Russian troops have nearly reached the centre of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine, according to the regional governor, Vadym Filashkin, who told Ukrainian TV the situation was very difficult. Public broadcaster Suspilne quoted two soldiers of Ukraine’s 72nd Mechanized Brigade defending Vuhledar as saying that while Russian forces were in control of most of the town “certain parts” remained under Ukrainian control. “The brigade has received no order to leave the city,” Suspilne quoted the soldiers as saying.
Vuhledar has strategic significance because of its high ground and location near the junction of the two main fronts, in eastern and southern Ukraine. The popular war blog DeepState reported that Russian forces held Vuhledar and had hoisted Russian flags throughout. Footage online showed Russian soldiers waving a flag from atop a bombed-out multi-storey building and unfurling another flag on a metal spire. Reuters said it had matched the footage to street patterns of Vuhledar.
Russia’s plan to hike defence spending next year “is an outrage”, 80-year-old pensioner Irina told Agence France-Presse in Moscow on Tuesday. “We need to end this war, and spending the budget on war is a crime.” Russia is to spend more than 40% of its total budget on defence and security – more than the money allocated for social welfare and education combined.
“There is not enough for anything at all. Not for treatment, not for anything,” said another Irina, 70, who complained her pension was only 25,000 rubles (US$260) a month. “It’s pennies. People are unprotected. It’s a shame and a disgrace that the country has no money to treat its own children.” Another pensioner, Elena, 68, told AFP: “The population of the country does not live so well … I am generally against military action of any kind, in any country, in ours, and in general the whole world.”
Some in Moscow were supportive of the budget plans. “If it is not to the detriment of education, medicine, some other social programmes … In the current situation, an increase in the amount of funding is understandable,” said 49-year-old lawyer Vladimir. Another Vladimir, 50, told AFP: “In the current times, it is necessary to spend money on defence, because Nato is playing against us. We have to do something and we can’t do it any other way.”
Authorities in Ukraine have launched an investigation into what they said was an apparent summary execution by Russian troops of 16 Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered on the eastern frontline. Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said the alleged war crime, shown in video footage, took place on the Pokrovsk front.
An apparent Russian artillery strike hit a market in the southern Ukraine city of Kherson on Tuesday, killing at least six people and wounding three others, authorities said, on a morning when people were observing a minute’s silence for their military and war dead. Across Ukraine on Tuesday, traffic stopped and people on sidewalks came to a halt at 9am to commemorate those defending Ukraine and those who have sacrificed their lives.
People gathered at Independence Square in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, carrying pictures of fallen soldiers. Angelina Stashenko held a portrait of her 30-year-old brother, Denys Stashenko, who was killed in action in May in the Donetsk region. His mother, Halyna Stashenko, said: “I hope future generations will never forget the price our loved ones paid for their freedom … I hope Ukraine’s future will be bright.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy used the occasion to appeal for further support from western allies: “The daily Russian terror, the daily attempts to destroy life – all this can be stopped. Ukrainian strength and the determination of our partners must be greater than Putin’s desire to spread terror.”
Zelenskyy hailed Ukraine’s “new defence industry” that has ramped up production to help fight the Russian invasion. “In the first half of this year alone, Ukraine produced 25 times more ammunition for artillery and mortars than in the whole of 2022,” Ukraine’s president told a defence forum in Kyiv. Almost 300 weapons companies, both Ukrainian and foreign, were in Kyiv for the conference, Zelenskyy said. “In the extremely difficult conditions of a full-scale war, under constant Russian attacks, Ukrainians were able to build a virtually new defence industry. Today, everyone can see this new Ukrainian capability.” Zelenskyy said Ukraine had built up the capacity to produce four million drones a year.
While much attention has focused on the billions of dollars in military aid from western backers, Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmygal, has told a government meeting that half of the ammunition Ukraine uses at the front is produced domestically. Alongside long-range drones, Ukraine also makes the Neptune anti-ship missiles that have been used to hit Russian vessels in the Black Sea. At the end of August, Zelenskyy announced the successful test firing of the first Ukrainian-made ballistic missile.
Russia is suspected of deliberately leaking chemical waste into a Ukrainian river, with deadly consequences for wildlife, write Luke Harding and Artem Mazhulin from Slabyn, Ukraine. A toxic slick was detected on 17 August coming from the Russian border village of Tyotkino. According to Kyiv, chemical waste from a sugar factory had been dumped in vast quantities into the Seym river. The pollution crossed the international border just over a mile away and made its way into the Desna river of Ukraine’s Sumy region where mass die-offs of fish, molluscs and crayfish have resulted.
