Hundreds of people have pleaded to be rescued from flooding in Kherson following Tuesday's Kakhovka dam breach
Many of those seeking help are on the Russia-controlled side of the Dnipro river
Hundreds of thousands of people in the Kherson region, where the dam is located, have been left without drinking water
Both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of attacking the dam, though some speculated it could have collapsed from previous damage
Ukraine’s domestic security service claims to have a recording it says shows Russian soldiers admitting its forces attacked the dam
Russian President Vladimir Putin says the Ukrainian counter-offensive is under way but their troops "did not achieve their goals in any sector"
Meanwhile, Ukrainian attacks in the key Zaporizhzhia region are continuing, Russian officials and military bloggers say
Several military experts have said the focus of Ukraine's long awaited counter-offensive will be Zaporizhzhia
We're wrapping up our live coverage of the war in Ukraine here.
If you still want to learn more:
Updates were written by Alys Davies, Adam Durbin, Ece Goksedef and Victoria Lindrea. The editors were Rob Corp and Nathan Williams.
Thanks for joining us.
Image source, EPAPeople are still struggling with the aftermath of flooding from the Kakhovka dam breach
As we draw our live coverage to a close, here are five key points from the war in Ukraine today:
Image source, ReutersThe European Union's foreign policy chief says the dam which collapsed in southern Ukraine on Tuesday was destroyed with explosives planted in its turbine chamber - in an area under Russian control.
Josep Borrell said everything pointed to Moscow being behind the demolition, which has caused catastrophic flooding.
The explosion, he said, could not have been caused by anyone else. He did not present evidence for his claims that explosives destroyed the dam.
Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of attacking the dam.
Image source, Getty ImagesSwedish climate activist Greta Thunberg says Russia is guilty of "ecocide" following the breach of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine.
"This ecocide as a continuation of Russia's unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine is yet another atrocity which leaves the world lost for words," Thunberg said on Twitter.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy replied on Twitter: "Thank you for your position and for upholding the truth @GretaThunberg! (Russia) must be held accountable for all its evil against people, life and nature!"
Ukraine and Russia blame each other for the dam's collapse which has led to widespread flooding and has had ecological and agricultural impacts.
The Pentagon has announced a $2bn aid package for Ukraine.
Washington said the package would include critical air defence and ammunition capabilities, including Hawk air defence systems and missiles, unmanned aerial systems and laser-guided rocket munitions.
The package will also include support for training and maintenance, the Defense Department said in a statement.
It is being provided under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and marks the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine.
"The United States will continue to work with its allies and partners to provide Ukraine with capabilities to meet its immediate battlefield needs and longer-term security assistance requirements," the Pentagon statement concluded.
Frank Gardner
Security Correspondent
Regardless of who was responsible for breaching the dam, and whether it was by error or by design, the mass flooding that ensued does have an affect on the war in Ukraine.
Most immediately, it throws the Ukrainians somewhat off-balance just as they were building up for their main assault on Russian-occupied territory.
Dealing with thousands of displaced citizens, their flooded homes and unknown numbers of floating anti-personnel mines, is a major distraction.
Secondly, it narrows Ukraine’s military options in terms of from where they can launch an attack on Russia’s positions.
Image source, EPAVladimir Putin says Ukraine has begun its expected counter-offensive against Russian forces - but without success, he claims.
"The offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has begun," the Russian president told a conference in Sochi on Friday.
"This is evidenced by the use of strategic reserves," he said, in footage from the forum posted on Telegram.
"Ukrainian troops did not achieve their goals in any sector - thanks to the courage of Russian soldiers [and] proper organisation of troops."
The president has so far produced no evidence to back up his claims of Ukraine's military failure.
Russia is constructing a drone factory using materials from Iran that could be up and running by next year, the US government has said.
The White House released a satellite picture of the site of the planned facility, to be built in the Alabuga special economic zone - around 900km (560 miles) east of Moscow.
National security spokesman John Kirby said US intelligence indicates the partnership between Moscow and Tehran is "deepening".
The US estimates that Russia has received hundreds of attack drones and accompanying equipment from Iran, which Kirby said had been used to "strike Kyiv and terrorise the Ukrainian population" in recent weeks..
The drones are built in Iran, shipped across the Caspian Sea "and then used operationally by Russian forces against Ukraine", Kirby said.
Tehran is looking to buy fighter jets, attack helicopters, radar technology, and other aircraft from Russia in return, according to the White House.
Image source, EPAIran is a major manufacturer of combat drones
Earlier we brought you news of an alleged drone attack in the Russian city of Voronezh, about 200km from the border with Ukraine.
Now we are receiving reports of further drone attacks in Russia.
Drones also fell on an office building in Belgorod - some 35km (22 miles) from the Ukraine border - and near an oil depot in Kursk, officials in those cities have claimed.
"Our guys are stars, the air defence is working well," said Alexei Fedyunin, a 43-year-old driver from Belgorod told Reuters.
He added: "It's very unpleasant,"
Olga Maskayeva, 71, who lives in the border city with her 99-year-old father, said: "Where are we supposed to go? If it happens, it happens."
There was no serious damage in either Beolgorod or the oil depot, but drone attacks do appear to be becoming more frequent in Russia.
Early in May, Russia accused Ukraine of launching two drones at the Kremlin, in Moscow, in what it said was an attempt to kill President Putin.
Kyiv denied involvement in that incident. Nor has it commented on the recent drone attacks.
Eleven Ukrainian prisoners of war have been transferred by Russia to Hungary, the country's Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen says.
"This is my human and patriotic duty".. we have brought back from Moscow 11 prisoners of war from Transcarpathia [Ukraine]," a post on Semjen's official Facebook page said.
Ukraine has welcomed the move, but also expressed concern that it had not been informed of efforts to secure the prisoners' release, which was brokered by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The prisoners of war are ethnic Hungarians from the western part of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry says it has asked Hungary's representative in Ukraine to grant immediate access to them.
The Ukraine dam breach rescue... in 62 seconds
Dozens of communities along Ukraine's Dnipro river have been flooded after the Kakhovka dam was breached early on Tuesday.
Thousands of people have no access to clean water as a result, and the Ukrainian army has been using drones to drop bottles to stranded residents.
Both Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of shelling the dam. The BBC has been working to independently verify who was behind the damage.
According to some experts, previous fighting in August and November last year, external could have contributed to the breach.
A second theory is that Russia, which controls the dam, deliberately allowed water levels to rise in the reservoir behind the dam – making a collapse more likely.
Today we also heard that Norwegian seismologists say sensors 400 miles away in Romania picked up what appears to have been an explosion at the site on Tuesday morning while Ukrainian intelligence say they have a recording of two Russian speakers saying the collapse was the result of sabotage by Russia.
Who benefits from breaching the dam? Find out here
Stories are continuing to emerge of people being caught up in flood waters after Tuesday's Kakhovka dam breach.
Pensioner Maria Mikhailovna has described being woken up by her husband in the middle of the night to find their belongings underwater:
"The water in the house was at waist level," said the 73-year-old, who walks slowly with the help of a stick: "We can hardly walk. We went outside and were lucky that there were passers-by. They helped us to get to the 'Vostok' shop. Then we limped on to our friends."
They live in Hola Prystan, southwest of Kherson, which is under Russian control.
They were evacuated with other pensioners on Thursday in a rubber boat crewed by Russian rescuers.
Another woman, Oksana, was evacuated with her daughter in a boat with their two pet dogs. "We ended up at the kindergarten because our house was carried away by a torrent of water," said Oksana, as her daughter turned her head away to sob.
Image source, ReutersThe floodwaters in Kherson are finally beginning to fall, Colin Freeman of Britain's Telegraph newspaper has told BBC Radio 4.
"It wouldn't be right to say it was returning to normal - large parts of the city are still flooded - but it does appear the floodwaters are now beginning to reduce," he told the World At One.
Freeman, who is reporting from the outskirts of the city, said the high tide mark on the makeshift harbour wall there had dropped "a couple of feet - 30 or 40cm - below what it was" since Thursday."
"So it's clear the water is draining away."
"The shops in the city centre are pretty full of food [and] most of the residents that needed to be evacuated have been evacuated.
"The only evacuations that are deemed urgent by the rescuers are pets and animals," he added.
Image source, ReutersOn the dam breach
Elsewhere
Frank Gardner
BBC News, Security Correspondent
Military activity in southern Ukraine can currently be divvied up into three areas.
In the west, you have the flooded River Dnipro. Militarily, the floods have massively widened the area of water that Ukraine would have to get across if it chose to try and circle round the Russian defences that way.
In the east, there is fighting still going on - pretty intensively - around the outskirts of Bakhmut.
But that's not the main area of operation for the Ukrainians.
The province of Zaporizhzhia in the south is mostly in Russian hands, but the provincial capital itself is still in Ukrainian hands.
What the Ukrainians have done is to start a probing action - using armour, drones, probably some infantry as well - to head south from there doing armoured reconnaissance of the really heavily fortified Russian lines.
That is the area Ukraine are going to have to make progress in, because if they are going to change the map - that red swathe of territory that Russia is occupying in the south and east - they need to cut that in half, drive a wedge and create two separate Russian blocks so it cuts Russian forces off from Crimea.
But that is the area Russia has been really heavily building defences: deep trenches, anti-tank obstacles, minefields, bunkers, zero-ed in artillery.
It's going to be a tough fight
Image source, .Russia will begin deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus between 7 and 8 July, President Vladimir Putin has told his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.
In a meeting in the Russian resort city Sochi, Putin said the land-based nuclear missiles would be moved once preparations were complete, adding that "everything is according to plan, everything is stable", according to the Kremlin's summary of the conversation.
The close allies had previously agreed a plan to deploy these short-range nuclear missiles on Belarusian territory.
There have been many theories about the cause of the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam, but it remains unclear whether explosive devices were responsible.
We know that the breach occurred early in the morning of Tuesday 6 June.
A new report from Norwegian scientists says there’s evidence of an explosion in the area of the dam at 02:54 local time. They say seismic data indicates a blast within a radius of 20-30 km of the dam.
However, it’s important to note that according to surveillance footage seen by BBC Verify the dam had been breached before that time.
The time stamp on that video shows it had already been extensively damaged by 02:46 with torrents of water flowing over it.
Also, local Telegram channels reported the sound of an explosion first at 02:18 then at 02:40 more chat discussed the sound of water flowing rapidly.
All this suggests that if an explosion was responsible for the dam breach, it would have already happened before 02:54, the time of the seismic event detected by the Norwegian scientists.
Ukraine's deputy defence minister, Hannah Maliar, says the situation on all areas of the front line is "tense".
"Heavy battles" are continuing, she writes on the messaging app Telegram, with the east being the "epicentre".
"The enemy continues to focus its main efforts on the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivsky and Mariinka directions," she writes.
She adds that Russian troops are engaging in defensive battles in Zaporizhzhia.
The BBC is unable to independently verify Maliar's analysis.
Imogen Foulkes
Reporting from Geneva
Image source, ReutersThe flooded town of Hola Prystan, Kherson region on 8 June
UN aid officials appeared to hit back at criticism from Ukraine that there had been no humanitarian response to the destruction of the Kakhovka dam earlier this week.
Speaking from flooded areas of Ukraine, the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator Denise Brown told journalists in Geneva that UN aid agencies had arrived very quickly and said a convoy of five lorries of emergency supplies would be arriving today.
The UN says 17,000 people in Ukrainian-held territory are known to be affected, but warned the figure could be much higher.
Brown said immediate concerns were landmines dislodged by the flood water, adding that the entire flood zone could be considered a mine-contaminated area.
In addition, hundreds of thousands of people now lack access to safe drinking water. Water supplies have been contaminated by sewage, pesticides, and other chemicals.
The UN is also warning of serious long-term consequences, with huge areas of agricultural land contaminated.
As throughout the conflict, the UN has no access to civilians in Russian-held areas, but acknowledged that many people there have also been affected.
Five more people have been reported dead in southern Kherson as a result of the flooding following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, a Russian-installed official says.
That takes the death toll to eight in total in the Russian-controlled area, south of the Dnipro river, Vladimir Saldo writes on Telegram, external.
"Unfortunately, there are casualties... Their number has grown to eight people," he says.
Separately, five deaths have also been reported in the Ukrainian controlled area, north of the Dnipro river.
That means that altogether, 13 people are known to have died, though humanitarian organisations have warned that the death toll is likely to be higher.