Ukrainian forces have attacked the Russian-occupied eastern town of Balakliia in the Kharkiv region, a senior Russian-appointed official has said. Daniil Bezsonov added that if the town were lost, Russian forces in Izium would become vulnerable on their north-west flank. The Luhansk region’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, told Ukrainian television that a “counterattack is under way and … our forces are enjoying some success. Let’s leave it at that.”
A Ukrainian counteroffensive is occurring in eastern and north-eastern Ukraine as well as in the south, a senior presidential adviser has claimed. Writing on Telegram, Oleksiy Arestovych said that in the coming months Ukraine could expect the defeat of Russian troops in the Kherson region on the western bank of the Dnieper River and a significant Ukraine advance in the east.
Ukrainian forces are planning for a long and brutal campaign with the goal of taking back most of the Russian-occupied region of Kherson by the end of the year, according to reports. Ukraine’s goal of recapturing Kherson by the end of 2022 is ambitious but possible, US officials said.
Ukraine has claimed to have destroyed a key strategic bridge used by Russian forces in Kherson. Ukraine’s armed forces shared a series of satellite images purported to show the damaged structure on Tuesday night. The military said the images showed “significant damage to the Daryiv bridge itself” as well as damage to a building near the river.
Ukrainian troops could be in a position to seize the entire right bank of the Dnieper, including Kherson city, by October, according to a French general. Ukrainian forces have methodically prepared their counterattack in the southern Kherson region, launching offensives on “almost the entire southern frontline”, Gen Dominique Trinquand, a former head of the French military mission to the UN, said.
Ukraine’s top military chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, has claimed responsibility for a series of strikes on Russian airbases in Crimea. The strikes used missiles or rockets and 10 warplanes were destroyed, he said. The attacks Zaluzhnyi took responsibility for reportedly included the devastating August strike on the Saki military facility.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has urged residents of Russian-occupied areas around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to evacuate for their own safety. The town of Enerhodar, which serves the nuclear plant, has come under fire from Russian forces and lost electricity, according to its exiled Ukrainian mayor.
Ukraine is considering shutting down the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant for safety reasons, according to Kyiv’s top nuclear safety expert. Oleh Korikov also expressed concerns about the reserves of diesel fuel used for backup generators. Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of threatening Europe’s nuclear security by shelling the plant, and claimed Russia has no military equipment at the facility.
Russia has reportedly resumed shelling near the nuclear plant. A local official said the city of Nikopol – on the opposite bank of the Dnieper River from Zaporizhzhia – was fired on with rockets and heavy artillery. The report has not been independently verified.
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency has said the world is facing “a very grave danger” as shelling continues at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. In his first television interview since leading an expert mission to the Russian-held plant, Rafael Grossi said what was “urgently needed” was to establish a protection around the perimeter of the facility.
The UN nuclear watchdog has said its experts found extensive damage at the plant, in a report presented to the UN security council on Tuesday. The report said Ukrainian staff were operating under constant high stress and pressure where there was an increased possibility of human error. “We are playing with fire and something very, very catastrophic could take place,” the IAEA chief warned.
Ukraine’s nuclear chief has said he would support the deployment of UN peacekeepers to Zaporizhzhia. The remarks by Petro Kotyn, the head of Ukraine’s nuclear agency Energoatom, came a day after the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called for a demilitarised zone around the nuclear plant.
The head of the EU executive has set out plans for windfall taxes, mandatory electricity savings and a cap on the price of Russian gas to limit Kremlin revenues used to finance the “atrocious” war in Ukraine. Ursula von der Leyen outlined a five-point plan in response to an energy price crisis driven by the Russian shutdown of the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline but exacerbated by the climate crisis and lingering effects of the Covid pandemic.
Vladimir Putin said western sanctions on Russia were shortsighted and a danger for the entire world, which he said was increasingly turning towards Asia. In a speech to the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, he also claimed the developing world had been “cheated” by a landmark grain deal designed to alleviate a food crisis.
Putin also threatened to cut off energy supplies if price caps were imposed on Russia’s oil and gas exports. Russia would walk away from its supply contracts if the west went ahead with its plans, Putin said, warning that Russia would “sentence the wolf’s tail to be frozen”.
Germany is well placed to survive the winter despite turmoil in the energy markets, its chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said. Scholz vowed that Germany would keep moving “at great speed” to shed its reliance on Russia for power, adding that gas reserves were at over 86% capacity and would be used to heat homes, generate electricity and power industry.
Vladimir Putin will meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Uzbekistan next week, according to a Russian official. The pair plan to meet on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s summit in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on 15-16 September, Russia’s ambassador to China, Andrei Denisov, said. It would the first face-to-face between the two leaders since Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in February.
Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, and her US counterpart, Joe Biden, have promised to strengthen their relationship in the face of Putin’s aggression. Truss’s call to Biden on Tuesday night followed a conversation with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and focused on what she called “extreme economic problems caused by Putin’s war”.
Putin said the way Britain chooses its leaders is “far from democratic”, a day after Liz Truss replaced Boris Johnson as prime minister. In his first public comments on Truss’s appointment, the Russian president alluded to the fact she was chosen in a leadership ballot by members of the Conservative party, not by the whole country.
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have reached an agreement in principle to restrict the entry of Russian citizens travelling from Russia and Belarus, the Latvian foreign minister said. Edgars Rinkēvičs said the increase of border crossings by Russian citizens was “a public security issue […] also an issue of a moral and political nature”.
The leader of Russia’s governing party has proposed that a referendum should be held in occupied regions of Ukraine on 4 November on whether to become part of Russia. Andrei Turchak, the head of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, said it would be “correct and symbolic” to hold votes on that date, a Russian public holiday which is celebrated as the day of national unity.
A Russian colonel who served as the military commandant of the occupied Ukrainian city of Berdiansk was killed in a car bombing, according to Russian state media reports. Russian officials have alleged that Ukraine was behind the attack on Col Artyom Bardin. If true, it would be the most significant assassination yet of an official working for the occupational government of Russia in Ukraine.
