraine.

QUOTE "Apart from the external enemy, we unfortunately have an internal enemy, and this enemy is no less dangerous," the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said in an interview when referring to Russian spies. (Compiled by Catherine Evans and Hugh Lawson)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)