KYIV, Aug 19 - Civilians with small children in their arms and lugging heavy suitcases fled Monday from Ukraine’s eastern city of Pokrovsk, where the Russian army was bearing down fast despite a lightning Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

KYIV, Aug 18 – Fitch Ratings has upgraded Ukraine's Long-Term Foreign-Currency (LTFC) Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to 'CC' from 'RD' (restricted default).

"The upgrade of Ukraine's LTFC IDR to 'CC' follows the execution of consent solicitation on 11 August to restructure external debt, which we deem constitutes completion of a distressed debt exchange (DDE), curing the 'restricted default," Fitch said in a report.

KYIV, Aug 18 – Ukrainian volunteer Serhiy Prytula, the founder of a charitable foundation, said on Thursday that the funds saved as part of the People's Bayraktar campaign (more than UAH 600 million) were spent on the purchase of a space satellite for the Ukrainian army.

KYIV, Aug 18 – Ministers of Energy and Internal Affairs of Ukraine Herman Haluschenko and Denys Monastyrsky, together with President of the state-owned enterprise Energoatom Petro Kotin, heads of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia regional administrations and the State Emergency Service inspected the work of all services, forces and means responsible for radio- and nuclear control.

LVIV, Aug 18 - Turkey’s leader and the U.N. chief met in Ukraine with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday in a high-powered bid to ratchet down a war raging for nearly six months. But little immediate progress was reported.

KYIV, Aug 19 – The meeting of the Presidents of Ukraine and the United States, Volodymyr Zelensky and Joseph Biden, will take place on August 31 in Washington, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.

KYIV, Aug 19 - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has lamented that the crisis in Crimea has fallen from global attention, and he pledged to "raise from the knees" the fate of the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia seven years ago, RFE/RL reported.

KYIV, Aug 19 – Ukraine will seek to encourage businesses to make investments in Donetsk and Luhansk regions as part of a long-term program to develop the war-ravaged areas, a senior official said Wednesday.

BERLIN, Aug. 19 - German chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian president Vladimir Putin discussed the conflict in Ukraine as well as the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline during talks on Saturday, The Independent newspaper reported.

KYIV, Aug 17 – Ukraine's Infrastructure Ministry has developed a package of countermeasures, including limiting passenger transportation from Russia, in response to Russian attempts to disrupt shipping in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea. Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan says he expects Cabinet to approve the measures soon.