In his traditional late-night video address, Ukraine's President Zelensky said Russia was deploying "poorly trained conscripts and those gathered by covert mobilisation" to the eastern region of Donbas.

According to him, Russia is deploying reserve forces in Donbas to support its assault on the city of Severodonetsk, "where very fierce fighting is going on literally for every metre", as well as Lysychansk, Bakhmut and other areas.

"Russia can cross the line of 40,000 of its lost troops already in June. In no other war in many decades have they lost so much," he said, accusing Russian generals of seeing their people as "cannon fodder".

He once again called on world leaders to provide Ukraine with modern missile defence systems, citing the casualties from the latest missile attack on western Ukraine.

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We are restarting our coverage of the conflict in Ukraine at the start of a new week. Here's what's been happening.

• Fighting continues in the city of Severodonetsk, where Ukrainian and Russian forces are fighting for "literally every metre", Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said
• Ukraine’s military says Ukrainian forces have been “pushed out of the city centre”, due to a significant advantage in artillery
• Zelensky has called for modern missile defence systems for his country, saying more than 2,600 cruise missiles have landed since the start of the invasion
• New research suggests Russia is continuing to earn huge amounts by selling oil and gas, despite facing tighter sanctions around the world since it invaded Ukraine
• The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is due to visit the Middle East as she tries to set up a new natural gas deal to help replace Russian energy imports to Europe

We're pausing our live coverage now. Thanks for following and we'll be back tomorrow with more updates on the Ukraine war throughout the day.

Today's live page was brought to you by Chris Giles, Emily McGarvey and Patrick Jackson.

For a round-up of the main Ukraine war headlines, head here - and for the latest on Severodonetsk, that's here.

Image source, EPA

We're pausing our live coverage shortly. Here's a look at the main developments in Ukraine today:

• Shelling blamed on Russian forces has caused a huge fire at the Azot chemical plant in the key eastern city of Severodonetsk where up to 800 civilians are reportedly sheltering
• Officials say Ukrainian forces remain in control of the Azot plant and Russian forces and their separatist allies in Luhansk have said do not plan to storm the huge chemical plant
• A former British soldier has been killed fighting for the Ukrainian armed forces in Severodonetsk, his family has said
• Ukraine has appealed to the West for faster deliveries of heavy weapons to counter the onslaught of Russian forces in the east of the country
• The Russian military have destroyed a second bridge linking the neighbouring cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and are shelling the third one, Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, says
• The first rebranded McDonald's restaurants have opened in Moscow today under new ownership and a new name called "Vkusno i tochka", which translates to "Tasty and that’s it"

Image source, Reuters

These are some of the latest images we've received of Ukrainian military personnel carrying out operations in the Donetsk region.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

A grain storage facility in the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv has been left in charred ruins after it was shelled by Russian military, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Local media say the shelling hit a warehouse where sunflower meal was stored.

Piles of sunflower seed meal could still be seen smouldering in the harbour a week after the shelling, after media access was granted access to the facility today, and a fire truck was on standby to put out new fires in the rubble.

Up to 300,000 tonnes of grain may have been stored in warehouses destroyed by Russian shelling last weekend, Ukraine's deputy agriculture minister, Taras Vysotskyi, has said

Mykolaiv is home to one of Ukraine's largest agricultural commodities terminal, the Nika-Tera grain terminal.

Vysotskyi said that before Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, the warehouses in Mykolaiv had held up to 300,000 tonnes of grain, mainly wheat and corn.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Getty Images

Ukraine has established two routes through Poland and Romania to export grain and avert a global food crisis, Kyiv's deputy foreign minister, Dmytro Senik, has said.

He said global food security was at risk because Russia's invasion had halted Ukraine's Black Sea grain exports, causing widespread shortages and soaring prices.

Ukraine is the world's fourth-largest grain exporter and it says millions of tonnes of grain are sitting in warehouses and Ukrainian ports unable to be exported due to the war.

Ukraine was in talks with Baltic states to add a third corridor for food exports, Senik said.

"Those routes are not perfect because it creates certain bottlenecks, but we are doing our best to develop those routes," he told Reuters.

It comes as the World Trade Organization warned that a food crisis kicked off by the Ukraine war could last for years without intervention.

As we've been reporting, the first of Russia's rebranded McDonald's has opened in Moscow, after the famous fast food chain ended all operations in the country.

Hundreds of people queued to buy burgers from "Vkusno i Tochka", which translates to "Tasty and that's it".

The BBC's Russia editor Steve Rosenberg has been to visit the restaurant on its first day.

Image source, Reuters

The head of Nato has appeared to play down hopes of an early resolution of a dispute with Turkey over the planned admission to the alliance of Finland and Sweden.

Jens Stoltenberg said its summit in Madrid at the end of this month had never been a deadline.

Speaking at a news conference alongside the Finnish president, Sauli Niinisto, Stoltenberg repeatedly stressed that Turkey's concerns about alleged support for Kurdish militants must be taken seriously.

"We have to address the security concerns of all allies, including Turkish concerns about the terrorist group PKK," Stoltenberg said.

Niinisto said he'd been "surprised" by Turkey's complaints.

Without the support of all Nato members, Sweden and Finland cannot join the military alliance.

Image source, Dean Gatley/Facebook

The British Foreign Office has confirmed that a former British soldier has been shot and killed in Ukraine.

It said it is "supporting the family of a British man who has died" in the country.

Jordan Gatley left the British army in March and travelled to Ukraine. His father Dean Gatley said in a Facebook post his son died in the battle for the eastern city of Severodonetsk, which has seen intense fighting in recent days.

His family say they "have had several messages from his team out there telling us of his wealth of knowledge, his skills as a soldier and his love of his job".

"His team say they all loved him, as did we, and he made a massive difference to many people's lives, not only soldiering, but also by training the Ukrainian forces," the statement continued.

Dean Gatley wrote, "Jordan and his team were so proud of the work they were doing and he often told me that the missions they were going on were dangerous, but necessary.

"He loved his job and we are so proud of him".

Image source, Reuters

The head of the pro-Russian Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) has said there is no reason to pardon the two Britons who were sentenced to death on Thursday after being captured while fighting for Ukraine.

Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, along with Moroccan national Brahim Saaudun, were accused of being mercenaries by a Russian proxy court in eastern Ukraine.

The Britons' families have insisted they are both long-serving members of the Ukrainian military.

The pro-Russian separatists who control Donetsk say the three men committed grave crimes and have a month to appeal the sentence. The men's lawyer said they all wished to do so.

"I don't see any grounds, prerequisites, for me to come out with such a decision on a pardon," Denis Pushilin, the leader of the breakaway republic, was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

The UK and Ukraine have condemned the sentences for violating international laws protecting prisoners of war.

Image source, Getty Images

Russian forces and their separatist allies in Luhansk do not plan to storm the huge Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where Ukrainian troops are holding out, a separatist official says.

The unnamed official told Russia's Interfax news agency that negotiations with the Ukrainian troops there had failed so far to bring a deal.

“There are no plans to storm Azot. The factory is blockaded. The Ukrainian troops who remain there will be forced to surrender,” the official said.

He ruled out allowing them a safe corridor to rejoin the main Ukrainian force – something he said they had demanded.

Earlier Ukraine’s governor for Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said some 800 civilians including children were sheltering in bunkers at the Azot plant. He said Russian shelling had caused a big fire at the plant, but did not report any Ukrainian casualties.

Interfax reported that some civilians had managed to leave the Azot plant.

Ukrainian troops held out for weeks at a vast steel plant in Mariupol before surrendering late last month.

Victoria Prisedskaya
Reporting from Lviv

Image source, STANISLAV SENYK

For many Ukrainian schoolchildren the war has taken away one of the most important occasions of their youth – a graduation party.

A photographer from the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk decided to capture the memory of this year's graduation as part of a photoshoot among the destroyed buildings of Chernihiv.

Stanislav Senyk told BBC News Ukrainian he had found graduates from three schools in Chernihiv, a city to the north-east of Kyiv that was under the Russian occupation during the first month of the war.

Each class chose a location for their photo shoot which "showed how badly their city was destroyed", he added.

Image source, STANISLAV SENYK

Some of the photos were taken outside a ruined hypermarket. "This place is part of our lives, we all grew up here," says student Olha Babynets.

“We wanted to show the world that now we live this way," he says. "We are children who faced the war on 24 February and grew up immediately."

Senyk hopes to sell the photos from Chernihiv and donate the money to the Ukrainian army.

Read more here.

Joe Inwood
Reporting from Kyiv

Image source, Dean Gatley/Facebook

A former British soldier has been killed fighting in Ukraine – his family have announced.

Jordan Gatley – who left the British Army in March – died in the battle for the eastern city of Severodonetsk, the scene of intense fighting in recent days.

He is the second British man to have died trying to defend Ukraine from Russia’s invasion after Scott Sibley lost his life in April.

His family said Jordan "was a hero and will forever be in our hearts”.

In a Facebook post, his father Dean said Jordan went to join the resistance to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and helped to train local forces. He said Jordan died on the front lines defending Severodonetsk.

The eastern city has been the main focus of Russia’s offensive for weeks – with fierce street fighting and heavy artillery said to be causing huge casualties on both sides.

Image source, Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made an appeal to Russians to stand united and build on the "deep feelings of patriotism" and "spiritual foundations" that run through Russia's history, during a speech he made to commemorate Russia Day.

Russia Day, the national holiday of the Russian Federation, has been celebrated annually on 12 June since 1992 to commemorate the formal adoption of the Declaration of Sovereignty of the Russian Federation on 12 June 1990 which declared Russia's "independence" from the USSR.

In an address at the Kremlin, Putin once again paid tribute to Peter the Great, whom he celebrated in a speech earlier the same week, which marks the 350th anniversary since the birth of the Russian tsar.

"Today, we are especially acutely aware of how important it is for the Fatherland, for our society and people to be united," Putin said.

As we reported earlier, Russia has carried out a rocket attack on the western Ukrainian city of Chortkiv that partly destroyed a military facility and injured 22 people, including a 12-year-old child.

Now, Russia's defence ministry says it destroyed a "large depot of anti-tank missile systems, portable air defence systems and shells provided to the Kyiv regime by the United States and European countries" during the attack.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify these claims.

Russia is using its overmatch in force ratio and artillery to "gradually seize territory in and around Severodonetsk" from Ukrainian control, the UK's defence ministry says in its latest update.

It says Russia continues to seek to generate combat units to deploy to Ukraine. In recent weeks, Russia probably started preparing to deploy the third battalion from some combat formations, the ministry says, while most brigades normally only committed a maximum of two of their three battalions to operations at any one time.

Third battalions within brigades are often not fully staffed, the MOD notes, and Russia will probably have to rely on new recruits or mobilised reservists to deploy these units to Ukraine.

"Deploying all three of their battalions simultaneously will likely reduce formations’ longer term capacity to regenerate combat power after operations," the UK defence ministry says.

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Eddie Sharpe, an aid worker who volunteers with the group Ambulance Aid, has been delivering food, toys and medication to a shelter in the Ukrainian city of Odesa that cares for hundreds of children affected by the war.

Sharpe, from Radcliffe-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, said he and the other volunteers had done their best to hide their emotions from the children.

Image source, Reuters

Crowds of people have queued outside the former McDonald's flagship restaurant in central Moscow for the opening of Russia's rebrand of the American restaurant chain, after it pulled out of the country over its invasion of Ukraine.

The stores have new branding and a new name "Vkusno i tochka" or "Tasty and that's it'" and its chief executive, Oleg Parov, said the new name had only been decided on yesterday.

McDonald's flagship Big Mac is missing, but other popular items are on sale.

A double cheeseburger costs 129 roubles (£1.82; $2.31) and a fish burger is priced at 169 roubles (£2.38; $2.93).

Image source, Reuters

The composition of burgers has not changed and the equipment from McDonald's has remained, said Alexander Merkulov, quality manager at the new company.

Sergei, a 15-year-old customer, saw little difference. "The taste has stayed the same," Reuters news agency quoted him as saying as he tucked into a chicken burger and fries. "The cola is different, but there really is no change to the burger."

One man gatecrashed the opening of the flagship store in central Moscow by shouting "Bring back Big Mac", and held a sign calling for the return of the McDonald's classic. He was quickly ushered away by restaurant staff.

Image source, ITAR - TASS NEWS AGENCY

UK Prime MInister Boris Johnson is "fully engaged" in trying to help two Britons handed the death penalty for fighting Russian forces, according to a Conservative minister.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis says Johnson has ordered ministers to do "everything in their power" to secure the release of Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin.

The pair were sentenced alongside a third man, Moroccan national Saaudun Brahim, by a Russian proxy court on Thursday in what the UK Government has described as a "sham" sentencing.

Asked if there was anything Britain could actually do, Lewis told Sky News: “The foreign secretary and the prime minister [are] working with the Ukrainians because they were serving Ukrainian armed forces, and therefore they are protected by the Geneva Convention, something that all governments around the world have respected for decades now.

"It's something that Russia should respect as well.”

He added: “We've got to keep that pressure on and do everything we can to support not just these families, but actually everybody who's fighting for democracy in Ukraine."