UN inspectors visit Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia to prevent a nuclear accident at a Russian-occupied power plant where recent shelling has prompted fears of disaster, as fighting rages on day 190 of conflict.
Key oil consumers China and US partner India have stepped up imports of discounted Russian barrels to record levels.
(Reuters Archive)
Thursday, September 1, 2022G7 finance chiefs to discuss Russian oil price cap on Friday
Finance ministers from the Group of Seven club of wealthy nations will discuss the US Biden administration's proposed price cap on Russian oil when they meet on Friday, the White House has said.
"This is the most effective way, we believe, to hit hard at Putin's revenue and doing so will result in not only a drop in Putin's oil revenue, but also global energy prices as well," said White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre.
Despite Russia's oil exports hitting their lowest levels since last August, its export revenue in June increased by $700 million month on month due to higher prices, 40 percent above last year's average, the International Energy Agency said last month.
Key oil consumers China and America's partner India have stepped up imports of discounted Russian barrels to record levels.
For live updates from Wednesday (August 31), click here
Source: TRTWorld and agencies
Ukrainian gunners prepare to fire with a self-propelled multiple rocket launcher at a position near a frontline in Donetsk region on August 27. Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images
The White House says it has seen reports that Ukraine has begun a counteroffensive against Russian forces in southern Ukraine but does not want to comment further on specific Ukrainian military operations, John Kirby, the communications coordinator for the National Security Council, said.
Kirby did note, however, that regardless of the size, scale and scope of the latest counteroffensive, the Ukrainians “have already had an impact on Russian military capabilities.”
“Because the Russians have had to pull resources from the east simply because of reports that the Ukrainians might be going more on the offense in the south,” Kirby said. “And so they've had to deplete certain units …in certain areas in the East in the Donbass, to respond to what they clearly believed was a looming threat of a counter offensive."
Kirby also said that Russia “continues to have manpower problems” in Ukraine, and is trying to expand its recruitment of fighters inside Russia as well as “entice” some of their conscripts and contract soldiers to serve beyond their time frames.
That is “because they are experiencing manpower challenges—manpower challenges that are not made any easier by the way they’ve had to respond to reports of a potential counteroffensive by the Ukrainians,” Kirby said.
Kirby also said that “the idea of going on the offense is not new to the Ukrainians.”
“Now I recognize that what we're talking about here is the potential for a major counteroffensive, which is different than going on the offense in a more localized way,” Kirby said. But he said Ukrainian forces “have been taking the fight to the Russians inside” Ukraine for quite some time now, including in the early months of the war around the capital Kyiv.
“So, it’s not a new development for them to do this,” Kirby said.
What Russia is saying: Moscow on Monday acknowledged Kyiv’s counteroffensive in Ukraine’s south, but said the Ukrainian troops “suffered heavy losses” and “failed miserably” in their “attempted” offensive.
Ukrainian forces on Monday “attempted an offensive in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions from three directions,” the Russian defense ministry said in a statement, adding, "as a result of the active defense of the grouping of Russian troops, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine suffered heavy losses."
The ministry said that during the fighting, 26 Ukrainian tanks, 23 infantry fighting vehicles, nine other armored fighting vehicles were destroyed and two Su-25 attack aircraft were shot down.
“Another attempt at offensive actions by the enemy failed miserably,” it concluded.
US warning of new attacks and weekend car bombing killing pro-Kremlin TV commentator Darya Dugina stir fears of Russian violence on the 31st anniversary of Ukraine's independence from Soviet Union.
A woman holds the flag of Ukraine while looking into one of the destroyed Russian military vehicles in Kiev.
(David Goldman / AP)
The sense of dread has deepened in Ukraine because of warnings that Russia may try to spoil the country's Independence Day holiday and mark the conflict's six-month point with intensified attacks.
The US reinforced the worry with a security alert on Tuesday citing "information that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine's civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days." As it has done previously, it urged American citizens to "depart Ukraine now." Several European countries issued similar warnings.
Kiev authorities banned mass gatherings in the capital through Thursday for fear of missile attacks around Independence Day, which, like the six-month mark in the offensive, falls on Wednesday. The holiday celebrates Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
"Our country is having a very hard time, and we need to be careful," 26-year-old Vlad Mudrak said in support of the ban.
Anxiety also mounted after a weekend car bombing outside Moscow killed the daughter of a leading right-wing Russian political theorist. Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack and the bloodshed stirred fears of Russian retaliation.
Pro-Kremlin TV commentator Darya Dugina, 29, the daughter of Alexander Dugin, a writer dubbed "Putin's brain", died when the SUV she was driving blew up on Saturday night as she was returning home from a patriotic festival.
READ MORE: Russia mourns nationalist's daughter killed in car bombREAD MORE: Live blog: Russia, France discuss Ukraine nuclear plant inspections
A vendor sells blue and yellow balloons in honour of the country's National Flag Day on August 23, 2022 at Maidan Square in Kiev, Ukraine, where authorities banned mass gatherings through Thursday.
(David Goldman / AP)
Managing expectations of Russian 'cruelty'
Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russia "may try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel" this week.
On Tuesday, however, Zelenskyy stressed defiance rather than worry when he raised the national flag at a memorial one day ahead of Independence Day.
"The blue and yellow flag of Ukraine will again fly where it rightfully should be — in all temporarily occupied cities and villages of Ukraine," he said, including the Crimea Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
He added: "It is necessary to liberate Crimea from occupation. It will end where it had started.”
At a separate event, Zelenskyy appeared to downplay the threats this week, indicating that at most, he expected increased intensity rather than new targets.
NATO, meanwhile, said Zelenskyy can continue to count on the 30-nation alliance for help in defending itself in what Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called "a grinding war of attrition." The conflict broke out on February 24.
"This is a battle of wills and a battle of logistics. Therefore, we must sustain our support for Ukraine for the long term so that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation," Stoltenberg said at an international conference on Crimea.
READ MORE:Erdogan: Return of Crimea to Ukraine a requirement under international lawZaporizhzhia at risk
One particular source of foreboding is Europe's largest nuclear power plant, in southeastern Ukraine, where shelling has raised fears of a catastrophe.
Shelling close to the Zaporizhzhia plant continued early on Tuesday. Regional Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said Russian forces fired on Marhanets and Nikopol, two towns less than a dozen kilometres from the power station. The UN Security Council is meeting on Tuesday to discuss the danger.
In other developments, the US plans to announce on Wednesday an additional $3 billion or so in aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces, according to American officials speaking on condition of anonymity. This would be the largest single security package yet in the six-month-old fighting.
READ MORE:One Ukrainian neonatologist's fight to save premature babies amid conflict
Source: AP
IMAX has banned Russian cinemas from screening Russian movies within Russia after leaving the country over its invasion of Ukraine, the head of a major cinema chain said Tuesday.
IMAX Corporation, a Canadian company that provides proprietary high-resolution technology for a large-format movie experience, has left Russia on June 1 after 19 years on the market, according to the RBC news website. It is among hundreds of foreign businesses to exit Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Alexei Vasyanin, head of Russia’s largest network Cinema Park and Formula Kino, told RBC that all IMAX employees had been fired and top executives had left Russia for London.
He noted that Russian cinemas require explicit permission from IMAX to screen movies in a high-resolution format despite the technical capabilities to do so without permission.
“Unfortunately we can’t even screen Russian films in that format right now… because there’s a direct ban by the company on using the format,” Vasyanin said.
Vasyanin warned that Russian chains could sue IMAX if does not return to the market with 54 cinemas around Russia that use its technology by the end of 2022.
“First of all, we’ll file lawsuits. Secondly, we’ll use this equipment to screen movies in a different format,” the executive told RBC.
“We have a very strict contract with them that regulates their work here. If they keep ignoring that contract by the end of the year, we’ll go to trial,” Vasyanin said.
A serviceman with a Russian flag on his uniform stands guard near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant on August 4. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
A delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency may be able to visit the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in early September, according to Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian representative in Vienna where the IAEA is based.
Ulyanov said during an online briefing on Friday: “It’s too early to say anything about the details, these are all extremely sensitive issues, we are discussing and will continue to discuss the modalities of the mission, the route, the number of people who will be involved in this, how long they will stay at the station, for what tasks they are there sent."
"When the mission can take place -- forecasts do not always come true, but, according to my feelings, we can quite realistically talk about the first days of September, unless some extraneous factors that are not related to the goals arise again," Ulyanov said.
Ulyanov said that the organization of the mission is currently being discussed with the IAEA secretariat.
"Almost every day I communicate with the director general of the agency, Rafael Grossi ... On Monday, he will appear here in Vienna, and work in this direction will intensify," Ulyanov said.
The Russian and Ukrainian sides are at odds over the arrangements for such a visit. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday an IAEA mission would have to travel only through territory not occupied by Russia.
As for the status of the plant, Ulyanov said: "So far, there are no serious consequences, but, as the IAEA director general rightly said at an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council a week ago, at any moment this could end badly," Ulyanov said.
He said the situation at the plant was "extremely alarming. What the Ukrainian military is doing when shelling this nuclear facility is completely unacceptable," he said.
Ukraine has denied shelling the area, and blamed Russia for doing so as a provocation. Some facilities at the plant have been damaged.
Ulyanov said he did not think the IAEA would support Ukraine's insistence that a demilitarized zone around the plant be created.
"I think IAEA won't support it, and for one simple reason -- the creation of demilitarized zones has nothing to do with the IAEA's mandate," he said.
Russian officials have rejected the idea of demilitarizing the plant, saying that it needs to be protected.
Amid a steady stream of accusations by each side, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Friday that Ukrainian recklessness was to blame for posing "a threat to the largest nuclear facility in Europe with potential risks for a huge territory, not only adjacent to this plant, but far beyond the Ukrainian borders."
"Our air defense systems in the region have been strengthened, we are taking all measures to ensure the safety of the station," Ryabkov said, according to Russian state news agency TASS.
Ryabkov said that the presence of the Russian military guarding the nuclear plant was a guarantee that such a Chernobyl scenario would not be realized.
Two Russian villages were evacuated on Thursday after a fire broke out at an ammunition depot near the border with Ukraine, local authorities said.
The blaze comes days after explosions at a military base and munitions depot in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow, whichRussiacalled an act of "sabotage" by Kyiv.
"An ammunition depot caught fire near the village of Timonovo," less than 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Ukrainian border in Belgorod province, the region's governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a statement.
No casualties were reported, but residents of Timonovo and the nearby village of Soloti were "moved to a safe distance," he said, adding that authorities were investigating the cause of the fire.
A video posted on social media showed a huge fireball billowing a thick column of black smoke.
Another video showed several explosions in quick succession in the distance.
Thursday's fire comes amid a slew of blasts at Russian military installations near Ukraine.
Earlier this month, a bomb exploded near the Saki military airfield in Crimea, killing one person and injuring several others.
A few days later, explosions ripped through an ammunition depot in Crimea.
In the second case, Moscow unusually admitted there had been an act of "sabotage."
Since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in late February, Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out strikes on its soil, particularly in the Belgorod region.
Last month, missiles slammed into the provincial capital Belgorod, killing four people, according to local authorities.
Earlier this month, Gladkov accused Ukraine of carrying out an attack on a fuel depot in Belgorod with two helicopters.
Four people were killed and more than a dozen others injured Thursday by early-morning Russian bombardments on the northeast Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, the governor said.
The attacks come hours ahead of a meeting between the Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and UN chief Antonio Guterres on the other side of the country and after Russian attacks on Kharkiv a day early left at least seven dead.
Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv has been subjected to persistent Russian shelling since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in late February.
The head of the Kharkiv region Oleh Synehubov said Moscow's forces had launched eight missiles from Russian territory at around 04:30 a.m. local time (01:30 GMT) striking western and northern districts of the city.
In the southern Slobidskyi district, "one of the missiles hit a four-story dormitory. The building is partially destroyed. Preliminarily, two people died, 18 got injured, including two children. The detailed information is being clarified," Synegubov said in a statement on social media.
AFP journalists on the scene saw the smoldering remains of several burned-out buildings and twisted wreckage of destroyed vehicles nearby.
Separately, he said, Russian missile attacks on the town of Krasnograd around 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of Kharkiv had destroyed several residential buildings in strikes that left two civilians dead and two injured, including a 12-year-old.
Russian forces initially tried to capture Kharkiv early in their assault on Ukraine but were pushed back and have been shelling mostly northern residential districts of the city since.
Moscow claims Ukraine is storing military equipment near civilian infrastructure, a claim Ukraine denies.
The Turkish leader and Guterres brokered a grain export deal between Moscow and Kyiv, allowing grain to be exported from Ukraine's blockaded Black Sea ports.
A spacewalk by two Russians on Wednesday was ended abruptly due to a problem with the battery in cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev's suit, though at no point was he in any danger, the U.S. and Russian space agencies said.
"Oleg, you must return to the airlock as soon as possible," the Earth-based Russian mission controllers ordered, more than two hours into his trip outside the International Space Station (ISS).
"Drop everything and go back," he was told multiple times, according to a live English translation broadcast by NASA.
The orders came soon after Artemyev reported abnormal voltage readings for his spacesuit's battery.
"Please do not worry, everything is fine. You are OK," the controllers said.
"Me? Worry? No way," responded 51-year-old Artemyev, who took over the commander position of the ISS in May from American astronaut Thomas Marshburn.
Artemyev made his way back into the airlock where he successfully reconnected to the ISS's main power.
He then waited for the second cosmonaut, Denis Matveyev, to gather all the supplies they had used on their mission, reenter and pressurize the airlock.
The spacewalk was declared finished after about four hours.
"The situation is under control... The health of the cosmonaut is not in danger," Roscomos said in a statement afterward.
"The crew is doing well," the Russian space agency added, noting that any uncompleted work will be finished later on.
Before the battery issue, the two cosmonauts installed two cameras outside the ISS.
"The duo was never in any danger during the operations," NASA said in a blogpost.
Wednesday's mission was the seventh spacewalk for Artemyev and the third for Matveyev.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said a block of flats was ‘totally destroyed’ in the attack
President Volodymyr Zelensky said a block of flats was ‘totally destroyed’ in the attack
Ukraine’s president has condemned a Russian strike that the region’s governor said killed at least six people and wounded 16 in Ukraine’s Kharkiv on August 17 as “despicable and cynical”.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said a block of flats was “totally destroyed” in the attack, which he said “had no justification and shows the powerlessness of the aggressor”.
“We will not forgive, we will take revenge”, the president said on the Telegram app.
The strike started a fire in a block of flats in the northeastern city, mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram.
He earlier gave a toll of three dead and ten wounded, but regional governor Oleg Synegubov said the numbers had risen.
“Unfortunately the number of deaths and injuries following the bombardment... has increased: six people died and 16 were wounded,” Mr. Synegubov said on Telegram.
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Tuesday called for systematic punitive measures against Russian oligarchs supporting Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his military operation in Ukraine.
In a lengthy social media post, he said that Western sanctions -- by the United States, European Union or the United Kingdom -- have only targeted 46 of the Forbes list of Russia's 200 richest people.
"That doesn't sound very much like an all-out war on Putin's oligarchs to me," Navalny said.
According to him, the head of Russian gas giant Gazprom, Alexei Miller, was still not on the EU sanctions list.
Navalny said that famed Russian oligarch -- and former Chelsea football club owner -- Roman Abramovich had so far escaped US sanctions, despite his companies "supplying metal to the Russian defence ministry".
"We can't expect a split among Putin's elite on the issue of war if, despite a lot of chatter, we still don't use the stick against them, while allowing them to keep all their carrots," he said.
"I call on all voters and legislators in the EU, UK, US and Canada to put pressure on the executive branch and force them to stop engaging in demagoguery and urgently get down to massive personal sanctions against Putin's thieves."
He also suggested that the European Union, United States and United Kingdom ban anyone supporting the Russian military offensive in Ukraine from their soil "for 20 years".
Navalny is serving a nine-year prison sentence in a penal colony near the Russian town of Vladimir on embezzlement charges that he and his allies say are politically motivated.
But he has continued to pass on messages to his lawyers.
Navalny, 46, rose to prominence as an anti-corruption blogger and, before his imprisonment, mobilised anti-government protests across Russia.
In 2020, he barely survived a poisoning attack that he has blamed on the Russian authorities, but in which the Kremlin has denied any involvement.
He was arrested last year on his return from treatment in Germany, sparking widespread condemnation abroad.
His anti-corruption organisation has drafted a list of more than 6,000 officials it accuses of backing the Russian operation in neighbouring Ukraine.
Russian forces in the occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the flow of ammunition, armor and fuel to front-line units, according to Ukrainian officials and Western analysts, thanks to a concerted Ukrainian campaign to cut off river and rail supply lines as well as target ammunition depots.
The Russians are moving command posts from the north of the Dnipro River to the south bank as bridges have been heavily damaged, Ukrainian officials say.
The first deputy head of Kherson regional council, Yuri Sobolevsky, claimed on his Telegram channel that a significant portion of the Russian military command had already left Kherson city. Ukrainian forces are about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) north of the city, towards Mykolaiv.
Much of Kherson region has been occupied since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As part of Kyiv's counteroffensive to try to retake lost territory in the south, Ukrainian forces are targeting critical bridges to disrupt supply routes in and around Kherson.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, said Sunday that the Russians may be leaving for the other side of the river "to avoid being trapped in Kherson city if Ukrainian strikes cut off all ground lines of communication connecting the right bank of the Dnipro River to the Russian rear."
Videos have appeared on social media in the past few days showing renewed long-range artillery attacks on the Antonivskyi bridge and a road bridge over the dam near Nova Kakhovka, rendering them impassable for heavily armored vehicles. In some areas, the river is up to 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) wide, making pontoon bridges impractical.
The Ukrainians have also targeted several railway lines from the Russian-occupied Crimea Peninsula into the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. On Tuesday, a series of fierce explosions rocked the town of Dzankhoy on the main line towards Kherson. Recent video showed a substantial stock of military vehicles and ammunition at the site.
Two railway lines from Crimea were struck in the last 10 days. Last week, local residents reported several hours of explosions in the Henichesk district, a port area along the Sea of Azov, and the railway further west at Brylivka was also struck.
"Within the last week we have destroyed over 10 ammunition warehouses and military equipment clusters. These hits do not allow for the heavy equipment to be transferred by these bridges," said the Ukrainian military's Operational Command South.
None of this suggests an imminent Russian withdrawal from Kherson.
Olga Voitovych, Yulia Kesaieva and Mariya Knight contributed reporting.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and American Foreign Minister Antony Blinkin have congratulated Pakistan on the 75th independence day.
Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated President Arif Alvi and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on the diamond jubilee of the country’s independence. The Russian President said that Pakistan’s economic and societal progress has been commendable.
Anthony Blinkin added that America and Paksitan have a long history of friendly relations which will only get better with time. He added August 14 marks 75 years of mutual Pak-US relations.
Ukraine on Wednesday accused Russia of carrying out rocket strikes that killed 14 civilians in areas near a nuclear power plant, as the G7 warned that Russian control of the facility "endangers the region."
Overnight strikes in the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine killed 13 people and injured 11, with five reported to be in a serious condition, regional governor Valentin Reznichenko wrote on Telegram.
"It was a terrible night," he said, urging residents to shelter when they hear air raid sirens.
"I am asking and begging you... Don't let the Russians kill you," he wrote.
A woman died after Russian missiles slammed into a village in the Zaporizhzhia region on Wednesday morning, local governor Oleksandr Starukh wrote on Telegram.
Most of the casualties were in the town of Marganets, just across the Dnipro River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's biggest.
Regional council head Mykola Lukashuk said the strikes had hit a local power line, leaving thousands of people without electricity.
G7 call over nuclear plant
Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of recent shelling around the plant, which has six reactors.
Ukraine says Russia has stationed hundreds of troops and stored ammunition at the facility since taking it over on March 4, shortly after starting its invasion.
The tensions have revived memories of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Soviet Ukraine, which killed hundreds of people and spread radioactive contamination over much of Europe.
The Group of Seven industrialized nations condemned Russia's occupation and called on Moscow to immediately hand back full control of the plant.
Ukrainian staff operating the plant must be able to work "without threats or pressure" and Russia's control of the plant "endangers the region," the G7 foreign ministers said in a statement.
The strikes came a day after major blasts at the Saki airfield, a key military base on the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula.
Moscow insisted that the explosions were caused by detonating ammunition rather than Ukrainian fire and Ukraine has not claimed responsibility.
'There is a lot of shooting'
Fighting also ground on in eastern Ukraine, where Russian troops are gradually advancing.
Strikes on the city of Bakhmut killed at least six people and injured three others, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram, adding that 12 residential buildings were damaged.
The city of Soledar was under constant shelling, AFP reporters saw, as Russian troops attempted to drive out Ukrainian forces and seize a foothold towards Bakhmut.
The echoes of cluster bombs and artillery bounced off apartment buildings with their windows shattered, while roads were cratered and shops boarded up or destroyed.
The city was shrouded with black and white smoke arising from artillery and air strikes.
Some of those who remain now live underground in cellars ill-suited as bomb shelters.
"Most have left. It's very scary. There is a lot of shooting," said 62-year-old Svitlana Klymenko.
"I just want to leave to grow old in a normal way, die a normal death, not be killed by a missile."
EU ban on Russian coal
The war has severely hampered grain supply from Ukraine, leading to an international food crisis as it is one of the world's biggest producers.
Some ships have been able to leave Ukrainian ports in recent days after a deal with Russia brokered by the United Nations and Turkey.
The first exports of wheat should start next week under the agreement, top UN official Frederick Kenney said on Wednesday.
The first grain shipment to leave on the Sierra Leone-flagged vessel Razoni departed the Ukrainian port of Odesa on Aug. 1 and had been expected to dock in the Lebanese port of Tripoli at the weekend.
But the Ukrainian embassy said a new buyer for the shipment was being sought after the original Lebanese buyer cancelled the order.
Marine traffic sites showed the Razoni docked in Turkey's Mediterranean port of Mersin, following reports a new buyer had been found for its cargo.
Spain on Wednesday launched a pilot project to import Ukrainian grain by train to avoid blocked maritime routes, with a freight train leaving Madrid for the Polish town of Chelm late on Tuesday.
Western countries have meanwhile imposed increasingly stringent sanctions on Moscow, raising fears that Russia may cut off gas supplies.
EU countries have started putting into place different measures to save energy, with air conditioning curbs coming into force in Spain on Wednesday and Vienna dimming street lighting.
A total EU ban on imports of Russian coal was due to come into force overnight.
Ukraine calls on the West to impose a blanket travel ban on Russians as angry Moscow steps up its fierce military offensive against Kiev on the 168th day of the conflict.
Russia has intensified attacks near the cities of Bakhmut and Soledar in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region in recent days.
(AFP PHOTO / UKRAINIAN EMERGENCY SERVICE)
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Six killed in Russian strikes on eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut
Russian strikes on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut have killed at least six people and left three others injured, the regional governor said.
"The Russians bombed the city with a multiple rocket launcher, hitting a residential area.
According to initial information, 12 residential buildings have been damaged and four are on fire," Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram.
First Ukrainian wheat shipments expected next week: UN
The first wheat since the conflict should ship next week from Ukraine under a landmark deal also signed by Russia aimed at tackling the global food crisis, a top UN official has said.
The first 12 ships to leave the three Black Sea ports designated by the agreement were carrying 370,000 tonnes of corn and foodstuffs, according to Frederick Kenney, interim UN coordinator at the joint centre in Istanbul overseeing the deal.
The ships have been docked in Ukraine since Russia began its offensive in February. Once all the ships carrying corn and foodstuffs leave their ports, new ones can come in to pick up wheat that has accumulated with this year's harvest, Kenney said.
Georgia troops return after deploying amid conflict in Ukraine
More than 3,800 army soldiers are returning to Georgia five months after their rapid deployment to Europe after Russia started its offensive in Ukraine.
The soldiers from Georgia went to Germany to train alongside NATO allies in a show of force intended to deter further Russian aggression in Europe. Fort Stewart commanders say the rest of the 1st Brigade should be home by the end of August.
The US military is sending another unit to take its place - the 3rd Armored Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division based at Fort Hood, Texas.
Ukraine's President Zelenskyy says the war can only end with the liberation of Crimea pic.twitter.com/pGWcUZwdxJ
Estonia protests Russia's 'unacceptable' violation of its airspace
Estonia has summoned the Russian ambassador and formally protested the violation of its airspace by a Russian helicopter on Tuesday, the foreign ministry said.
"Estonia considers this an extremely serious and regrettable incident that is completely unacceptable," the ministry said in a release, saying the helicopter had flown over a point in the southeast of the small Baltic nation without permission.
Estonia made an identical complaint to Moscow in June.
Ukraine's creditors agree to payment freeze on international bonds
Ukraine's overseas creditors have backed its request for a two-year freeze on payments on almost $20 billion in international bonds, according to a regulatory filing, a move that will allow the war-torn country to avoid a debt default.
With no sign of peace or a ceasefire on the horizon nearly six months after Russia's offensive began on February 24, bondholders have agreed to postpone sovereign interest and capital payments for 13 Ukrainian sovereign bonds maturing between 2022 and 2033.
The government in Kiev launched a consent solicitation, which is a formal request to agree with creditors on changes to sovereign debt contracts, on July 20.
Sergey Markov claims Russia is liberating Ukraine, but Peter @zalmayev hits back accusing Moscow of destroying the country.
Ukraine says nine Russian warplanes destroyed in Crimea blasts
Ukraine's air force has said that nine Russian warplanes were destroyed in massive explosions at an air base in Crimea amid speculation they were the result of a Ukrainian attack that would represent a significant escalation in the conflict.
Russia denied any aircraft were damaged in Tuesday's blasts — or that any attack took place.
Ukrainian officials have stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility for the explosions, while poking fun at Russia’s explanation that a careless smoker might have caused munitions at the Saki air base to catch fire and blow up.
Russian oil shipments to central Europe expected to resume
Oil shipments from Russia through a critical pipeline to several European countries should resume soon after a problem over payments for transit was resolved, Slovakia’s Economy Minister Richard Sulik has said.
“I expect the oil shipments to resume in hours,” Sulik said. Russian state pipeline operator Transneft cited complications due to European Union sanctions for its action on August 4, saying its payment to the company’s Ukrainian counterpart was refused.
Sulik said the payments would be made Wednesday by Slovak refiner Slovnaft after both the Russian and Ukrainian sides agreed to the solution. Slovnaft is owned by Hungary’s MOL energy group.
Denmark to train Ukrainian soldiers in UK
Denmark will send military instructors to Britain to help train Ukrainian soldiers and also offer to train Ukrainian officers on its soil, the Danish defence ministry has said.
The announcement preceded a conference in Copenhagen on Thursday when British, Danish and Ukrainian defence ministers are expected to discuss long-term support for Ukraine, including military training, mine clearance and weapons supplies.
"Denmark will support a British-led training project with 130 Danish soldiers and at the same time offer to train Ukrainian soldiers in Denmark," a ministry statement said.
Supply of Russian oil to Central Europe via Druzhba pipeline has been halted due to payment issues caused by sanctions.
Although it is expected to resume soon, disruption in oil flow once again shows how much European nations are dependent on Russia for energy pic.twitter.com/I89RS9giKA
Deadly Russian strikes hit Dnipropetrovsk - local governor
At least 13 civilians have been killed by Russian strikes in the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine, the local governor says.
"It was a terrible night. 11 people were killed," Governor Valentin Reznichenko wrote on Telegram, adding in a later post that two more people had died of their injuries overnight.
Reznychenko initially put the casualties at 21, with 11 killed in the district of Nikopol and 10 in Marganets, but said in a subsequent message on the Telegram messaging app that 11 was the total number, without clarifying which initial details were incorrect.
G7: Russian control of Ukraine nuclear plant endangers region
The Group of Seven industrialised nations has condemned Russia's occupation of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and called on Moscow to immediately hand back full control of the plant to Ukraine.
Ukrainian staff operating the plant "must be able to carry out their duties without threats or pressure. It is Russia's continued control of the plant that endangers the region," the G7 foreign ministers said in a statement.
Philippines cancels Russia helicopter deal over US sanctions
The Philippines has scrapped an order for 16 Russian military helicopters, an official confirmed, following reports former president Rodrigo Duterte decided to cancel it due to US sanctions on Moscow.
Manila — a longtime Washington ally — agreed in November to pay $228 million for the Mi-17 helicopters, as it seeks to modernise its military hardware.
The United States and its allies imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Moscow in the wake of its attacks on Ukraine.
The UN's nuclear watchdog says it has no way of safely accessing Ukraine's Zaphorizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Russia says inspectors are welcome to see the site, but it won't agree to a ceasefire to facilitate the visit pic.twitter.com/JJeFbLMpIY
Ukraine: Russia trying to connect Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to Crimea
Russian forces occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeast Ukraine are preparing to connect to Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, and are damaging it by reorienting its electricity production, Ukrainian operator Energoatom has warned.
"The Russian military present at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is implementing the programme of (Russian operator) Rosatom aimed at connecting the plant to the Crimean electricity grid," Energoatom president Petro Kotin told Ukrainian television.
"To do this, you must first damage the power lines of the plant connected to the Ukrainian energy system. From August 7 to 9, the Russians have already damaged three power lines. At the moment, the plant is operating with only one production line, which is an extremely dangerous way of working," he said.
"When the last production line is disconnected, the plant will be powered by generators running on diesel. Everything will then depend on their reliability and fuel stocks," Kotin warned.
Russian airbase explosions could be the work of 'partisan saboteurs'
A senior Ukrainian official has suggested a series of explosions at a Russian air base in Crimea could have been the work of partisan saboteurs, as Kiev denied any responsibility for the incident deep inside Russian-occupied territory.
The adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also suggested Russian incompetence as a possible cause of Tuesday's blasts. They killed one civilian and injured eight, according to the health department in Russia-annexed Crimea.
Mykhailo Podolyak, asked by the Dozhd online television channel whether Kiev was responsible, replied: "Of course not. What do we have to do with this?"
For live updates from Tuesday (August 9), click here
Russian police raided the house of Marina Ovsyannikova, the former Russian state television producer who protested the war in Ukraine in a live news broadcast, the journalist said on Wednesday.
“At 6 in the morning while I was still sleeping, tens of employees of the Investigative Committee and the police stormed into my house. They showed an order for the raid,” Ovsyannikova said on the Telegram messaging app.
“They scared my little daughter. Now I am being taken to the Investigative Committee,” she added.
Ovsyannikova, 44, became well known in Russia and abroad in March after staging an anti-war picket during a primetime news broadcast on Russia’s state-controlled Channel One, where she was employed as a producer at the time.
Wednesday’s raids were linked to a criminal case on distributing “fakes” about the Russian Armed Forces, a criminal charge punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
The case was opened over Ovsyannikova’s solo protest near the Kremlin in July where she held a poster reading "How many more children must die [in Ukraine] before you stop?"
Dmitry Zakhvatov, a lawyer with the OVD-Info human rights watchdog who is representing Ovsyannikova, said the police started searching her home before her legal representative arrived.
Ovsyannikova has been fined twice before for her anti-war actions.
In July, Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court ordered her to pay 50,000 rubles ($816) for “discrediting” the Russian Armed Forces in an interview she gave during a trial against opposition politician Ilya Yashin.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday accusedRussiaof using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "for terror" after the operator of the facility reported major damage at the site.
Energoatom, the operator of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the south of the country, said Saturday that parts of the facility had been "seriously damaged" by military strikes and one of its reactors was forced to shut down.
Friday's strikes had damaged a station containing nitrogen and oxygen and an auxiliary building, Energoatom said on the Telegram messaging service.
As hostilities raged on in the east and south of Ukraine, pro-Moscow authorities in the Russian-occupied Kherson region reported the assassination of a senior official.
And the head of Amnesty International's Ukraine office announced she had resigned from the organization over the group's publication of a controversial report that accused the country's military of endangering civilians.
Kyiv and Moscow have blamed each other for the attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest atomic power complex.
Zelensky, in his nightly address on Saturday, once again accused Moscow of terrorism, saying, "Russian terrorists became the first in the world to use the power plant...for terror."
The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog expressed alarm over the shelling at the plant. The strikes underline "the very real risk of a nuclear disaster," said Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"Any military firepower directed at or from the facility would amount to playing with fire, with potentially catastrophic consequences," he added.
The European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell condemned the attack "as a serious and irresponsible breach of nuclear safety rules and another example ofRussia's disregard for international norms."
Another assassination
An official with the Russian occupying authorities in Kherson died in hospital after being shot on Saturday, Russian state media reported.
Vitalii Hura, "the deputy head of the Novaya Kakhovka administration in charge of the housing and utility sector, died from his wounds," Yekaterina Gubareva, the deputy head ofRussia's civil-military administration in Kherson, wrote on Telegram, according to TASS.
The report said Hura had been attacked in his home and shot several times.
Another Moscow-appointed official was killed in the same region in June, reportedly by a bomb planted in his car.
There has been a spate of reported assassination attempts and attacks against pro-Kremlin officials in Ukrainian regions controlled byRussia.
AlthoughRussiahas seized a large swath of the Kherson region and part of nearby Zaporizhzhia in recent months, Ukraine's forces have reclaimed some territory.
In his address Saturday, Zelensky hit out at Amnesty International, comparing the rights group's accusations against Ukraine's military with its silence onRussia's actions.
Referring to the strikes on the Zaporizhzhia plant, he said that although they represented "one of the most dangerous crimes against Ukrainians and all Europeans...for some reason, there's still no report or even just a simple message from Amnesty International about it."
"It's a very eloquent silence, which points out, once more, a manipulative selectivity of this organization," he added.
Amnesty sparked outrage in Ukraine with the report published Thursday that accused the military of endangering civilians by establishing bases in schools and hospitals and launching counterattacks from heavily populated areas.
Amnesty report row
The head of Amnesty's Ukraine office quit the organization in protest.
"If you don't live in a country invaded by occupiers who are tearing it to pieces, you probably don't understand what it's like to condemn an army of defenders," Oksana Pokalchuk said on social media late Friday.
"And there are no words in any language that can convey this to someone who has not experienced this pain."
Pokalchuk said she had tried to warn Amnesty's senior leadership that the report was one-sided and failed to properly take into account the Ukrainian position but had been ignored.
Amnesty secretary-general Agnes Callamard expressed regret at her departure and paid tribute to her work. But the organization stands by its report.
On Friday, Ukrainian officials said three grain ships left Ukraine after the first in months sailed on Monday as part of a deal to avert widespread food shortages.
Another five cargo ships are due to leave the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk on Sunday, said a statement from the Joint Coordination Centre of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the organization coordinating the operation agreed betweenRussia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations.
Russian forces began an assault Saturday on two key cities in the eastern Donetsk region and kept up rocket and shelling attacks on other Ukrainian cities, including one close to Europe's largest nuclear power plant, Ukraine's military and local officials said.
Both cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka had been considered key targets of Russia's ongoing offensive across Ukraine's east, with analysts saying Moscow needs to take Bakhmut if it is to advance on the regional hubs of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
"In the Donetsk direction, the enemy is conducting an offensive operation, concentrating its main efforts on the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions. It uses ground attack and army aviation," the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook.
Russian shelling killed five civilians and injured 14 others in the Donetsk region in the last day, Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote Saturday on Telegram, saying two died in Poprosny, and one each in Avdiivka, Soledar and Pervomaiskiy.
The governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region said three civilians were injured after Russian rockets fell on a residential neighborhood in Nikopol, a city across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. The nuclear plant has been under Russian control since Moscow's troops seized it early in the war.
"After midnight, the Russian army struck the Nikopol area with (Soviet-era) Grad rockets, and the Kryvyi Rih area from barrel artillery," Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian authorities also said a Russian missile attack overnight damaged unspecified infrastructure in the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia. On Thursday, Russia fired 60 rockets at Nikopol, damaging 50 residential buildings in the city of 107,000 and leaving residents without electricity.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned this week that the situation was becoming more perilous day by day at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
"Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated" at the plant, he said. "What is at stake is extremely serious and extremely grave and dangerous."
He expressed concern about the way the plant is being operated and the danger posed by the fighting going on around it. Experts at the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said they believe Russia is shelling the area intentionally, "putting Ukraine in a difficult position."
The Ukrainian company operating the nuclear power station said Saturday that Russian troops are using the plant's basement to hide from Ukrainian shelling and have barred its Ukrainian staff from going there.
"Ukrainian personnel do not yet have access to these premises, so in the event of new shelling, people have no shelter and are in danger," Enerhoatom, a Ukrainian state enterprise, said on its Telegram channel.
Enerhoatom said Friday that Russian rockets had damaged the plant's facilities, including a nitrogen-oxygen unit and a high-voltage power line. Local Russian-appointed officials acknowledged the damage, but blamed it on alleged Ukrainian shelling.
In Ukraine's south, two civilians were seriously injured Saturday after Russian forces fired rockets on the Black Sea port of Mykolayiv before dawn, according to regional authorities. That followed a Friday afternoon attack on Mykolayiv that killed one person and wounded 21 others.
In the north, Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv and its surrounding area also came under Russian rocket fire again overnight, according to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov. An 18-year-old in Chuhuiv, a town near Kharkiv, had to be hospitalized Saturday after he picked up an unexploded shell.
Both Chuhuiv and Kharkiv have endured sustained Russian shelling in recent weeks, due to their proximity to the Russian border.
The neighboring Sumy region, which also borders Russia, has also seen near-constant shelling and missile strikes. Its regional governor said Saturday the province was hit more than 60 times from Russian territory over the previous day, and one wounded civilian had to be hospitalized.
On the ammunition front, Russia has begun using Iranian combat drones in the war, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a YouTube address, adding that Tehran had transferred 46 drones to the Russian army.
Dr Alexander Shiplyuk, director of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Siberian Branch, is the third Russian scientist this summer to be arrested on suspicion of treason.
The institute's scientific director Vasily Fomin told the Russian news agency TASS that Shiplyuk was sent to the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center in Moscow.
His detention comes after the arrest on June 27 of the chief researcher of the institute, Anatoly Maslov, who is suspected of transferring state secret data related to hypersonic missiles.
According to the institute's website, Shiplyuk heads a technology lab with unique wind tunnels purpose-built for simulating hypersonic conditions.
On June 30, the Sovetsky District Court of Novosibirsk arrested another scientist, Dmitry Kolker, a researcher at the Institute of Laser Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Kolker was detained on state treason charges for allegedly collaborating with China's security services, Reuters reported.
Kolker, who was diagnosed with stage four cancer, died while being transferred from the pre-trial detention center.
Military powers in Russia, China, and the United States are working to develop hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) weapons.
These are highly maneuverable weapons that can theoretically fly at hypersonic speeds while adjusting course and altitude to fly under radar detection and around missile defenses.
Experts say such weapons are incredibly hard to defend against.
Russia is thought to have an HGV in its arsenal, the Avangard system, which Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 claimed was "practically invulnerable" to Western air defenses.
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