Summary
It is now approaching 9pm in Kyiv. Here are the main stories of the day:
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, says there can be no compromise on the president’s peace formula for Ukraine. Podolyak said this includes negotiations around “immediate ceasefires” and “negotiations here and now” that he says would “give Russia time to stay in the occupied territories”.
Two Russian missile strikes hit a residential building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Telegram.
The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff said on Monday that talks about the Ukraine war in Saudi Arabia at the weekend dealt a “huge blow” to Russia, and that the participants agreed to hold another meeting of political advisers within about six weeks.
The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Monday he had held a phone call with his US counterpart Antony Blinken during which he requested ATACMS long-range missiles. In a tweet, he said: “In our call, [Antony Blinken] and I discussed further steps to broaden global support for the peace formula and solutions to expand grain exports”
Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed Ukraine’s solidarity with Georgia in a tweet and reiterated his support of their sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, has reported that a 36-year-old man has died and another 68-year-old man has been injured after Russian attacks on Nikopol. Lysak said “the aggressor has been terrorising Nikopol since the morning. It is punding the city with heavy artillery.” As well as the casualties, he reported that “private houses, farm buildings and cars were damaged. There is damage to gas pipelines and power lines.”
Poland’s border guard has asked the defence ministry to send another 1,000 troops to the border with Belarus. Reuters reports the move comes amid an increase in attempts to illegally cross the frontier. The head of the border guard, Tomasz Praga, said this year 19,000 people had tried to cross the Polish-Belarusian border illegally, up from 16,000 last year.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, on Monday spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the phone, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement. On the war in Ukraine, Wang told Lavrov that China will uphold an independent and impartial position, actively promote peace talks and strive to find a political settlement to the issue, according to the statement, Reuters reports.
Poland’s government on Monday accused Belarus and Russia of orchestrating another migration influx into the EU via the Polish border in order to destabilise the region. The polish deputy interior minister, Maciej Wasik, told AFP reporters: “We’re talking about an operation organised by the Russian and Belarusian secret services that is getting more and more intense.”
Russia said on Monday its troops had advanced three kilometres (two miles) along the Kupiansk front in north-east Ukraine over the past three days, as it seeks to regain territories it lost earlier in its offensive. The city of Kupiansk and surrounding areas of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region were liberated by Ukrainian forces last September, but Moscow has since renewed its assault on the region, AFP reports.
Ukraine’s security service said on Monday it had detained an informer accused of helping Russia plot an attack on President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as he visited a flood-hit region, according to AFP. The SBU security service said the detained woman was gathering intelligence to try to find out Zelenskiy’s itinerary before his visit to the southern Mykolaiv region.
Ukraine has released images of prisoners of war on Monday returned by Russia. Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, announced that 22 more Ukrainian soldiers had been returned from captivity, stating that all of them are soldiers of the armed forces of Ukraine.
Yermak also reported that “the Russians shelled the village of Kucherivka, in Kupyan district, hitting a house. Two dead and three injured people are known”. The deaths were in addition to a person killed and several injured during a “difficult night” of Russian shelling of Kherson, the city’s governor Oleksandr Prokudin, has said.
A conference hosted by Saudi Arabia to discuss a peace plan for Ukraine was successful because it showed the willingness of the international community to work towards ending the war, Reuters reports a German government spokesperson as saying on Monday. A spokesperson at a news conference in Berlin said: “Germany will also continue to engage actively including in this process.”
A Ukrainian MP claimed on Monday that key parliamentary factions in Germany had “reached a consensus” to supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles with a range of 500km (310 miles), but that an official decision was yet to come. Reuters reports Germany’s defence minister said last week Berlin does not plan to supply the missiles for now and that the weapons are not the most urgent priority. A ministry spokesperson told Reuters on Monday that Berlin’s position had not changed.
Russia said on Monday a peace settlement with Ukraine was only possible if Kyiv put down its arms. Russia was not invited to the conference in Jeddah, where representatives from about 40 countries including China, India, the US and Ukraine took part in the peace summit.
Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, claimed Ukrainian forces had shot down a Russian drone over his region on Monday.
China’s foreign ministry said on Monday that recent international talks in Saudi Arabia on resolving the Ukraine crisis had helped “consolidate international consensus”. China’s special envoy for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, “had extensive contact and communication with all parties on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis … listened to all sides’ opinions and proposals, and further consolidated international consensus”, the foreign ministry said in a written statement.
The Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv, one of the nation’s most recognisable landmarks, has lost its hammer-and-sickle symbol after officials replaced the Soviet-era emblem with the country’s trident coat of arms. The move is part of a wider shift to reclaim Ukraine’s cultural identity from the communist past.
Two Russian missile strikes hit a residential building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Monday.
On Telegram, he said:
Two missile strikes. An ordinary residential building was hit. Unfortunately, there are victims.
Rescuers and all necessary services are on the scene. The rescue of people continues.
These claims have not been independently verified.
The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Monday he had held a phone call with his US counterpart Antony Blinken during which he requested ATACMS long-range missiles.
In a tweet, he said:
In our call, [Antony Blinken] and I discussed further steps to broaden global support for the peace formula and solutions to expand grain exports
I thanked the US for all the assistance provided and stressed the need to enhance Ukraine’s long-range capabilities by providing ATACMS.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has expressed Ukraine’s solidarity with Georgia and reiterated his support of their sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In a tweet, he said:
On the 15th anniversary of the beginning of Russia’s armed aggression against Georgia, we express our solidarity with the Georgian people and our resolute support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of this country.
It is only the complete de-occupation of Ukrainian and Georgian lands, punishment of Russian invaders and compensation for the damage they have caused that will bring peace and stability to Europe and the world.
On the 15th anniversary of the beginning of Russia's armed aggression against 🇬🇪, we express our solidarity with the Georgian people and our resolute support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of this country. It is only the complete de-occupation of 🇺🇦 and 🇬🇪 lands,…
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 7, 2023
Ukrainian troops are creating conditions to advance forward step-by-step and have the initiative on the battlefield, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said on Monday.
Zaluzhnyi also said in a statement on Telegram that the Ukrainian defence was stable with troops repelling Russian attempts to counterattack and distract Ukrainian forces from other areas of the front.
Poland’s government on Monday accused Belarus and Russia of orchestrating another migration influx into the EU via the Polish border in order to destabilise the region.
The polish deputy interior minister, Maciej Wasik, told AFP reporters:
We’re talking about an operation organised by the Russian and Belarusian secret services that is getting more and more intense.
During a previous border crisis, starting in the summer of 2021, tens of thousands of migrants and refugees – mostly from the Middle East - crossed or attempted to cross into Poland from neighbouring Belarus.
Tomasz Praga, the head of the Polish border guard, said:
[the Belarusian services had become] a criminal group that is masterminding illegal migration.
Of course, they are making huge profits from it.
At the time the west accused the Belarusian regime of orchestrating the influx with its ally Russia in a “hybrid” attack, a type of warfare using non-military tactics – a charge Minsk denied.
Poland reacted then by setting up a no-access zone at the border, which lasted for nine months and banned non-residents including migrants, aid workers and media from the area.
It also sent thousands of troops and police officers to reinforce border guard patrols at the height of the crisis, built a steel wall along the border and approved a law allowing migrants to be forced back into Belarus.
Wasik said the situation “is not as chaotic today as it was two years ago”.
According to Praga, 19,000 migrants have tried to enter Poland from Belarus so far this year, compared to 16,000 during all of 2022.
Last month alone, more than 4,000 migrants tried to cross the border.
In response, the border guard on Monday called on the defence ministry to send 1,000 additional troops to the border.
Russia said it plans to launch a lunar lander this week after multiple delays, hoping to return to the moon for the first time in nearly fifty years.
Russian space agency Roscosmos said it had scheduled the launch of the Luna-25 lander for the early hours of Friday, according to AFP.
With the lunar mission, Russia’s first since 1976, Moscow is seeking to restart and build on the Soviet Union’s pioneering space programme.
The launch is the first mission of Moscow’s new lunar project and comes as president Vladimir Putin looks to strengthen cooperation in space with China after ties with the West broke down after the start of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine last year.
Engineers have assembled a Soyuz rocket at the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Russian Far East for the launch of the lander, Roscosmos said.
Roscosmos said in a statement:
The Luna-25 will have to practise soft landing, take and analyse soil samples and conduct long-term scientific research.
The four-legged lander, which weighs about 800 kilograms (1,750 pounds), is expected to touch down in the region of the lunar south pole. By contrast, most previous Moon landings have occurred near the lunar equator.
The spacecraft is expected to reach the moon around five days after launch.
Anton Gerashchenko, Ukraine’s internal affairs ministerial adviser, posted a video of one of the Ukrainian prisoners of war thanking everyone involved in getting him back from “captivity”.
In the tweet, Gerashchenko translated the soldier as also saying “I came back from hell”.
"I came back from hell" - Ukrainian Defender after release from Russian captivity.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 7, 2023
Happy comeback day to all Ukrainian Heroes! pic.twitter.com/C4GdfyT72q
The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff said on Monday that talks about the Ukraine war in Saudi Arabia at the weekend dealt a “huge blow” to Russia, and that the participants agreed to hold another meeting of political advisers within about six weeks.
Andriy Yermak told a briefing in Kyiv that no other peace initiatives were discussed at the meeting in Jeddah apart from Ukraine’s, and that all countries present at the talks had fully supported Ukrainian independence and territorial integrity, Reuters reports.
A former FBI agent accused by US prosecutors of working for sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska may change his plea to criminal charges of evading US sanctions and money laundering, court records showed on Monday.
Charles McGonigal had previously pleaded not guilty. A change of plea hearing has been scheduled for 15 August, Reuters reports.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, on Monday spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the phone, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.
On the war in Ukraine, Wang told Lavrov that China will uphold an independent and impartial position, actively promote peace talks and strive to find a political settlement to the issue, according to the statement, Reuters reports.
Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, has reported that a 36-year-old man has died and another 68-year-old man has been injured after Russian attacks on Nikopol.
Lysak said “the aggressor has been terrorising Nikopol since the morning. It is punding the city with heavy artillery.”
As well as the casualties, he reported that “private houses, farm buildings and cars were damaged. There is damage to gas pipelines and power lines.”
A Ukrainian MP claimed on Monday that key parliamentary factions in Germany had “reached a consensus” to supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles with a range of 500km (310 miles), but that an official decision was yet to come.
Reuters reports Germany’s defence minister said last week Berlin does not plan to supply the missiles for now and that the weapons are not the most urgent priority. A ministry spokesperson told Reuters on Monday that Berlin’s position had not changed.
However, Yehor Chernev, the MP who heads Ukraine’s delegation at the Nato parliamentary assembly, said: “My friends in the Bundestag just told me that key parliamentary factions have reached consensus regarding the transfer to Ukraine of long-range Taurus missiles.
“We’ve worked for a long time with German parliamentarians to form a support group and now finally the ice has broken. We await an official decision,” he wrote on Facebook.
Updated
Poland’s border guard has asked the defence ministry to send another 1,000 troops to the border with Belarus.
Reuters reports the move comes amid an increase in attempts to illegally cross the frontier. The head of the border guard, Tomasz Praga, said this year 19,000 people had tried to cross the Polish-Belarusian border illegally, up from 16,000 last year.
“Praga asked to move another 1,000 soldiers to the Polish-Belarusian border,” deputy interior minister Maciej Wąsik said.
Poland has built a fence on the border with Belarus, equipped with electronic protection.
In recent weeks, soldiers from the Wagner mercenary group have appeared near the border, which, according to the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, is aimed at destabilising the situation on Nato’s eastern flank.
In the past Poland, the EU, Nato and others have all blamed Belarus for intentionally sparking a migrant crisis at the border by allowing people who want to come to the EU from the Middle East and Africa to travel to Minsk, then providing them with transport to the edge of Poland.
Updated
Here is another image of some of the Ukrainian prisoners of war returned by Russia.
Earlier, Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office said:
Today, another 22 Ukrainian soldiers were returned home from captivity.
Updated
Russia said on Monday its troops had advanced three kilometres (two miles) along the Kupiansk front in north-east Ukraine over the past three days, as it seeks to regain territories it lost earlier in its offensive.
The city of Kupiansk and surrounding areas of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region were liberated by Ukrainian forces last September, but Moscow has since renewed its assault on the region, AFP reports.
Moscow’s defence ministry said:
Over the past three days, the advance of Russian troops … amounted to 11 kilometres along the front and more than three kilometres deep into the enemy’s defence.
It said that it had “improved” its standing along the frontline in the area and that it continued to repel Ukrainian counterattacks.
Updated
Zelenskiy adviser says 'there can be no compromise' on peace plan
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, says there can be no compromise on the president’s peace formula for Ukraine.
Podolyak said this includes negotiations around “immediate ceasefires” and “negotiations here and now” that he says would “give Russia time to stay in the occupied territories”.
He wrote:
The only basic “foundation for negotiations” is President #Zelenskiy’s peace formula. There can be no compromise positions such as “immediate ceasefires” and “negotiations here and now” that give Russia time to stay in the occupied territories. Only the withdrawal of Russian troops to the 1991 border. One should have no illusions: any “Minsk-3” will only prolong the war in the future. It is precisely the “abandonment of illusions” that is happening today in many countries that yesterday misjudged Russia and its intention to “kill” international law...
This block originally in error suggested that Podolyak said there could be a compromise due to an omission of the word “no” in the original quote.
Updated
Ukraine security service says it has detained informer accused of helping Russia plot against Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Ukraine’s security service said on Monday it had detained an informer accused of helping Russia plot an attack on President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as he visited a flood-hit region, according to AFP.
The SBU security service said the detained woman was gathering intelligence to try to find out Zelenskiy’s itinerary before his visit to the southern Mykolaiv region.
It published a blurred image of the woman being detained by masked officers in a kitchen, as well as some phone messages and handwritten notes about military activity.
On Telegram, Zelenskiy said that the head of the SBU had updated him about the “fight against traitors”.
The SBU said that Ukraine was aware of the plot ahead of time and had put in additional security measures during Zelenskiy’s visit. It alleged the suspect was helping Russia prepare a “massive airstrike on the Mykolaiv region”.
She was allegedly seeking data on the location of electronic warfare systems and warehouses with ammunition.
The SBU said its officers kept monitoring the suspect to get more information on her Russian handlers and her assignments. Officers then caught the woman “red-handed” as she attempted to pass intelligence data to Russian secret services, the SBU said.
It said the woman lived in the small southern town of Ochakiv in the Mykolaiv region and formerly worked in a store at a military base there. She allegedly photographed locations and tried to get information from personal contacts in the area.
She may face a charge of unauthorised dissemination of information about the movements of weapons and troops. If convicted, she could serve up to 12 years in prison.
Updated
Here is more from the peace conference in Saudi Arabia:
Russia said on Monday a peace settlement with Ukraine was only possible if Kyiv put down its arms.
Russia was not invited to the conference in Jeddah, where representatives from about 40 countries including China, India, the US and Ukraine took part in the peace summit.
Russia said that a resolution was possible if Ukraine “stopped the hostilities and terrorist attacks” and if western countries stopped arms supplies to Kyiv.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said in a statement:
The original foundations of Ukraine’s sovereignty – its neutral, non-aligned and non-nuclear status – must be confirmed.
It also called on Ukraine to cede its occupied territories to Moscow, AFP reports.
Updated
A conference hosted by Saudi Arabia to discuss a peace plan for Ukraine was successful because it showed the willingness of the international community to work towards ending the war, Reuters reports a German government spokesperson as saying on Monday.
A spokesperson at a news conference in Berlin said:
Germany will also continue to engage actively including in this process.
Updated
Iuliia Mendel, Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s former spokesperson, shared a video on X, formerly Twitter, showing some of the damage done to the nine-storey residential building in Kherson that was heavily damaged by Russian shelling last night.
My Kherson… the nine-storey residential building after Russian shelling last night…. #StopRussianAggression #WarCrime pic.twitter.com/S6GmjXiD28
— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) August 7, 2023
Summary of the day so far …
Ukraine has released images of prisoners of war on Monday returned by Russia. Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, announced that 22 more Ukrainian soldiers had been returned from captivity, stating that all of them are soldiers of the armed forces of Ukraine.
Yermak also reported that “the Russians shelled the village of Kucherivka, in Kupyan district, hitting a house. Two dead and three injured people are known”. The deaths were in addition to a person killed and several injured during a “difficult night” of Russian shelling of Kherson, the city’s governor Oleksandr Prokudin, has said.
Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, claimed Ukrainian forces had shot down a Russian drone over his region on Monday.
China’s foreign ministry said on Monday that recent international talks in Saudi Arabia on resolving the Ukraine crisis had helped “consolidate international consensus”. China’s special envoy for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, “had extensive contact and communication with all parties on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis … listened to all sides’ opinions and proposals, and further consolidated international consensus”, the foreign ministry said in a written statement.
The Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv, one of the nation’s most recognisable landmarks, has lost its hammer-and-sickle symbol after officials replaced the Soviet-era emblem with the country’s trident coat of arms. The move is part of a wider shift to reclaim Ukraine’s cultural identity from the communist past.
Updated
Ukraine has released images of some prisoners of war returned by Russia.
Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, announced that 22 more Ukrainian soldiers had been returned from captivity, stating that all of them are soldiers of the armed forces of Ukraine, including two officers, enlisted and noncommissioned officers. There are wounded among those released, he added.
Updated
China’s foreign ministry said on Monday that recent international talks in Saudi Arabia on resolving the Ukraine crisis had helped “consolidate international consensus”.
Reuters reports China’s special envoy for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, “had extensive contact and communication with all parties on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis … listened to all sides’ opinions and proposals, and further consolidated international consensus”, the foreign ministry said in a written statement.
More than 40 countries, including China, India, the US, and European countries, but not Russia, took part in the Jeddah talks that ended on Sunday.
Updated
Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat has appeared on Ukrainian television attempting to clarify media reports that missiles are fired into Ukraine from Belarus, by saying that while Russian planes are freely using Belarus airspace, missiles are being launched from within Russia.
Ukrinform reports he told viewers :
It [the missile] was launched from a MiG-31K aircraft from the Tambov area. As it flies along the route, at the crossroads of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, it enters Belarusian airspace, and there are no problems for the Russians here.
If a missile flies and enters Belarusian airspace, it appears somewhere over Belarus and flies in the direction of the Khmelnytskyi region, accordingly the person on duty will write ‘A Kinzhal is flying from the direction of Belarus.’ That’s all, and there is no need to manipulate the headlines that missiles are flying from Belarus.
Russia has been actively using Belarusian airspace since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Their troops, planes, Wagner forces are there, so there’s nothing new here.
Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, has reported on Telegram that “the Russians shelled the village of Kucherivka, in Kupyan district, hitting a house”.
He states that “two dead and three injured people are known”.
More details soon …
Updated
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-imposed leader in occupied Donetsk, has said that travel by road in the region is safe, despite Ukrainian attacks on key bridges.
“At the moment, there are no queues, the situation is fully controlled, it is safe to move through the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic along the land corridor, relatively, as far as possible, quickly and comfortably,” Tass reports he said on Russian television.
Updated
Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast, has claimed that Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian drone over his region. The type is being clarified, he reported.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, citing the regional authority, reports that yesterday Russian forces shelled the Ukraine-controlled area of Zaporizhzhia 24 times. There were no reports of any casualties. The Russian Federation claimed to have annexed Zaporizhzhia late last year.
This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.
Updated
One person has been killed and several injured during a “difficult night” of Russian shelling of Kherson, the city’s governor Oleksandr Prokudin, has said.
A 59-year-old woman died while two rescuers and a 93-year-old woman were among those injured in the attacks, which targeted residential areas in the city centre, he wrote on Telegram. The report could not be verified.
Ukraine recaptured Kherson and parts of the surrounding Kherson region in November after months of occupation by Russia.
Ukraine replaced the Soviet-era hammer and sickle on one of its most prominent landmarks on Sunday with its national trident, as part of its efforts to reclaim its own history and culture.
Kyiv’s Motherland monument is 62 metres tall and holds a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. Workers began removing the Soviet Union’s coat of arms from the shield last month.
Images sent through on the wires show what a feat it was to raise the trident:
Ukrainian attacks on two key bridges linking the occupied Crimean peninsula with the Russian occupied Kherson region “will likely pose significant disruptions to logistics” for the Russian military, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has said in its latest update on the conflict.
Ukraine launched precision missile strikes on the Chonhar and Henichesk road bridges on Sunday. Russian sources had circulated images showing “significant damage” to the Henichesk bridge and claimed that a section had partially collapsed, the US-based thinktank said.
The Chonhar bridge meanwhile suffered “minor damage” according to footage posted by Russian sources, it continued.
It is unclear how quickly Russian officials will be able to repair the Chonhar bridge and it is equally as unclear if Russian officials have repaired the Chonhar railway bridge that Ukrainian forces struck on July 29. The damage to the Henichesk Strait bridge will likely take Russian officials substantially longer to repair.
Some routes the military may be forced to use are closer to Ukrainian positions in upper Kherson oblast and in many cases within artillery range of the Ukrainian-held western bank of the river, the ISW said.
Russian forces likely can reduce risks from Ukrainian indirect fire in this area by taking slower and less efficient village roads … but at the cost of slower and more complicated logistics support.
NEW: #Ukraine struck two key road bridges along critical Russian grounds lines of communication (GLOCs) connecting occupied #Crimea & occupied #Kherson causing Russian forces to reroute road traffic from shorter eastern routes to longer western routes. https://t.co/USrGNocJm0 pic.twitter.com/a1pfQnh7Eo
— ISW (@TheStudyofWar) August 7, 2023
Russia’s air defence system destroyed an aircraft-type drone over the Ferzikovskyi district in the Kaluga region, Vladislav Shapsha, governor of the region, has said on the Telegram messaging app.
The Kaluga region borders the Moscow region to the north. “There has been no impact on people or infrastructure,” Shapsha said according to Reuters.
It was not clear who launched the drones, and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russia-controlled territory in Ukraine.
Olexsandr is perhaps Ukraine’s deadliest kamikaze drone pilot: he has destroyed five tanks, five combat infantry vehicles, one armoured personnel carrier, one combat reconnaissance vehicle, two multipurpose lightly armed transporters, an infantry fighting vehicle and an airborne combat vehicle.
That is 20 pieces of deadly and highly valuable pieces of Russian hardware taken off the battlefield.
He prefers not to think of the lives that have been taken in the process but he concedes that, on Friday morning at 7.15am, his explosive-packed drones killed two Russian soldiers and injured six in a fortified trench position near the village of Robotyne in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, where Ukraine’s counter-offensive forces are inching forward through a phalanx of tripwires and anti-personnel and anti-armour mines. Word had just reached him that the position has since been taken. “We did good work,” he says.
Olexsandr – he has asked for his full name not to be used – has footage to prove his deadly work. A video from Friday morning shows Russian soldiers, unaware of the peril from above, firing over the trench at Ukrainian soldiers seeking to storm their position, only for one of Olexsandr’s Mavic 3 drones to make its lethal swoop.
It is not to brag, however, that he has agreed to meet by a sunflower field in Zaporizhzhia, near to where he was killing and maiming just a few hours earlier. “War is nothing to boast about,” he says. Olexsandr is here to complain.
Read on below:
Zelenskiy praises 'powerful' US and German air defence systems
Air defence systems donated to Ukraine by Germany and the US “already yielded significant results” Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said in his latest evening address, shooting down a “significant number” of Russian missiles and drones over the past week.
The Ukrainian president, who spoke hours after Russia launched a multi-wave attack on Ukraine that killed six people, said Moscow had fired 65 different missiles and 178 drones at Ukraine in the past seven days.
The US Patriot and German Iris-T systems were “powerful systems, very effective”, Zelenskiy said. “Here, in our skies, we can prove that terror is losing … Ukraine can win this battle, and our sky shield will eventually guarantee security for the whole of Europe.”
A blood transfusion centre in Kupiansk, a city in Kharkiv, was also destroyed early Sunday, in what was one of the busiest nights of strikes for weeks. The overnight assault on Ukraine was said to be in retaliation for successful strikes against Russian naval vessels.
Updated
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Livingstone.
Air defence systems donated to Ukraine by Germany and the US are already yielding “significant results”, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said in his latest evening address: “These are powerful systems, very effective.”
He said Ukraine had managed to shoot down a “significant number” of the 65 different missiles and 178 drones fired by Russia in the past week using the US Patriot and German IRIS-T defence systems.
His comments came after Moscow launched a deadly multi-wave assault across Ukraine, killing six people and destroying a blood transfusion centre in what the president separately called “a war crime of “beasts”.
In other developments:
The Chonhar bridge to the occupied Crimean peninsula was damaged by a missile strike, the Moscow-installed governor said. Another of the three road links between Crimea and Russian-occupied parts of mainland Ukraine, near the town of Henichesk, was shelled and a civilian driver wounded, a Moscow-appointed official said.
A hostile drone was destroyed by Russian air defences as it approached Moscow on Sunday morning, the city’s mayor said. The capital’s Vnukovo airport temporarily suspended flights.
Russia has said its forces struck military airbases in the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions in western Ukraine and that “all targets were hit”. The deputy governor of the Khmelnytskyi region, Serhiy Tiurin, said on Sunday that a military airfield in Starokostiantyniv was among the targets. He said most of the missiles were shot down but explosions had damaged several houses, a cultural institution and the bus station, and a fire had broken out at a grain silo.
The Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv, one of the nation’s most recognisable landmarks, has lost its hammer-and-sickle symbol after officials replaced the Soviet-era emblem with the country’s trident coat of arms. The move is part of a wider shift to reclaim Ukraine’s cultural identity from the Communist past.
A weekend conference in Saudi Arabia of senior officials from some 40 countries including the US, China and India – part of a diplomatic push by Ukraine to build support beyond its core Western backers – ended with no concrete action beyond a commitment to further consultations. Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said the discussions had been very productive, but did not give details.
