By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) -Revelations that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones may have lied on the stand in a defamation lawsuit by parents of a child slain in the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting made for a dramatic moment in a high-profile trial, but it would be unusual for prosecutors to follow through with perjury charges, lawyers said.

A jury in Austin, Texas, on Friday said Jones should pay $45.2 million in punitive damages – on top of the $4.1 million in compensatory damages it had already awarded to the plaintiffs – for falsely claiming the shooting was a hoax.

During the final day of testimony on Wednesday, a lawyer for the parents made the unusual disclosure that Jones’ lawyer had inadvertently sent him a file containing text messages from Jones’ phone about the Sandy Hook shooting.

The revelation was significant because Jones has maintained that he had searched his phone for such messages and never found any.

The lawyer for the parents, Mark Bankston, in questioning Jones about the texts, asked him if he knew the definition of perjury.

Jones replied that the suggestion he had lied was “ridiculous.”

Travis County Judge Maya Guerra Gamble on Thursday denied Jones’ motion for a mistrial based on the disclosure.

Perjury charges are rare in Texas, even when parties in civil lawsuits are caught giving false testimony, according to criminal defense lawyers who practice in the state.

But prosecutors in liberal Travis County, where Jones’ radio show and right-wing webcast InfoWars is based, could be more inclined to charge Jones because of his incendiary conservative views and his mockery of the legal system during the defamation case, said Lisa Shapiro Strauss, a lawyer in Houston.

“The political motivation may be there to make an example of him,” Strauss said.

Lawyers for Jones and the family that sued him, and the Travis County District Attorney’s office, did not respond to requests for comment.

If Jones were charged it would likely be for aggravated perjury, a felony punishable by two 10 years in prison, because his comments were made in court testimony, lawyers said. Lying under oath outside of court, such as in a deposition or police statement, is a misdemeanor in Texas.

Prosecutors would have to closely review Jones’ testimony about the text messages before deciding whether to bring a perjury charge, according to Benson Varghese, a Fort Worth, Texas-based defense lawyer.

Varghese said that if Jones has claimed only that he could not find the messages, prosecutors could have a difficult time proving that he intentionally lied about their existence.

“The mere fact that the text messages exist does not necessarily mean he found them” and then lied about it, Varghese said.

Gamble, the judge presiding over the defamation case, can refer the matter to local prosecutors, which would likely raise the chances that Jones is charged, lawyers said.

Gamble has repeatedly admonished Jones and his legal team during four years of litigation in the case and has suggested that Jones lied under oath about complying with discovery requests and his company’s financial situation.

Earlier this week, the judge warned Jones against lying on the stand, telling him, “Just because you claim to think something is true does not make it true.”

But Gamble has refrained from imposing sanctions on Jones in the defamation case, suggesting his statements may be insufficiently serious to warrant perjury charges, said Nick Bunch, a white-collar defense lawyer in Dallas.

“It’s very unlikely that it turns into a criminal prosecution,” Bunch said.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, N.Y., and David Bario in Hopewell, N.M.Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Matthew Lewis)

By Pavel Polityuk

KYIV – Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Friday of shelling Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant as fighting raged again in the crucial border region of the Donbas and three more ships left ports carrying previously blockaded Ukrainian grain.

Shells hit a high-voltage power line at the Zaporizhzhia plant, prompting operators to disconnect a reactor despite no radioactive leak being detected. The plant was captured by Russian forces in early March in the opening stage of the war but it is still run by its Ukrainian technicians.

Earlier this week, the United Nations nuclear watchdog appealed for access to the plant, which Washington says Russia is using as a battlefield shield.

Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom blamed Russia for the damage at the power station.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow was responsible and accused it of committing “an open, brazen crime, an act of terror”, calling for sanctions on the entire Russian nuclear industry.

Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the plant, saying a leak of radiation had been avoided only by luck.

It said that as a result, the generating capacity of one unit had been reduced and power supply to another had been cut. In addition, the nearby city of Enerhodar had power and water supplies problems, a ministry statement said.

Energoatom said the plant, about 200 km (160 miles) northwest of the Russian-held port of Mariupol in southeast Ukraine, was still operational and no radioactive discharges had been detected.

Further east, both sides claimed small advances while Russian artillery bombarded towns and villages across a wide area in a now-familiar tactic.

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, was subjected to renewed shelling early on Friday, the mayor said. “All of Kharkiv heard the sounds,” Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terehov said on Telegram. “The rescue teams are on site.”

Details of any casualties or damage were not immediately available.

The southern city of Mykolaiv was shelled on Friday night and one person was killed, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said on Telegram. Twenty-two people were injured. Twenty-one private homes and five residential apartment buildings suffered damage, the mayor said.

GRAIN SHIPMENTS

In other developments, three grain ships left Ukrainian ports on Friday and the first inbound cargo vessel since the Russian invasion was due in Ukraine to load, marking further steps in the Kyiv government’s efforts to resuscitate its economy after five months of war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meanwhile met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who is cultivating a role as a mediator in the war, in the Russian city of Sochi.

Turkey helped negotiate the agreement that on Monday saw the first grain ship leave a Ukrainian port for foreign markets since the invasion.

On Friday, two grain ships set off from Chornomorsk and one from Odesa carrying a total of about 58,000 tonnes of corn, the Turkish defence ministry said.

The Turkish bulk carrier Osprey S, flying the flagof Liberia, was expected to arrive in Chornomorsk on Friday to load up with grain, the Odesa regional administration said.

Russia and Ukraine normally produce about one third of the world’s wheat, and the United Nations had warned that the halt in grain shipments through the Russian-dominated Black Sea could lead to famine in other countries, particularly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

BATTLE FOR STRONGHOLD

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in what Putin termed a “special military operation”, the conflict has settled into a war of attrition fought largely in the east and south of Ukraine.

Moscow is trying to gain control of the largely Russian-speaking Donbas, comprised of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, where pro-Moscow separatists seized territory after the Kremlin annexed Crimea to the south in 2014.

Russia’s TASS news agency on Friday cited separatist forces as saying they and Russian troops had taken full control of Pisky in Donetsk region, a fortified village held by Ukrainian troops and close to Donetsk city, which is in the hands of Russian-backed separatist forces.

Ukraine has turned the village into a stronghold, seeing it as a buffer against Russian-backed forces holding Donetsk city about 10 km to the southeast.

TASS also said fighting was taking place in the city of Bakhmut, north of Donetsk and Russia’s next main target.

But the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces in a statement on Friday contradicted the claims made by TASS.

“With its offensive stance, the occupiers tried to take over more advantageous positions and improve their tactical positions in the area of Bakhmut, Zaitsevo and Vershyny. They were unsuccessful and retreated,” it said.

The statement added that Russia “tried unsuccessfully to advance toward” other towns, including Pisky.

Reuters could not verify either side’s assertions about battlefield developments.

The next weapons package to Ukraine from the United States was expected to be $1 billion, one of the largest so far, three sources briefed on the matter told Reuters. If signed in its current form, it will include munitions for long-range weapons and armoured medical transport vehicles, the sources said. The package is expected to be announced as early as Monday.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Nick Macfie, Angus MacSwan and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Grant McCool)