Russia has launched its second attack in two nights on Ukrainian ports, with Ukrainian officials warning residents of Izmail to remain in shelters in the early hours of Monday. Oleg Kiper, the governor of Odesa, said Moscow launched an almost two-hour drone attack on the city, one of Ukraine’s two major grain-exporting ports on the Danube River in the south of the region. The Ukrainian air force also said drones had targeted the nearby district of Kili.
Ukrainian air defences shot down 17 drones targeting the Odesa region, governor Oleg Kiper has said in a Telegram post, but added “unfortunately there were also hits”. In an update to previous posts he said the attack on Izmail had lasted a total of three and a half hours. Several buildings including warehouses were struck and agricultural machinery and industrial equipment were damaged, he said.
Russia’s overnight attack on Ukrainian port infrastructure on the Danube River on Monday did not generate direct military threats to neighbouring Nato state Romania’s territory, Romania’s defence ministry said in a statement. Earlier, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said drones had detonated on Romanian territory.
The abduction of Ukrainian children and their subsequent transportation to Russia is being investigated as potential genocide by an independent international commission of inquiry on Ukraine. Chairman Erik Møse told a press conference on Monday that the commission is trying to establish what has happened to the children once they enter occupied territory or Russia itself.
Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov submitted his resignation letter to the chairman of parliament, he said in a post on Twitter on Monday. Zelenskiy said on Sunday he had decided to replace his wartime defence minister, the biggest shake-up of Ukraine’s defence establishment since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, PA Media reports.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy previously said he planned to dismiss the defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, from his post and will ask parliament this week to replace him with Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s main privatisation fund. The announcement, made in the Ukrainian president’s nightly video address to the nation, sets the stage for the biggest shake-up of Ukraine’s defence establishment since the war was launched by Russia in February 2022. Zelenskiy has to submit Umerov’s candidacy to parliament for review.
The Russian defence ministry claimed it had thwarted overnight Ukrainian drone attacks on the border region of Kursk and on the occupied Crimean peninsula, with drones shot down by air defences. But Roman Starovoit, the governor of the Kursk region, said a Ukrainian drone attack had resulted in a fire at a non-residential building in the city of Kurchatov. There were no casualties, he said.
Russia’s defence ministry claims it has destroyed four US-made Ukrainian military boats carrying landing troops in the Black Sea. In a Telegram post, the ministry said the Willard Marine Sea Force inflatable boats were heading towards Cape Tarkhankut on the Crimean peninsula. It was not possible to verify the claim and Ukraine has not so far made any comment.
Zelenskiy and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, spoke on Sunday, discussing the “functioning” of a sea corridor set up by Kyiv for safe navigation of ships after Moscow exited a landmark grain deal in July. The phone call came on the eve of a summit in Russia between president Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who wants to revive the deal.
Russia is exploiting foreign nationals in its effort to acquire more personnel for its war effort in the face of mounting casualties, and probably views millions of migrants from central Asia as potential recruits, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
Moscow has recruited 230,000 people into the army since the start of the year, ex-president and Security Council chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday according to Tass news agency. “Part of them were in the reserves, part of them volunteers and other categories,” he said during a visit to the Far Eastern Russian island of Sakhalin. It was not possible for the Guardian to verify these numbers.
Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky has been arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering. The detention of the one-time supporter of Zelenskiy, whose election he backed in 2019, comes as Kyiv is trying to signal progress during a wartime crackdown on corruption.
Ukrainian forces have decisively breached Russia’s first defensive line near Zaporizhzhia after weeks of painstaking mine clearance, and expect faster gains as they press the weaker second line, the general leading the southern counteroffensive has told the Observer. Brig Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskiy said Ukrainian forces were now pushing out on both sides of the breach and consolidating their hold on territory seized in recent fighting.
A non-residential building in the western Russian city of Kurchatov caught fire on Sunday after an attack by a Ukrainian drone but emergency services put the fire out and there were no casualties, Roman Starovoit, governor of the Kursk region, said.
Ukraine expects a boom in drone production as early as this autumn, according to its outgoing defence minister. Reznikov told the state-run Ukrinform news agency one reason for the growth of production was that authorities had reduced various regulations and laws.
