A summary of today's developments
The Nobel Foundation has announced it is reversing its decision to invite ambassadors from Russia and Belarus to this year’s Nobel award ceremony in Stockholm, after the move sparked anger.
Ukrainian forces are “on the move”, the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said, as the US acknowledged the “notable progress” of the counteroffensive over the past few days.
Russia risks splitting its troops as it seeks to prevent a Ukrainian breakthrough in Ukraine’s south, the UK Ministry of Defence said. It said Ukrainian forces continued to take offensive action on the Orikhiv axis in southern Ukraine, with units reaching the first Russian main defensive line.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is to host the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for talks on Monday, the Kremlin announced yesterday. It comes just over six weeks after Moscow broke off a deal brokered by Ankara and the UN that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach world markets.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces this morning destroyed an unmanned Ukrainian boat being used in an attempt to attack the bridge linking the Crimean peninsula to the Russian mainland. The vessel had been “spotted and destroyed in time off the Black Sea coast”.
Elections are under way in Russian-controlled provinces of Ukraine as part of a move to cement Moscow’s authorities in its “new territories” despite the ongoing conflict. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions where the votes are being held – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
The largest refugee centre established to home Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion has been closed by Poland after it said the sanctuary was no longer required, since most had now found homes elsewhere.
Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, has tweeted a photo of a Russian strike in Kramatorsk.
Instead of a thousand words.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) September 2, 2023
A Russian rocket hit Kramatorsk today. Very close to a residential building.
Terrorist state continues terrorizing civilians.
📷: Radio Svoboda pic.twitter.com/B9CQUIB6a2
• This post was amended on 3 September 2023. Anton Gerashchenko is advisor to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, rather than holding that position himself.
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Ukraine’s ministry of defence has tweeted footage of Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, testing the Slinger anti-drone system.
Ukraine’s Ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko @AmbVasyl, personally struck two fixed targets. He was testing the Slinger anti-drone system, manufactured by Australian company Electro Optic Systems and based on the 30mm M230LF cannon and the 7.62mm MAG58 machine gun. pic.twitter.com/NeEWufJpfV
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 2, 2023
It has also posted a photograph of the remnants of a KAB-500 aviation bomb that Russia used.
The remnants of a KAB-500 aviation bomb that russian terrorists drop on frontline villages and cities. They maim and kill peaceful residents every day. Fortunately, this one did not explode completely.
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 2, 2023
📷 32nd Mechanized Brigade pic.twitter.com/JN92I2cUG7
Ukraine has called the Nobel Foundation’s decision to bar Russia and Belarus from its Stockholm prize ceremony a restoration of justice.
The foundation cancelled an invitation to the two nations and Iran after widespread criticism.
“Thank you to everyone who demanded that justice be restored,” said Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko.
“We are convinced that a similar decision should be made regarding the Russian and Belarusian ambassadors in Oslo,” referring to the peace prize ceremony that takes place in Norway after the event in Sweden.
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Summary
The Nobel Foundation has announced it is reversing its decision to invite ambassadors from Russia and Belarus to this year’s Nobel award ceremony in Stockholm, after the move sparked anger.
Ukrainian forces are “on the move”, the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said, as the US acknowledged the “notable progress” of the counteroffensive over the past few days.
Russia risks splitting its troops as it seeks to prevent a Ukrainian breakthrough in Ukraine’s south, the UK Ministry of Defence said. It said Ukrainian forces continued to take offensive action on the Orikhiv axis in southern Ukraine, with units reaching the first Russian main defensive line.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is to host the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for talks on Monday, the Kremlin announced yesterday. It comes just over six weeks after Moscow broke off a deal brokered by Ankara and the UN that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach world markets.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces this morning destroyed an unmanned Ukrainian boat being used in an attempt to attack the bridge linking the Crimean peninsula to the Russian mainland. The vessel had been “spotted and destroyed in time off the Black Sea coast”.
Elections are under way in Russian-controlled provinces of Ukraine as part of a move to cement Moscow’s authorities in its “new territories” despite the ongoing conflict. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions where the votes are being held – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
The largest refugee centre established to home Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion has been closed by Poland after it said the sanctuary was no longer required, since most had now found homes elsewhere.
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Ukrainian forces are “on the move”, the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said, as the US acknowledged the “notable progress” of the counteroffensive over the past few days.
The defence ministry cited a statement from Zelenskiy’s Telegram channel:
.@ZelenskyyUa: 🇺🇦Ukrainian forces are moving forward. Despite everything and no matter what anyone says, we are advancing, and that is the most important thing. We are on the move.#StandWithUkraine️ pic.twitter.com/gf3BVMbFSU
— MFA of Ukraine 🇺🇦 (@MFA_Ukraine) September 2, 2023
Ukraine’s military retook the southern village of Robotyne this week before its troops moved eastwards toward Verbove, where several lines of Russian defences meet.
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Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, has claimed that students in Crimea are set to receive military training courses under Russian plans to militarise the annexed region.
In a statement on Telegram, Lubinets said:
From today, Crimean schoolchildren from grades five to nine will attend extracurricular classes – ‘basics of military training’. And for students of the 10th and 11th grades, it was included in the OBZ program.
For this purpose, 25 Crimean teachers have already completed courses of military training, tactical medicine, to assemble and disassemble automatic weapons, organise life in a field camp, handle personal protective equipment and radiological, chemical and biological protection.
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The head of a Russian government-funded thinktank has been removed from his post after publishing an article about Russian propaganda during the war on Ukraine.
Valery Garbuzov, the head of the United States and Canada Institute, told Tass:
Yes, yesterday an order was signed to terminate the contract with me. The reason as such is not indicated there, there is an article of the employment contract that is at the initiative of the founder, it is formulated like this.
The BBC reports that Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta ran a column by Garbuzov last week. He claimed that there is an “atmosphere of pseudo-patriotic madness” and conditions of the “creeping restoration of Stalinism”.
Less controversially, in Russia at least, he added: “US dominance is an objective, permanent factor that began the process of its formation at the beginning of the 20th century and still exists.” Before stating: “Russia is a former empire, the heir to the Soviet superpower, experiencing an extremely painful syndrome of suddenly lost imperial greatness.”
He said that Russian people “with amazing ease, naively and thoughtlessly perceives the theses of total state propaganda”.
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Iran’s news agencies are reporting that a Russian-made Yak-130 combat trainer aircraft is in the country and has joined the air force.
The report by Isna said the advanced combat trainer aircraft is able to meet the training needs of pilots learning to fly fourth-generation fighters.
In April, Iran announced that it had finalised a deal to buy Su-35 fighter jets from Russia. Iran and Russia have a close relationship, especially in military equipment, reports AP.
Iranian drones have been a key element of Russia’s continued war on Ukraine. Tehran has offered a series of contradictory explanations about the drones, first denying it supplied them to Moscow and then claiming it sold them only before the war began. However, the volume of drones used in the conflict shows a steady supply by Iran of the bomb-carrying weapons.
In June, the White House said Iran is providing Russia with materials to build a drone manufacturing plant east of Moscow as the Kremlin looks to lock in a steady supply of weaponry.
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France has been assisting Ukraine in a fresh diplomatic effort to gather the support of more countries in the global south.
The Financial Times reports there have been concerns that Russia emerged from the Brics summit in South Africa last week strengthened since it was announced that next year’s meeting would be held in Kazan, Russia.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was in Paris this week and claimed his country had offered countries the option of choosing which aspects of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s 10-point peace plan they could support.
This flexible method allows us to have a bigger coalition … Much work remains to be done and more diplomatic contacts will be needed. We will use the next session of the United Nations to organise more communication with countries in Africa, Asia and South America.
Some emerging countries such as India and Brazil have not condemned Russia over the war in Ukraine since they maintain that the conflict does not concern them.
Olexiy Haran, professor of comparative politics at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy university, told the FT that Ukrainian diplomatic outreach with the global south was “becoming more active, more professional and taking into account greater specificity” of the countries it sought to engage.
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The release of Russia’s first feature-length film about its invasion of Ukraine that premiered across the country on 17 August comes on the back of plans announced by the Russian authorities to boost the production of movies glorifying Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.
But The Witness is a box-office flop. Set to a budget of 200 million roubles (£1.5m), it has grossed less than 14 million roubles (£110,000) in its first two weeks, with viewers across the country reporting empty cinema halls.
In two hours of screen time, the film covers a wide spectrum of falsehoods that the Kremlin has used to justify its invasion of Ukraine. On the eve of the invasion, Vladimir Putin said Moscow had to “denazify” its neighbour, the lie that Ukraine was infiltrated by dangerous “Nazis”.
At one point, a Ukrainian commander is seen walking around with a copy of Mein Kampf, while other Ukrainian soldiers pledge their allegiance to Adolf Hitler. As a witness to these unspeakable horrors, a fictional Belgian violinist, Daniel Cohen, sets out to tell the world the “truth” about the conflict.
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A new Russian high school text book has sought to justify its war of aggression in Ukraine, as students returned to classes following the summer break.
The New York Times reports that a revised textbook alleges that Ukraine is an “ultranationalist state” where “opposition is forbidden,” and that the US is “the main beneficiary of the Ukrainian conflict.”
The rewritten version of “The History of Russia, 1945 to the beginning of the 21st Century,” a textbook for 16- and 17-year-old students, devotes almost 30 pages to the war. The NYT said the authors framed it as a response to “an increasingly aggressive West” that wanted to use Ukraine as a “battering ram” to destroy Russia.
Russia is trying “to silence” the 2021 Nobel Peace prize laureate, Dmitry Muratov, by branding the journalist a foreign agent, the body in charge of the prestigious award has said.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said:
Dmitry Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize … for his efforts to promote freedom of speech and freedom of information, and independent journalism. It is sad that Russian authorities are now trying to silence him. The accusations against him are politically motivated.”
Reiss-Andersen said the committee “continues to stand behind the important work” done by Muratov and the independent publication Novaya Gazeta, AFP reports.
Russia yesterday added Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta, to its list of foreign agents, a label authorities commonly use to stifle critics.
Muratov “used foreign platforms to disseminate opinions aimed at forming a negative attitude towards the foreign and domestic policy of the Russian Federation”, the justice ministry said.
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The Nobel Foundation’s decision, since reversed, to invite the Russian and Belarusian ambassadors invoked condemnation in Sweden and abroad.
Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko wrote on Facebook that the foundation should support efforts to isolate Russia and Belarus as “millions of Ukrainians suffer from an unprovoked war and the Russian regime is not punished for its crimes”.
The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, also said that he disagreed with the foundation’s decision. “I would not have done it if I were handling invites to an award ceremony and I understand that it upsets many people in both Sweden and Ukraine,” he told AFP.
Several prominent Swedish politicians, including the leaders of the Centre, Green, Left and Liberal parties, said they would boycott the event over the Russian ambassador’s presence.
The glitzy event is held each year in Stockholm on 10 December when laureates in the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics receive their awards from King Carl XVI Gustaf.
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Here are the latest images coming across the wires from Ukraine:
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The Russian defence ministry has said on Saturday that its forces brought down three Ukrainian drones over the Belgorod region.
Meanwhile the regional governor said that one man had been killed in a Ukrainian rocket strike on a village close to the border.
Separately, the governors of the nearby frontier regions of Bryansk and Kursk said a string of border villages had come under fire from Ukraine, and a woman had been wounded in Kursk region.
Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian territory have picked up in recent weeks, with dozens of drones striking Russia at once on some days, reaching as far as the western city of Pskov, 400 miles from Ukraine.
Russian-installed authorities in the Moscow-controlled part of Ukraine’s Kherson region also said that Kyiv struck the village of Maslivka in a drone strike, wounding a civilian.
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Nobel Foundation U-turn on controversial decision to invite Russian ambassadors to ceremony
The Nobel Foundation has announced it is reversing its decision to invite ambassadors from Russia and Belarus to this year’s Nobel award ceremony in Stockholm, after the move sparked anger.
In 2022, the Nobel Foundation, which organises the annual Nobel prize ceremony and banquet in Stockholm, decided not to invite the Russian and Belarusian ambassadors to the award event because of the war in Ukraine.
They made the same decision regarding the Iranian envoy over the country’s crackdown on protests.
The Swedish foundation said on Thursday that it was returning to its previous practice of inviting ambassadors from all countries represented in Sweden, sparking a wave of angry reactions.
The foundation said today that Thursday’s decision was based on its belief “that it is important and right to reach out as widely as possible with the values and messages that the Nobel prize stands for.” It noted, however, that the strong reactions “completely overshadowed this message”.
We, therefore, choose to repeat last year’s exception to regular practice – that is, to not invite the ambassadors of Russia, Belarus and Iran to the Nobel prize award ceremony in Stockholm.
Last year, the Norwegian Nobel Institute still invited all ambassadors to the peace prize ceremony it organises in Oslo, and the foundation said this would be the case again. “As before, all ambassadors will be invited to the ceremony in Oslo,” it noted.
The decision to once again invite the Russian and Belarusian representatives sparked ire in Sweden and abroad, reports AFP.
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Large-scale naval drills in the Baltic Sea involving some 30 ships and more than 3,000 western service members will for the first time practice how to respond to a Russian assault in the region, Germany’s navy chief has said.
The two-week exercise, set to start next Saturday, will see troops from all Nato countries on the Baltic Sea, plus soon-to-be member Sweden and non-Baltic allies including the US, Canada, and France, train side by side, Reuters reports.
“We are sending a clear message of vigilance to Russia: Not on our watch,” vice-admiral Jan Christian Kaack said in Berlin. “Credible deterrence must include the ability to attack.”
The US navy will send the Mesa Verde – a ship more than 200 metres long designed to transport and land some 800 marines in an amphibious assault – into the drills, Kaack said.
Finland and the Baltic states depend to almost 100% on the maritime supply routes through the Baltic Sea. Should the Suwalki Gap [the only connection linking the Baltic states to Poland and Nato’s main territory in Europe] be blocked – and this can be done easily as there are only two roads and one railroad line – then we are left with the sea routes only, and that’s where we will then have to make our way through.
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The father of a former British paratrooper who has gone missing in Ukraine has urged Scotland Yard to investigate his disappearance.
Daniel Burke, 36, has not been seen since he was in his flat on 11 August in south-east Ukraine three weeks ago, and speculation is rife over what may have happened to him, the Telegraph reports.
“We want the investigation to be kept going as much as possible, and I would love to see a British police investigation too,” Kevin Burke said. “If anyone has information, please come forward. We want to know where Daniel is.”
His son, from Manchester, arrived in Ukraine at the beginning of the war and formed his own volunteer military unit, the Dark Angels. However, he later switched to frontline rescue and evacuation work.
This week, 22-year-old British psychology student Sam Newey, who had no military experience when he volunteered to fight in Ukraine last year, was killed during combat in the east of the country. He had served in the Dark Angels before it was disbanded.
“I cannot put into words how broken I feel,” his brother said on Facebook. “I also cannot emphasise how proud I am of my little brother. He’d just turned 21 when he decided to answer the call and travel to Ukraine to push back against Russian imperialism. Sam, you gave your life for people you never knew and acted with courage, morality and honour.”
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Andrey Melnichenko, Russia’s richest man, has criticised attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine as crimes, while claiming there have been war crimes on both sides in the conflict.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Melnichenko, who owns the fertiliser giant EuroChem and is worth $25bn, said:
War brings up all sorts of odious people to the surface from both sides. There are definitely war crimes from both sides. This happens in any war. It’s natural. It doesn’t matter who started it.
Melnichenko is now living in Dubai after his 14 years in Switzerland came to an end when he was sanctioned by the EU for attending an oligarch’s round table in Moscow with Vladimir Putin on the first day of the war with Ukraine.
He said sanctions against Russia have caused global food prices to rise and have impacted access to food in poorer countries. “If you are harming millions who have nothing to do with the conflict, you are a war criminal,” he said, claiming that sanctions are effectively economic weapons of mass destruction. “Don’t hide behind the term collateral damage – it’s a crime. It doesn’t matter why you did it.”
Melnichenko said he was concerned that he does not “see a trend for de-escalation anywhere, unfortunately. That scares me. The longer things go on and the more [society’s] expectations are thwarted, the harder it is to mobilise it. There’s a limit to how long propaganda can rally people for destruction. People get tired of it and want to move on. Leaders start losing popularity.”
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A third cargo vessel to depart Ukraine, despite Russian threats, has been located a short distance away from Bulgarian territorial waters, maritime officials have said.
The Anna-Theresa, a Liberian-flagged bulk carrier loaded with 56,000 tons of pig iron, left the Ukrainian port of Yuzhny yesterday, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, said.
He added that a second vessel – the Ocean Courtesy, traveling under a Marshall Islands flag — left the same port yesterday with 172,000 tons of iron ore concentrate. It was expected to reach Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta this afternoon, according to the global ship tracking website MarineTraffic.
AP reports that the two vessels sailed through a temporary corridor for civilian ships from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to the Bosphorus, Kubrakov said on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. The corridor goes along the western shores of the Black Sea, avoiding international waters and instead using those controlled by Nato members Romania and Bulgaria.
The ships were the third and fourth vessels to use the interim corridor established by Ukraine’s government after Russia halted a wartime agreement aimed at ensuring safe grain exports from Ukraine. The vessels had been docked in Ukrainian Black Sea ports since before Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
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Elections are under way in Russian-controlled provinces of Ukraine as part of a move to cement Moscow’s authorities in its “new territories” despite the ongoing conflict.
Reuters reports that Russia does not fully control any of the four regions where the votes are being held – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Along with Crimea, annexed in 2014, they make up almost a fifth of Ukraine.
Three-quarters of countries at the UN general assembly condemned Russia’s “attempted illegal annexation” of the four regions in October.
In all four regions, Moscow’s handpicked governors, a mix of veteran pro-Russian politicians and others known only locally, are seeking full terms of office in the polls, which conclude on 10 September.
The governors are all running with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s endorsement, having joined the Kremlin’s United Russia bloc in recent months, and face only nominal opposition.
The exiled Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko, told Reuters:
It is clear that there is no trust from the people toward this process, which should be called a sham election.
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Russian bloggers have been cashing in on their social media coverage of the Ukraine war with paid ads in their feeds worth more than a month’s average wage.
The BBC reports that pro-war influencers known in Russia as “Z-bloggers” share ads, mostly on Telegram – the platform du jour in Russia after the banning of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook – on everything from cryptocurrency to fashion.
Alexander Kots, a veteran correspondent for a pro-government newspaper who has more than 600,000 followers on his Telegram channel, told the BBC:
The Ministry of Defence often listens to us, and we have a direct channel to privately communicate information to them. It’s all behind the scenes, and I do that.
He said he would charge the equivalent of £440 to £680 per post on his channel, depending on the level of exposure of the ad.
President Putin appointed Kots to the presidential human rights council following the invasion and made several other bloggers members of a working group on mobilisation. “The fight in the information space is a battlefield. A crucial battlefield,” he told them. “And I really count on your help.”
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Oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, a former political ally of Ukraine’s president, reportedly now faces criminal charges over alleged financial manipulation related to his oil and gas holdings.
The Kyiv Independent published a photo which it said showed the moment that Kolomoisky was handed the charges at his home by security forces prior to a search of the property.
It cited a security service statement saying Kolomoisky, who controlled Ukraine’s largest refining company until the government seized the “critical national resource” in November, is alleged of laundering more than $13.5m in 2019-2020.
There are claims that the company may have refused to pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes last year. And it is not the first time that his residence has been raided.
The media empire owned by Kolomoisky, who is already under US sanctions for his alleged involvement in “significant corruption”, helped popularise Zelenskiy as an entertainer and then supported his political career. Kolomoisky has denied any wrongdoing.
Russia has added respected journalist and Nobel prize co-recipient Dmitry Muratov to its list of foreign agents, a label authorities commonly use to stifle critics.
The move targeting the editor of Russia’s top independent publication, Novaya Gazeta, is part of a wider crackdown on respected civil society institutions that has accelerated with Moscow’s assault on Ukraine.
Muratov “used foreign platforms to disseminate opinions aimed at forming a negative attitude towards the foreign and domestic policy of the Russian Federation”, Russia’s justice ministry said to justify the decision. It also accused Muratov of creating and distributing content from other foreign agents.
“What is there to comment on? For comments, contact the Ministry of Justice,” Novaya Gazeta’s website said. It added that the foreign agents list now included 674 “worthy” people and organisations.
The label, which is reminiscent of the term “enemies of the people” of the Soviet era, adds heavy administrative constraints and requires sources of funding to be disclosed.
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The idea of Warsaw as a phoenix city, reconstructed from ruins after the second world war, is a key part of the Polish capital’s identity. Now, an exhibition has shed fresh light on the innovative way the rebuilding effort used ruins and rubble to create a new city.
The exhibition, which has run over recent weeks at the Museum of Warsaw, argues that rubble is to Warsaw what Carrara marble is to Rome or Portland stone to London. It shows how millions of bricks were repurposed for use in new buildings, and how vast amounts of rubble were crushed to create a new building material known as “rubble concrete” used in the construction of many postwar projects.
According to the exhibition curator, Adam Przywara, Warsaw’s postwar history offers more than just historical curiosity. “There are two areas of contemporary relevance: the idea of sustainable architecture, and how it might relate to rebuilding in Ukraine,” he said.
The exhibit has been visited by architects and city planners looking to Warsaw’s experience for inspiration as they work on the reconstruction of Ukrainian cities damaged by Russia’s invasion.
“The best revenge against the Russians would be to build better from the very rubble they created,” said Natasha Kozub, an architect from Kharkiv who is part of Ro3kvit, a collective of architects and urban planners looking at potential solutions for the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine.
“It’s symbolic and sustainable, but it would also have to be economically viable. In Warsaw, they did experiments to see the different costs and we would have to do this in Ukraine, too,” she said.
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The largest refugee centre established to home Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion has been closed by Poland after it said the sanctuary was no longer required, since most had now found homes elsewhere.
The Financial Times reports that the decision, which was confirmed yesterday, necessitated a hasty relocation of some 300 residents to other refugee centres. About 1.5 million Ukrainians had registered for temporary protection in Poland in 2022, and many more travelled through Poland onwards.
The centre had been located at an exhibition centre in Nadarzyn, just south of Warsaw, and at one point was home to 9,000 Ukrainians.
Dagmara Zalewska, spokesperson for the local Mazovia province told the FT that “the number of refugees from Ukraine arriving in Mazovia is negligible”. She added that the move was part of a “reorganisation of the entire refugee assistance system” across Poland.
However, Alina Oniszczuk, an aid worker at another centre for refugees in Warsaw, said:
It made me cry, when a [Ukrainian] woman called me yesterday saying that at 5pm the door to the centre was closed and they weren’t allowed inside. Some people didn’t even have a chance to pack all their stuff. They gave them some food in bags and that was it.
Joanna Nahorska, a spokesperson for the International Rescue Committee, said:
While fewer people are crossing into Poland in search of safety these days, refugees arriving right now have been exposed to the war for much longer and are visibly more traumatised.
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Putin and Erdogan to meet in Russia on Monday for talks
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is to host the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for talks on Monday, the Kremlin announced yesterday.
It comes just over six weeks after Moscow broke off a deal brokered by Ankara and the UN that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach world markets safely despite the 18-month war.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Erdogan would meet in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi. The announcement ended weeks of speculation about when and where the two leaders might meet next, while international efforts continue to try to patch up the Black Sea grain initiative, which sent grain to parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, AP reports.
Ukraine and Russia are both major global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other commodities that developing nations rely on. However Russia complained that their access to world markets for fertilisers and other agricultural products had remained limited.
The Russian foreign minister. Sergei Lavrov, said previously that he had given the Turkish government a list of actions the west would have to take in order for Ukraine’s Black Sea exports to resume. The scheduled talks between Putin and Erdoğan could help unlock that.
Mattha Busby here, taking the blog from my colleague Adam Fulton. I’m on Twitter here.
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Russia risks dividing its forces to stop Ukrainian breakthrough, says UK MoD
Russia risks splitting its troops as it seeks to prevent a Ukrainian breakthrough in Ukraine’s south, the UK Ministry of Defence says.
In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said Ukrainian forces continued to take offensive action on the Orikhiv axis in southern Ukraine, with units reaching the first Russian main defensive line.
“Russian forces, primarily composed of the 58th combined arms army and Russian airborne forces elements, seek to halt the Ukrainian counteroffensive whilst maintaining their own offensive on the northern axis around Kupiansk,” said the ministry’s update, posted on X/Twitter.
The ministry said Russian forces were probably seeking to distract Ukraine from its counteroffensive, forcing it to divide its forces between Orikhiv and Kupiansk.
Given that Russia has made modest gains near Kupiansk since the Ukrainian counteroffensive began in June, they are highly likely seeking to capitalise on these by continuing to resource the axis.
However, Russia risks dividing its forces as it seeks to prevent a Ukrainian breakthrough.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 02 September 2023
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) September 2, 2023
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/nn0rHmtwtn
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/2fmbkCBLNs
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Key event
Ukraine has made “notable progress” in its southern offensive over the past 72 hours, a top US security official has said, as Kyiv said its troops had broken through Russia’s first line of defences in several places.
In Washington, White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby said the US had “noted over the last 72 hours or so some notable progress by Ukrainian armed forces ... in that southern line of advance coming out of the Zaporizhzhia area”.
“They have achieved some success against that second line of Russian defences,” he said.
Russian forces have established long and deep barriers across the terrain – including tank traps, minefields and other defences – to slow Ukraine’s advance.
On Friday the deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said Kyiv’s troops were advancing in the Zaporizhzhia region.
She told told Ukrainian television:
There is an offensive in several directions and in certain areas. And in some places, in certain areas, this first line was broken through.
She added, however, that Kyiv’s troops had now run into major defensive Russian fortifications.
Read the full story here:
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Ukrainian boat targeting Crimea bridge destroyed, says Russia
Russia’s defence ministry said early on Saturday that its forces had destroyed an unmanned Ukrainian boat being used in an attempt to attack the bridge linking the Crimean peninsula to the Russian mainland.
Reuters reports the ministry said the vessel had been “spotted and destroyed in time off the Black Sea coast”.
On Friday about 11.15pm (8.15pm GMT) Ukraine tried to launch a strike with the “half-loaded” boat, the ministry said on Telegram.
Agence France-Presse quotes the ministry as saying three Ukrainian naval drones targeting the bridge had also been destroyed.
There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials, who usually say little or nothing about attacks on Russian targets but have said destroying Russian infrastructure is vital for Ukraine’s war effort.
The Crimea bridge, which was completed in 2018, four years after Russia occupied and annexed the peninsula from Ukraine, has come under repeated attack during Russia’s invasion of its neighbour.
Ukraine claimed responsibility for an attack in July on the bridge by what has been described as a sea drone. Two people died in the strike.
The 19km (12-mile) bridge across the Kerch Strait was badly damaged in October 2022 in an explosion that Russian officials said was caused by a truck that blew up while crossing the bridge.
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Opening summary
Welcome back to our continuing live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. This is Adam Fulton and here’s an overview of the latest developments.
Russia’s defence ministry said early on Saturday that its forces had destroyed an unmanned Ukrainian boat being used in an attempt to attack the bridge linking the Crimean peninsula to the Russian mainland.
The ministry said the attempt was made with the “half-loaded” boat late on Friday but it was seen and destroyed, as were three naval drones, off the Black Sea coast.
There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials. The bridge has come under repeated attack during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces have made “notable progress” in their southern offensive over the past three days, a leading US security official has said.
Kyiv said its troops had broken through Russia’s first line of defences in several places.
More on those stories shortly. In other news:
The Biden administration will for the first time send controversial armour-piercing munitions containing depleted uranium to Ukraine, according to a document seen by Reuters and separately confirmed by two US officials. The rounds, which could help destroy Russian tanks, are part of a new military aid package for Ukraine – which one of the officials said was worth between $240m and $375m – set to be unveiled in the next week.
Ukraine has made “notable progress” in its southern offensive over the past three days, a top US security official has said, as Kyiv said its troops had broken through Russia’s first line of defences in several places. In Washington, national security council spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday the US had “noted over the last 72 hours or so some notable progress ... in that southern line of advance coming out of the Zaporizhzhia area”.
A man was killed in Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Friday and three people were injured earlier in a missile attack in the central region of Vinnytsia overnight, Ukrainian authorities said.
Russia said it had captured several strategic heights near Kupiansk, an eastern Ukrainian city where Moscow’s troops stepped up the pressure in August.
A recent drone attack on an airport in north-western Russia that damaged several transport planes was carried out from within Russian territory, Ukraine’s military intelligence said.
President Vladimir Putin said Russia planned to allocate 1.9tn roubles (£15.6bn/$19.7bn) from the federal budget over the next two and a half years to the development of the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow last year declared to be part of its territory.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had destroyed 281 Ukrainian drones over the past week, including 29 over the western regions of Russia, indicating the scale of the drone war now under way between Russia and Ukraine.
More than 2,000 troops from a Russia-led security alliance have opened military exercises in parts of Belarus near the borders of Nato countries.
Poland has denied that a military helicopter breached Belarus’s airspace on Friday, calling Minsk’s claims “lies and provocations” at a time of escalating tensions between the neighbours. Belarus said the incident took place over the Grodno region on the border.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is expected to attend the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN in New York this month and take part in a UN security council meeting on Ukraine.
Denmark said on Friday it had told Russia to reduce the number of staff at its Copenhagen embassy following Russian requests for visas for “intelligence officers”.
Two cargo vessels have left a port near Odesa, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said on Friday – the third and fourth to transit from deep-water Ukrainian ports through the Black Sea since Russia withdrew from a safe-passage deal for grain ships.
Russia’s Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles have been put on combat duty, state news agency RIA reported the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos as saying on Friday. The missiles are capable of carrying 10 or more nuclear warheads.
The Kremlin said it took a negative view of British defence contractor BAE Systems’ decision to establish itself in Ukraine. It also said on Friday that any facilities producing weapons used against Russia would become targets for Moscow’s military.
Russia will block the final declaration of this month’s G20 summit unless it reflects Moscow’s position on Ukraine and other crises, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Friday, which will leave participants to issue a non-binding or partial communiqué.
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met with the heads of Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions on Friday and reiterated US support for anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine, the White House said.
Several Swedish lawmakers said on Friday they would boycott this year’s Nobel Prize ceremonies after the private foundation that administers the awards changed its policy and invited Russia, Belarus and Iran, which had previously been barred from attending.
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