Summary of the day
It is almost 6pm in Ukraine and Russia. Here are the key events you might have missed from the day:
The Ukrainian air force attacked another bridge in Russia’s Kursk region on Sunday. Footage posted on a commander’s Telegram channel showed an attack on a bridge in Zvannoe, Kursk over the Seym river. This is the same river over which another key bridge was destroyed by Ukrainian strikes earlier this week. Ukraine’s destruction of infrastructure in the area is believed to be an attempt to hamper Russian supply lines and reinforcements.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday that Ukraine stationed more than 120,000 troops at its border with Belarus. In response, Minsk deployed nearly a third of its armed forces along the entire border, the Belta state news agency reported. The exact number of soldiers was not specified, but Belarus’ professional army consists of 48,000 and about 12,000 state border troops, according to the 2022 International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance. “Seeing their aggressive policy, we have introduced there and placed in certain points – in case of war, they would be defence – our military along the entire border,” Belta cited Mr Lukashenko, a staunch ally of Vladimir Putin, as saying in an interview with Russian state television. Kyiv did not respond to a Reuters request for comment but the news wire service reports that Andriy Demchenko, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian border service, told media outlet Ukrainska Pravda that the situation on the border with Belarus remained unchanged. “We are not seeing any increase in the number of equipment or personnel of Belarusian units near our border,” Demchenko said.
Ukraine says it repelled a Russian missile attack on Kyiv. Agence France-Presse reports that air raid sirens sounded in the Ukrainian capital before dawn on Sunday. “This is the third ballistic missile attack on the capital in August with a clear interval of six days between each attack,” the Kyiv city military administration posted on Telegram after the early morning barrage. Simultaneous to the missile attack, drones were spotted heading to Kyiv. “All enemy drones were destroyed far outside the city,” it added.
Ukraine has captured more than 150 Russian prisoners of war on some days in the cross-border military operation that a key civilian official said was the first of “several stages” in taking the fight to Moscow.
Ukraine’s offensive in Kursk has generated frontline-wide pressures on Russian forces, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War have said on Sunday. Vladimir Putin is almost certain to attempt to retake the Russian territory, which will require more manpower and equipment from elsewhere in the theatre, the US-based thinktank added. Long-term, Putin will be forced to make a decision about committing more resource Russia’s long international border with Ukraine, imposing “constraints” on theatre-wide planning that “Russia previously did not face”.
Russian forces took control of the village of Svyrydonivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, according to TASS state news agency reports citing the Russian defence ministry. The Guardian could not independently verify the battlefield report.
North Korea condemned Ukraine’s incursion into Russia as an unforgivable act of terror backed by Washington and the West, saying that the US’s anti-Russian policies were driving the global security environment to the brink of World War III and adding it will always stand with Russia as it seeks to protect its sovereignty, state media announced.
Russia denied a report that Ukraine’s attack on the Kursk region had derailed indirect talks with Kyiv on halting strikes on energy and power targets, saying there had been no talks with Kyiv about civilian infrastructure facilities. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Ukraine and Russia were set to send delegations to Qatar this month to negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides. The Post said the agreement would have amounted to a partial ceasefire but that the talks were derailed due to Ukraine’s attack on Russian sovereign territory. “No one broke anything off because there was nothing to break off,” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, said of the Post report.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog warned on Saturday that the safety situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was “deteriorating” after a nearby drone strike. Earlier on Saturday, Russia accused Ukraine of dropping an explosive charge on a road near the occupied plant in southern Ukraine.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy says his forces are “strengthening” their positions in Russia’s Kursk region where Kyiv has been mounting a major ground offensive. He said his army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, had reported that Ukrainian troops continued their advance and also took more Russian servicemen as prisoners.
Ukrainian drones attacked an oil storage facility in Russia’s southern Rostov region early Sunday morning, sparking a large fuel fire, the local governor said. Videos published on social media showed thick black smoke and bursts of flames coming from the site of the blaze, which the governor said was in the town of Proletarsk. There were no reported injuries.
Suggestions that Ukrainian authorities supported by Poland were behind planning and executing the sabotage attack on Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022 are groundless, the Polish president’s aide said on Sunday.
Authorities in Russia’s Tuva republic in southern Siberia ordered the evacuation of nearly 500 schoolchildren from summer camps, as emergency workers battled to contain 31 wildfires raging across forests, the regional governor said on Sunday.
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Authorities in Russia’s Tuva republic in southern Siberia have ordered the evacuation of nearly 500 schoolchildren from summer camps.
Emergency workers battled to contain 31 wildfires raging across forests, the regional governor said on Sunday.
Vladislav Khovalyg said on the Telegram app that the children would be transported on buses to the regional capital Kyzyl “in the next few hours”.
Authorities declared a state of emergency earlier on Sunday in forested parts of Tuva. Regional emergency services wrote on Telegram that about 2,850 hectares (7,043 acres) of forest were on fire as of Sunday morning, and that some blazes were close to populated areas.
Approximately 460 personnel were involved in extinguishing the blazes, the Interfax news agency cited local authorities as saying.
Intense heat, strong winds and dry thunderstorms frequently cause forest fires across Russia in summer months.
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