Summary
It is now approaching 9pm in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Here is a summary of the main stories so far:
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has said Ukraine’s counteroffensive is being hindered by Ukraine’s plant life. In its daily intelligence briefing it noted: “Undergrowth regrowing across the battlefields of southern Ukraine is likely one factor contributing to the generally slow progress of combat in the area.”
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s security council, told Ukrainian national television on Wednesday that Russian forces had ample time to prepare defences and lay extensive minefields during months of occupation. “The number of mines on the territory that our troops have retaken is utterly mad. On average, there are three, four, five mines per square metre,” he said. Danilov restated assertions by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the advances, while slower than hoped, could not be rushed as human lives were at stake. “No one can set deadlines for us, except ourselves … there is no fixed schedule,” he said.
The EU on Thursday banned drone sales to Belarus and added prominent state TV presenters to its sanctions list over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Minsk’s crackdown on opposition. The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said: Today we are also taking further measures against the Belarusian regime as an accomplice in Russia’s illegal and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.
Polish and Lithuanian leaders held an urgent meeting Thursday in a strategically sensitive area where their Nato nations border Belarus and the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, warning that they are bracing for provocations from Moscow and Minsk in the area.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general is investigating Russian attacks on its agriculture infrastructure since July as potential war crimes, the office told Reuters on Thursday.
The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, on Thursday again ruled out supplying Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles, saying it was “not a top priority” right now.
Russia will cut oil exports by 300,000 barrels a day in September, Reuters reports deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday. Russia has already pledged to reduce its oil output by about 500,000 bpd, or 5% of its oil production, from March until year-end.
Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that authorities in the Kursk region have confirmed that fighters of detachments of the voluntary people’s squad have been supplied with weapons.
Romania said on Thursday it will clear customs for up to 30 ships waiting to enter the country from Ukrainian ports on the River Danube over the next two days, a sign that trade has not halted despite a Russian attack on Ukraine’s main river port.
The jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said on Thursday he expected to be handed a “Stalinist” sentence of about 18 more years in prison. In a tweet, he said: “It’s going to be a huge term. This is what’s called a ‘Stalinist’ term. They asked for 20 years so they will give 18 or something around it.”
Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdog said on Thursday that it detained an armed forces official accused of helping draft-age men flee the country in exchange for a cash payment, according to AFP. Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that the official, who worked in the Kyiv city administration and headed a department in the army, had issued false documents declaring men unfit for military service.
India will participate in Ukraine peace talks to be hosted by Saudi Arabia on 5 to 6 August, a foreign ministry spokesperson said during a news briefing on Thursday.
Russia said on Thursday that the BRICS group of countries would be strengthened by adding new members, in its most explicit endorsement yet of the idea of expansion, Reuters reports. The BRICS group of emerging economies currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Moscow sees the group as an increasingly important and influential counterweight in global affairs to the US-led west.
Moscow court fined Apple 400,000 roubles (£3,377) on Thursday for not deleting “inaccurate” content about what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, the Tass news agency reported.
Russian forces have made no headway along the frontlines, but are entrenched in heavily mined areas they control, making it difficult for Ukrainian troops to move east and south, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday. Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said Russian forces had “tried quite persistently to halt our advance in the Bakhmut sector. Without success.”
Kyiv defended itself against the eighth consecutive nightly drone attack early on Thursday morning, the Kyiv regional military admistration said on Telegram. No damage was recorded in preliminary reports. The Ukrainian air force claimed to have shot down all 154 “Shahed” suicide drones launched overnight.
Three civilians and four emergency service workers have been injured in a Russian strike on Kherson, according to Ukraine’s state broadcaster. Serhiy Kruk, the head of Ukraine’s state emergency service, posted to social media images of bloodied and injured emergency workers and damaged emergency equipment as a result of what Ukraine claims has been a “double tap” attack near a church.
Russia claims overnight it downed six drones in the Kaluga region, followed by another in the morning. “There are no consequences for people and infrastructure,” regional governor Vladislav Shapsha said. Kaluga region is to the south-west of Moscow region, and the north-east of Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine.
Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory are being forced to assume Russian citizenship or face retaliation, including possible deportation or detention, a new US report has said.
Fighters from Russia’s private Wagner mercenary force are being moved close to Nato’s eastern flank to destabilise the military alliance, Poland’s prime minister alleged on Thursday.
Russia has added Norway to its list of foreign states that have committed “unfriendly” acts against Russian diplomatic missions, news agencies reported on Thursday.
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said the country is considering the possibility of insuring ships going through a “grain corridor”.
That is it from us, thank you for following along. Come back tomorrow for more live updates. You read more of our reporting on Ukraine here in the meantime.
The Ukrainian internal affairs ministerial adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, said Ukrainians continue to fight despite being tired and having “PTSD of some sort”.
He claimed that there have been more than 800 missile attacks or air raid alerts on Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.
In a tweet, Gerashchenko said:
We live among losses and death. That’s terrible. It’s an inhumane load, and it’s very challenging. Feelings and brains can’t fully process this experience. So our brain requires simplification to cope.
That’s why we might seem or behave in a way that is aggressive, addictive, divide everything into black and white. We’re often very categorical, we think in terms of stamps, we simplify.
But we continue to live and fight. We have to survive. And not just survive, but live. Not to lose the meaning of life.
Ukrainian society is shaken by war. People are very tired. We all have PTSD of some sort, I think - not just our Defenders but everyone in Ukraine.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 3, 2023
There have been over 800 missile attacks/air raid alerts on Kyiv since the full-scale invasion began. So those who didn't leave…
Updated
More from the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Moscow pulling out last month from the Black Sea grain initiative.
He took aim at Russia at the UN security council on Thursday, accusing Moscow of “blackmail” over its recent withdrawal from a key grain deal.
America’s top diplomat, chairing a meeting about food insecurity at the UN’s headquarters in New York, told the 15-member Council that “hunger must not be weaponised” according to AFP.
He singled out Russia, saying its invasion of Ukraine last year had sparked an “assault” on the global food system.
Updated
Oleksandr Kubrakov, the Ukrainian minister for communities and territories development and infrastructure, said Ukraine aims to involve more countries to protect port infrastructure
After a meeting with Ukrainian diplomats, initiated by the president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he tweeted:
We had a sincere conversation about key areas of international relations and the implementation of the tasks set by the President.
One of the important milestones is to involve more countries in the recovery process and call on partners to protect port infrastructure.
He also thanked the Ukrainian minister of foreign affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, for his “strong diplomatic position in the world”.
A powerful meeting with Ukrainian diplomats, initiated by the President @ZelenskyyUa. We had a sincere conversation about key areas of international relations and the implementation of the tasks set by the President. One of the important milestones is to involve more countries… pic.twitter.com/QEvd64jIZX
— Oleksandr Kubrakov (@OlKubrakov) August 3, 2023
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, urged all countries at the UN on Thursday to tell Russia to stop using the Black Sea as blackmail after Moscow quit a deal that had allowed Ukraine to safely ship its grain to global markets.
Chairing a UN security council meeting on famine and food insecurity caused by conflict, Blinken said:
Every member of the United Nations should tell Moscow ‘enough’.
Enough using the Black Sea as blackmail. Enough treating the world’s most vulnerable people as leverage. Enough of this unjustified unconscionable war.
Blinken announced that nearly 90 countries had backed a short US-drafted communique in which they commit “to take action to end the use of food as a weapon of war and the starvation of civilians as a tactic of warfare”, Reuters reports.
Updated
EU bans drone sales to Belarus and adds state TV presenters to sanctions list
The EU on Thursday banned drone sales to Belarus and added prominent state TV presenters to its sanctions list over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Minsk’s crackdown on opposition.
The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, is the closest ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and has allowed his country to be used as a staging post for Moscow’s assault on Ukraine.
The EU has already imposed repeated rounds of sanctions on Minsk over Lukashenko’s brutal repression of the opposition since 2020 and the war in Ukraine, which include blacklisting the Belarusian leader and his family members.
The latest measures target a further 38 regime figures and three state-owned entities, including leading “propagandists” on state television, prosecutors and prison officials.
In a bid to curb the flow of goods to Russia that could be used on the battlefield in Ukraine, the EU banned the export of aircraft engines and drones to Belarus.
In addition the 27-nation bloc tightened restrictions on the sale of semiconductors, camera equipment and other technology that could help Moscow’s war effort.
The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said:
Today we are also taking further measures against the Belarusian regime as an accomplice in Russia’s illegal and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.
Updated
Russia jailed two men on charges linked to Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine on Thursday, pursuing a sweeping crackdown on dissent since the launch of full-scale hostilities last year.
An entrepreneur known for his pro-Ukraine stance received a one-and-a-half-year sentence for “discrediting” the army, while another man was given six years for treason, AFP reports.
Dmitry Skurikhin, the entrepreneur and activist, was known for covering his store front in the northern village of Russko-Vysotskoye with messages including “peace for Ukraine, freedom to Russia”.
On Thursday, a court in St Petersburg said Skurikhin, 48, had been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Authorities last September launched a probe against the father of five over his anti-war posters.
A second investigation against him was launched after he knelt in front of his store in February holding a sign that read “Sorry Ukraine” to mark the conflict’s first anniversary.
Last year he was also fined for posting a video clip on social media in which he called for an end to Moscow’s campaign.
Skurikhin’s lawyer Dmitry Gerasimov said the activist had spent two months in pre-trial detention before being placed under house arrest.
Speaking to AFP, Gerasimov said that the entrepreneur was “very courageous” in court.
“He did not think he would be jailed,” Gerasimov said. “But he also said, ‘I couldn’t not do it’,” he said, referring to the protest.
Here is a little bit of background on the Finnish foreign and security policy thinktank chief, Mika Aaltola, who said on Thursday he would run for president in Nato’s newest member.
Finns will go to the polls on 28 January next year to elect a president to replace Sauli Niinisto, 74, who is required to retire after leading Finland’s foreign policy for two consecutive six-year terms, Reuters reports.
The president is the commander-in-chief of Finland’s defence forces, represents Finland in Nato meetings and leads foreign policy in cooperation with the government.
Aaltola has never been a member of any political party, but began surging in presidential polls – even topping one last year – in a spontaneous response to his rising popularity as a TV analyst of the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Aaltola said:
We need to unlearn our strategic silence, which I’ve sometimes called strategic haziness. We have a somewhat stoic reputation abroad.
Aaltola wants Finland to remain a strong supporter of Ukraine, to bring its defence spending close to, “if not above”, 3% of its gross domestic product, he said.
He also supports storing US weapons on Finnish soil and building a new Arctic railway line to guarantee Nato access in strategically important northern Finland.
Russia has enlisted over 230,000 additional personnel into the army since the start of the year, Moscow’s deputy security council chairperson, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Thursday.
Moscow has conducted an aggressive military recruitment campaign this year as it seeks to stave off an ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive and hold territories it has captured during the conflict, AFP reports.
Medvedev, who served as president from 2008-2012, said:
According to the Ministry of Defence, from 1 January to 3 August … a total of more than 231,000 people have been accepted for contract service.
Polish and Lithuanian leaders held an urgent meeting Thursday in a strategically sensitive area where their Nato nations border Belarus and the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, warning that they are bracing for provocations from Moscow and Minsk in the area.
AP reports that the meeting came two days after two Belarusian helicopters flew briefly at low altitude into Polish airspace, in what was viewed as a provocative move. Both nations on Nato’s eastern flank have increased their border security following the arrival of thousands of Russia-linked Wagner group mercenaries just across their borders in Belarus after an aborted mutiny in Russia in June.
At a news conference with the Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nauseda, the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said:
Russia and Belarus are increasing the pressure on the borders, increasing the number of their provocations, and we must be aware that the number of these provocations will grow.
The Belarusian Foreign Ministry denied that its country’s helicopters entered Poland. Anatoly Glaz, press secretary of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, said Thursday that the charge d’affaires of Poland was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Minsk and told that Poland had come to a hasty conclusion.
Glaz said:
We call on the Polish side not to escalate the situation and not use it to militarise the border area.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence tweeted a map showing the latest defence intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine. The red areas are Russian controlled and the green arrows show likely Ukrainian advances in their counteroffensive.
The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) August 3, 2023
The map below is the latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 03 August 2023
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/0rD2MaIyhB #StandWithUkraine… pic.twitter.com/7qPlqlVU5q
Ukraine investigating Russia’s attacks on agriculture infrastructure as potential war crimes
Ukraine’s prosecutor general is investigating Russian attacks on its agriculture infrastructure since July as potential war crimes, the office told Reuters on Thursday.
More information to come …
Updated
The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, on Thursday again ruled out supplying Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles, saying it was “not a top priority” right now.
Ukraine asked Germany in late May to provide it with Taurus air-to-surface cruise missiles which have a range in excess of 500 kilometres (310 miles), but the government has so far rebuffed the request.
During a visit to a mountain infantry brigade in Bavaria, Pistorius said:
We continue to believe that this is not our top priority right now.
Our American allies are not delivering these cruise missiles either.
The concerns about sending “special range” missiles to Ukraine “are obvious”, Pistorius said.
According to AFP, Pistorius stressed that Germany was playing a leading role in helping Ukraine with “air defence, training support, engineering and armoured vehicles”.
“This is our first priority, our core competency,” the minister said, adding that he saw “no urgent need for a decision” on the Swedish-German Taurus weapon system.
Updated
Oleh Kiper, governor of Odesa region, has posted to Telegram to say that work is already being undertaken to prepare for the heating season later in the year.
He wrote on Telegram: “Last winter was the hardest in the history of Ukraine. It was especially difficult for our region. We have no illusions about this year either – the enemy will probably attack our energy infrastructure again, so we are preparing carefully.”
He said that “work on improving the physical protection of critical infrastructure facilities in the region continues”.
Updated
Russia will cut oil exports by 300,000 barrels a day in September, Reuters reports deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday.
Russia has already pledged to reduce its oil output by about 500,000 bpd, or 5% of its oil production, from March until year-end.
Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. Oil prices have risen significantly since both announced supply cuts in early July.
Updated
Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that authorities in the Kursk region have confirmed that fighters of detachments of the voluntary people’s squad have been supplied with weapons.
The move follows criticism that when there have been cross-border incursions from Ukraine into Russia – as happened in Belgorod in May – local militia were not armed, which mean it took longer for Russian authorities to regain control.
Tass reports both Belgorod and Kursk each have about 3,000 people in their voluntary people’s squads, and that the supplies provided include civilian weapons of self-defence and hunting firearms.
Deputy chairman of the government of the region, Konstantin Polyakov, told Tass the weapons “have been assigned to the most experienced fighters who have completed training courses”.
Updated
Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, tweeted that prosecutors and law enforcement officers uncovered a large-scale scheme operating under the guise of surrogacy services in a crackdown on organised crime.
He said crime organisations “sold” newborn babies and sought out vulnerable women in the Kharkiv region, took advantage of their complicated circumstances, and offered them money to become surrogate mothers.
He said the investigation revealed that eight babies were illegally taken abroad and that the unlawful transfer of another child was prevented.
Prosecutors are now preparing requests for international legal assistance to determine the whereabouts of the illicitly transferred children and to take further measures to protect their rights, he said.
We continue our fight against organized crime. Prosecutors and law enforcement officers uncovered a large-scale scheme operating under the guise of surrogacy services.
— Andriy Kostin (@AndriyKostinUa) August 3, 2023
Citizens from countries where surrogacy is prohibited were being illegally offered these services, in clear… pic.twitter.com/87SMYWfFm3
Meanwhile, Romania said on Thursday it will clear customs for up to 30 ships waiting to enter the country from Ukrainian ports on the River Danube over the next two days, a sign that trade has not halted despite a Russian attack on Ukraine’s main river port.
Reuters reports that the Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis, said Russia’s continued attacks against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure on the Danube amounted to war crimes.
Traffic across the river is the last waterborne route out of Ukraine for its grain exports since Russia effectively reimposed its de facto blockade, shutting Ukraine’s Black Sea ports last month.
Before Russia pulled out of the safe passage corridor, the Danube ports accounted for about a quarter of Ukraine’s grain exports. Grain is loaded on to barges, shipped downriver through territorial waters of Romania, a Nato member, and onwards from Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta.
Florin Uzumtoma, the navigation director for Romania’s Danube administration agency, told Reuters:
Commercial ship tracking data shows the river and its mouth backed up with vessels trying to reach and exit the Ukrainian ports.
We are trying to handle these clusters as best we can, to relieve navigation congestion on the Danube.
We will clear around 30 ships in two days, at least 12 today, if not 14, and the rest tomorrow.
May and June were peaks, and we expect August to have a peak as well, despite everything.”
Uzumtoma said the administration cleared record high numbers of ships coming from Ukrainian inland ports in May and June, reaching more than 477 a month.
Updated
The jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said on Thursday he expected to be handed a “Stalinist” sentence of about 18 more years in prison.
Navalny is already serving sentences totalling more than 11 years on fraud and other charges which he says are also bogus, and his political movement has been outlawed and declared “extremist”.
In a tweet, he said:
It’s going to be a huge term. This is what’s called a ‘Stalinist’ term. They asked for 20 years so they will give 18 or something around it.
He also asked people to show solidarity to him and other political prisoners, saying the main purpose of the sentence “is to intimidate”.
1/21 The sentence will be read in twenty-four hours and I want to say several words before it's read. I just want to put several figures in a context.
— Alexey Navalny (@navalny) August 3, 2023
Updated
Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdog said on Thursday that it detained an armed forces official accused of helping draft-age men flee the country in exchange for a cash payment, according to AFP.
Since Kyiv introduced martial law after Russia’s invasion last year, able-bodied men between 18 and 60 have been forbidden from leaving the country and may be called up for military service at any time.
Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that the official, who worked in the Kyiv city administration and headed a department in the army, had issued false documents declaring men unfit for military service.
Men who are able to provide these documents are allowed to cross the border.
The statement said:
The price of the service for one person was $10,000.
It added that the suspect had been caught red-handed as he transferred documents to three people.
Here are some images sent to us from the wires showing the aftermath of a Russian drone attack yesterday on the Izmail river port, a main route for Ukrainian grain exports with its sea routes blockaded.
Updated
India will participate in Ukraine peace talks to be hosted by Saudi Arabia on 5 to 6 August, a foreign ministry spokesperson said during a news briefing on Thursday.
Russia said on Thursday that the BRICS group of countries would be strengthened by adding new members, in its most explicit endorsement yet of the idea of expansion, Reuters reports.
The BRICS group of emerging economies currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Moscow sees the group as an increasingly important and influential counterweight in global affairs to the US-led west.
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters:
Of course we believe that in one form or another, the expansion of BRICS will contribute to the further development and strengthening of this organisation.
He was commenting on a remark by Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, that it was “extremely important” for Saudi Arabia to join BRICS, along with Argentina and the United Arab Emirates, if they wished to.
Peskov said Russia had constructive ties with all three countries but “we don’t think we need to get ahead of ourselves” regarding specific candidate nations before the topic is discussed at a BRICS summit in South Africa on 22-24 August.
Strengthening BRICS forms part of Russia’s vision of undermining US dominance and building a new “multipolar world”. It values ties with developing countries that have refrained from condemning its actions in Ukraine, and wants to increase trade with them to neutralise the effect of western sanctions on its economy.
Russia will be represented at this month’s BRICS summit by its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, after President Vladimir Putin decided not to attend in person due to a warrant for his arrest issued by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, something Moscow denies.
Updated
Moscow court fined Apple 400,000 roubles (£3,377) on Thursday for not deleting “inaccurate” content about what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, the Tass news agency reported.
Tass said it was the first time Apple had been fined for that offence.
The company paused all product sales in Russia shortly after Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, and limited its Apple Pay service in Russia. Apple did not immediately respond to Reuters’ emailed request for comment.
Moscow has clashed with big tech for years over content, censorship, data and local representation in disputes that escalated after Russia sent its forces into Ukraine.
Apple paid a fine of 906m roubles in a Russian antitrust case alleging abuse of its dominance in the mobile apps market, Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said in February.
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has said Ukraine’s counteroffensive is being hindered by Ukraine’s plant life. In its daily intelligence briefing it noted: “Undergrowth regrowing across the battlefields of southern Ukraine is likely one factor contributing to the generally slow progress of combat in the area.”
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s security council, told Ukrainian national television on Wednesday that Russian forces had ample time to prepare defences and lay extensive minefields during months of occupation. “The number of mines on the territory that our troops have retaken is utterly mad. On average, there are three, four, five mines per square metre,” he said. Danilov restated assertions by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the advances, while slower than hoped, could not be rushed as human lives were at stake. “No one can set deadlines for us, except ourselves … there is no fixed schedule,” he said.
Russian forces have made no headway along the frontlines, but are entrenched in heavily mined areas they control, making it difficult for Ukrainian troops to move east and south, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday. Deputy Ukrainian defence minister Hanna Maliar said Russian forces had “tried quite persistently to halt our advance in the Bakhmut sector. Without success.”
Kyiv defended itself against the eighth consecutive nightly drone attack early on Thursday morning, the Kyiv regional military admistration said on Telegram. No damage was recorded in preliminary reports. The Ukrainian air force claimed to have shot down all 154 “Shahed” suicide drones launched overnight.
Three civilians and four emergency service workers have been injured in a Russian strike on Kherson, according to Ukraine’s state broadcaster. Serhiy Kruk, the head of Ukraine’s state emergency service, posted to social media images of bloodied and injured emergency workers and damaged emergency equipment as a result of what Ukraine claims has been a “double tap” attack near a church.
Russia claims overnight it downed six drones in the Kaluga region, followed by another in the morning. “There are no consequences for people and infrastructure,” regional governor Vladislav Shapsha said. Kaluga region is to the south-west of Moscow region, and the north-east of Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine.
Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory are being forced to assume Russian citizenship or face retaliation, including possible deportation or detention, a new US report has said.
Fighters from Russia’s private Wagner mercenary force are being moved close to Nato’s eastern flank to destabilise the military alliance, Poland’s prime minister alleged on Thursday.
Russia has added Norway to its list of foreign states that have committed “unfriendly” acts against Russian diplomatic missions, news agencies reported on Thursday.
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said the country is considering the possibility of insuring ships going through a “grain corridor”.
Updated
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said the country is considering the possibility of insuring ships going through a “grain corridor” Reuters reports, citing news agency Interfax-Ukraine.
“Now we are discussing in the government and, I am sure, we will make a decision on insurance of ships and relevant companies that will go via the ‘grain corridor,’” Shmyhal was quoted as telling a conference of Ukrainian ambassadors.
Updated
Fighters from Russia’s private Wagner mercenary force are being moved close to Nato’s eastern flank to destabilise the military alliance, Poland’s prime minister alleged on Thursday.
Wagner soldiers have begun training with the Belarus national army, prompting Poland to start moving more than 1,000 troops closer to the border. On Tuesday it accused Belarus of violating its airspace with military helicopters.
“We need to be aware that the number of provocations will rise,” Reuters reports Mateusz Morawiecki said after meeting Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda in eastern Poland.
“The Wagner group is extremely dangerous and they are being moved to the eastern flank to destabilise it.”
The politicians met in the Suwałki Gap, a strategically important area of Polish territory between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad that joins the Baltic states to other Nato members.
Nausėda said the number of Wagner fighters in Belarus could be higher than 4,000.
“We must not only talk about measures at the national level but also … what should be done if this situation becomes even more complicated, including the closure of the border with Belarus,” Nausėda said.
“This should be done in a coordinated manner between Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.”
Belarus allowed Russian president Vladimir Putin to use its territory as a launch pad for the Ukraine invasion, but has not yet committed its own troops to the war.
Suspilne, Ukraine's state broadcaster, reports that 29 people in Odesa will receive compensation after their houses were destroyed in Russian attacks. Residents are able to use the funds to spend on building materials and construction services.
Russia claims to have downed seventh drone over Kaluga region
Interfax in Russia reports that the governor of Kaluga region, Vladislav Shapsha, has said on his official Telegram channel that Russia has shot down a seventh drone.
“There are no consequences for people and infrastructure,” Shapsha said.
Kaluga region is to the south-west of Moscow region, and the north-east of Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine.
Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP, has reacted to the eighth consecutive night of drone attacks on Kyiv by noting on social media that “instead of saying ‘good night’ to each other we say ‘stay safe.’”
Spending nights in bomb shelters has become a harsh reality for us. Instead of saying ‘good night' to each other we say ‘stay safe’. This night was not the exception: russia launched a massive drone attack on Kyiv. Survived.
— Kira Rudik (@kiraincongress) August 3, 2023
Updated
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Ukraine.
Updated
Russia claims overnight it downed six drones in the Kaluga region, less than 125 miles from Moscow.
AFP reports The defence ministry said it had foiled “a terrorist attack with drones” in Kaluga.
“This night, six drones trying to cross the Kaluga region, were shot down with anti-air defence systems,” said regional governor Vyacheslav Shapsha said on Telegram. There were no casualties, he added.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Updated
Russia has added Norway to its list of foreign states that have committed “unfriendly” acts against Russian diplomatic missions, news agencies reported on Thursday.
Countries on the list are limited in the number of local staff they can hire in Russia, with Norway restricted to 27, Reuters reports, citing the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
Norway expelled 15 Russian diplomats in April for alleged spying, and Russia responded by ordering out 10 Norwegian diplomats.
Updated
Explosions are being reported again in Kherson.
More details soon …
Ukraine claims to have shot down all 15 drones launched overnight
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, citing the country’s air force, reports: “At night, air defence forces shot down all 15 ‘Shahed’ drones, which the Russian Federation released over Ukraine.”
Updated
Serhiy Kruk, the head of Ukraine’s state emergency service, has posted to social media images of bloodied and injured emergency workers and damaged emergency equipment in Kherson as a result of what Ukraine claims has been a “double tap” attack near a church.
Updated
Civilians and emergency workers injured after strike on Kherson church – regional governor
Three civilians and four emergency service workers have been injured in a Russian strike on Kherson, according to Ukraine’s state broadcaster. It cites the regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin as the source of the information. Suspilne reports:
The Russian army fired at a church in the center of Kherson — three people who were traveling on a trolleybus past the cathedral were injured and hospitalised, the head of the OVA Prokudin said.
During the extinguishing of the fire, which arose as a result of the shelling of the church, a repeat attack took place: four rescuers who were extinguishing the fire were injured, the state emergency service reported. They are being assisted.
Battlefield plants hindering Ukraine's offensive, says UK
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has issued its daily public intelligence briefing on the war, and today it concerns Ukraine’s natural environment. It writes:
Undergrowth regrowing across the battlefields of southern Ukraine is likely one factor contributing to the generally slow progress of combat in the area.
The predominately arable land in the combat zone has now been left fallow for 18 months, with the return of weeds and shrubs accelerating under the warm, damp summer conditions.
The extra cover helps camouflage Russian defensive positions and makes defensive mine fields harder to clear.
Although undergrowth can also provide cover for small stealthy infantry assaults, the net effect has been to make it harder for either side to make advances.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 03 August 2023.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) August 3, 2023
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This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.
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Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s security council, told Ukrainian national television on Wednesday that Russian forces had ample time in months of occupation to prepare defences and lay extensive minefields, Reuters reports.
“The enemy has prepared very thoroughly for these events,” he told national television.
“The number of mines on the territory that our troops have retaken is utterly mad. On average, there are three, four, five mines per square metre.”
Danilov restated assertions by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the advances, while slower than hoped, could not be rushed as human lives were at stake.
“No one can set deadlines for us, except ourselves … there is no fixed schedule,” he said.
“I have never used the term counter-offensive. There are military operations and they are complex difficult and depend on many factors.”
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Russian forces have made no headway along the frontlines, but are entrenched in heavily mined areas they control, making it difficult for Ukrainian troops to move east and south, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.
Reuters: Russian accounts of the fighting on the frontline said 12 Ukrainian attacks had been repelled in Donetsk region – a focal point of Russian advances for months.
Much of Russian military activity focused on air attacks that damaged grain infrastructure in Ukraine’s Danube port of Izmail. Russia’s defence ministry also said its forces had destroyed a Ukrainian naval drone that tried to attack a Russian warship escorting a civilian vessel in the Black Sea.
Deputy Ukrainian defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said Russian forces had “tried quite persistently to halt our advance in the Bakhmut sector. Without success.”
Russian forces, she wrote on the Telegram messaging app, were beefing up reserves and equipment in three areas farther north, where heavy fighting has also been reported in recent weeks.
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Russia ‘systematically’ forcing Ukrainians to accept citizenship
Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory are being forced to assume Russian citizenship or face retaliation, including possible deportation or detention, a new US report has said.
Yale University researchers found that people in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions were being targeted by a systematic effort to strip them of Ukrainian identity.
Ukrainians who do not seek Russian citizenship “are subjected to threats, intimidation, restrictions on humanitarian aid and basic necessities, and possible detention or deportation, all designed to force them to become Russian citizens,” the report said:
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'Massive’ drone attack on Kyiv
Kyiv defended itself against the eighth consecutive nightly drone attack early on Thursday morning, the Kyiv regional military admistration said on Telegram. No damage was recorded in preliminary reports.
Serhiy Popko, head of the administration, wrote:
Eight consecutive attack[s] of barrage ammunition ‘Shahed’ on Kyiv. And again, like yesterday – a massive attack. Air [defence] forces and means on the approach to Kyiv detected and destroyed almost one and a half dozen air targets. According to the information at this moment, there were no victims or destruction in the capital (data from the operational summary is being clarified, follow possible updates) […] this latest air alarm in the capital lasted exactly 3 hours. It became the 820th for Kyiv since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.”
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Russia ‘deliberately using food as a weapon’
The EU has warned developing countries that Russia is offering cheap grain “to create new dependencies by exacerbating economic vulnerabilities and global food insecurity,” according to a letter seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
Reuters reports that the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, wrote to developing and Group of 20 countries on Monday to urge them to speak “with a clear and unified voice” to push Moscow to return to a deal that allowed the safe Black Sea export of Ukraine grain and to stop targeting Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure.
“As the world deals with disrupted supplies and higher prices, Russia is now approaching vulnerable countries with bilateral offers of grain shipments at discounted prices, pretending to solve a problem it created itself,” Borrell said.
“This is a cynical policy of deliberately using food as a weapon to create new dependencies by exacerbating economic vulnerabilities and global food insecurity,” he added.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, told African leaders last week that Russia was ready to replace Ukrainian grain exports to Africa on a commercial and aid basis, to fulfil what he said was Moscow’s critical role in global food security.
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Helen Sullivan with the latest.
Our top stories this morning: The EU has warned developing countries that Russia is offering cheap grain “to create new dependencies by exacerbating economic vulnerabilities and global food insecurity”, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Wednesday. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, wrote to developing and Group of 20 countries on Monday to urge them to speak “with a clear and unified voice” to push Moscow to return to a deal that allowed the safe Black Sea export of Ukraine grain and to stop targeting Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure.
And Kyiv defended itself against the eighth consecutive nightly drone attack early on Thursday morning, the Kyiv regional military admistration said on Telegram. No damage was recorded in preliminary reports.
Elsewhere:
Russia has attacked Ukraine’s main inland port across the Danube River from Romania, sending global food prices higher as it ramps up its use of force to prevent Ukraine from exporting grain. The attacks on Wednesday destroyed buildings in Izmail and halted ships as they prepared to arrive there to load up with Ukrainian grain in defiance of a de facto blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports that Russia reimposed in mid-July. The Izmail port has since served as the main alternative route out of Ukraine for grain exports. Kyiv reportedly said the attacks damaged 40,000 tonnes of food products.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said Russia’s attacks on port infrastructure show Moscow is intent on creating a “global catastrophe” with a crisis in food markets, prices and supplies. “For the Russian state, this is not just a battle against our freedom and against our country,” Zelenskiy said on Wednesday in his nightly video address. “Moscow is waging a battle for a global catastrophe. In their madness, they need world food markets to collapse, they need a price crisis, they need disruptions in supplies.”
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, urged Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, to reopen talks on the failed Black Sea grain deal he helped broker last year.
More than 10 Russian drones were downed in an overnight attack on Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said early on Wednesday. “Groups of drones entered Kyiv simultaneously from several directions. However, all air targets – more than 10 unmanned aerial vehicles – were detected and destroyed in time by the forces and means of air defence,” said Sergiy Popko, head of the Kyiv city military administration.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he hoped a Ukraine “peace summit” could be held this autumn, and that this weekend’s talks in Saudi Arabia were a stepping stone towards that goal. He told Ukrainian diplomats on Wednesday in a speech published on the president’s website that almost 40 countries would be represented at the meeting in Jeddah on 5 and 6 August.
Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory are being forced to assume Russian citizenship or face harsh retaliation, including possible deportation or detention, US-backed research published on Wednesday said. Yale University researchers said that as part of a plan by Moscow to assert authority over Ukrainians, people in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions were being targeted by a systematic effort to strip them of Ukrainian identity.
The Polish deputy foreign minister, Pawel Jabłoński, said relations with Ukraine had “not been the best” lately after an official was criticised by Kyiv after suggesting the embattled nation had been ungrateful despite the level of support it had received.
Poland adopted an amended version of a panel to investigate “Russian influence” after an avalanche of EU and US criticism of the move, widely seen as targeting the opposition.
Local militia groups in two Russian regions bordering Ukraine – Belgorod and Kursk – were provided with weapons to defend their territory from Ukrainian attacks, according to local officials.
Pope Francis urged Europe to find “courageous courses of peace” to end the war in Ukraine. He said: “Where are you sailing, if you are not showing the world paths of peace, creative ways for bringing an end to the war in Ukraine?”
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