Russian forces mounted 53 attacks on the Pokrovsk front in Donetsk oblast on Thursday as Moscow pressed to take the town, which Kyiv’s military described as the main focus of the invaders’ efforts in Ukraine. Elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, Russian forces attacked Ukrainian positions near the settlement of Niu-York. Russia earlier said it had seized the settlement. Russia’s army also claimed it had captured the village of Mezhove, between already held Avdiivka and Pokrovsk. Ukraine did not confirm the Russian claims.

A ferry loaded with fuel tanks sank in the Russian port of Kavkaz in southern Krasnodar region on Thursday after a Ukrainian attack, local authorities said. Kavkaz port is one of Russia’s largest on the Black Sea, exporting as well as sending fuel across to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea.

Ukraine’s air force said it used a US-made GBU-39 bomb to strike a Russian platoon command post in the Kursk region of Russia which Ukraine has invaded. The model is a precision-guided small diameter bomb with wings that unfold so it can glide to its target using built-in navigation after being dropped from a plane. Allies including the US are supplying weapons to Ukrainian forces but have imposed restrictions on how and when they can be used inside Russia.

The Biden administration will send about $125m in new military aid to Ukraine including air defence missiles; Himars ammunition; Javelin anti-tank missile systems and other anti-armour missiles; counter-drone and counter-electronic warfare systems and equipment; 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition; vehicles and other equipment. Officials said the weapons were being provided through presidential drawdown authority, which means they are taken from Pentagon stockpiles and can be delivered more quickly.

A Russian strike killed a 56-year-old man and injured eight others in the Kharkiv region of north-east Ukraine, the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said on Thursday. The injured included a 15-year-old boy, while residential buildings were also damaged in the Russian strike on the village of Bohodukhiv, the prosecutor general’s office said.

Russian drone attacks killed two civilians and wounded a third, while a guided bomb attack killed two people, said prosecutors and officials in Sumy, which borders Russia’s Kursk region that Ukrainian troops have partly occupied.

Ukraine’s drone attack on Thursday at Marinovka airbase in Russia’s Volgograd region caused fires and ammunition explosions lasting hours, Dan Sabbagh and Luke Harding report. Ukraine’s SBU security service said it carried out the remote raid on the base, home to about 30 Su-34 and Su-35 fighter jets. The planes carry out regular bombing runs against Ukrainian positions on the frontline about 280 miles away, the SBU told the Kyiv Independent newspaper. It is unclear how many jets were damaged or destroyed.

Ukraine’s border guard service said on Thursday that Kyiv had not observed any signs of Belarusian troop or equipment movements near their shared border since Minsk announced it was sending additional forces to the area. “We do not see any movement directly near our border – neither equipment nor personnel,” said Andriy Demchenko, spokesperson for the border force.

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, on Thursday said no conflict could be resolved on a battlefield, as he spoke in Poland on the eve of his visit to Ukraine. Modi will be the first Indian PM to make a Ukraine trip and is the first in 45 years to visit Poland. The Indian government has avoided explicit condemnations of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In Warsaw, Modi said his country supports “dialogue and diplomacy for restoration of peace and stability as soon as possible”. Ukraine chastised Modi for a visit to Moscow last month during which he met and hugged Vladimir Putin. Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the meeting as a “huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts”.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Thursday its director general, Rafael Grossi, would assess the situation at Kursk nuclear power plant during his visit next week. The IAEA said it had been informed by the Russian federation that the remains of a drone had been found within the Kursk nuclear power plant. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has made unevidenced claims that Ukraine tried to attack the plant. Russian troops are occupying Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and Vladimir Putin has been accused of “nuclear blackmail” by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Ukraine’s Kursk campaign has boosted morale and changed the dynamic of the two-year war, according to the Guardian’s defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, who explains how Ukraine managed to mount a surprise invasion involving thousands of troops amounting to 14 brigades.

Russia has started to use vessels sanctioned by the EU for oil product exports, Reuters has reported, citing economic data. One of the sanctioned vessels, the Barbados-flagged Saga, was loaded in Vysotsk with 33,000 metric tonnes of dark oil products and was moving towards the Suez Canal, which could suggest an Asian destination.

Another, the Kavia, was loading diesel at the Baltic port of Primorsk for an unknown destination. The ships from the sanctions list cannot enter the ports of EU member countries. Several other vessels sanctioned by the EU have been renamed, including the Serenade (formerly NS Stream), N Cerna (formerly Canis Power) and Success (formerly SCF Amur), which are currently in the Sea of Marmara, according to data. The Marmara sea sits across the Bosphorus Strait from the Black Sea.

Ukraine ratified the Rome statute of the international criminal court on Wednesday, opening the possibility of more prosecutions of Russian officials for war crimes. Membership of the ICC is a requirement for joining the European Union, which Ukraine hopes to do after it was formally accepted as a candidate in June 2022. The legislation contains a clause that says Ukraine will not recognise ICC jurisdiction over cases where the crimes prosecuted by the ICC may have been committed by Ukrainian nationals.