Every week we wrap up essential coverage of the war in Ukraine, from news and features to analysis, opinion and more.
The medics salvaging life from carnage
In a field hospital, a badly wounded Ukrainian soldier had just arrived, hit with shrapnel from an enemy mortar. He looked more dead than alive. Doctors gave emergency transfusions of blood and plasma. A paramedic cut away his uniform. Another bandaged his left leg. A third gave him a shot of fentanyl, a powerful painkiller. A heart monitor beeped while artillery whumped 5km away.
After 20 minutes, the wounded man’s condition stabilised and he began to groan: a good sign. From the makeshift medical centre he was taken by ambulance to a fully equipped hospital – a perilous journey under threat of Russian shelling.
Dr Denys Sholom – the head of the medical team – said he was used to the daily carnage. He and his medical staff survive by guzzling energy drinks and puffing cigarettes during lulls in the fighting. How did he cope with constant presence of death? “The devil knows. It’s OK,” he said. Ivan, a 30-year-old doctor, said there was little prospect the conflict would stop. “I would like it to end. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
Morale among Ukrainian soldiers appears high. On a break from fighting near Bakhmut Serhiy Kraynyak – a member of the 5th brigade – said neither side was close to victory. “They have not completely lost the war. We have not completely won it,” he told Luke Harding.
Ukraine establishes foothold on Dnipro’s left bank
Ukrainian troops have established a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, officials from Russia and Ukraine acknowledged this week, Andrew Roth reported, in an operation that Kyiv says will open new avenues of attack toward Crimea.
“Against all odds, Ukraine’s defence forces have gained a foothold on the left [east] bank of the Dnipro,” said Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration.
Russian troops abandoned the western bank of the Dnipro River a year ago and took up positions on the eastern side, from which they have been regularly shelling towns and villages opposite.
A report in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday said Ukrainian marines had reinforced positions in three villages, brought in vehicles, and cut off a Russian resupply route – though the Ukrainians described themselves as “hunkered down in basements and trenches and heavily outnumbered”.
Sam Cranny-Evans, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said the advance might “buy some breathing space” for the Ukrainians.
“The Russians appear to be gaining momentum in other areas such as Avdiivka … At this stage, I think it is more of an opportunistic effort designed to shape the battlefield for future operations and restore some offensive prestige,” he said.
Cameron travels to Ukraine on first trip as UK foreign minister
David Cameron travelled to Kyiv and Odesa for his first trip as UK foreign secretary in an unannounced visit just days after his surprise appointment, but did not make any significant announcement about fresh military aid.
Shaun Walker and Dan Sabbagh reported that as he met Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Thursday, Cameron pledged that long-term British support for Ukraine would continue.
“What I wanted to say by being here is that we will continue to give you the moral support, the diplomatic support, the economic support but above all the military support that you need, not just this year and next year but for as long as it takes,” said Cameron.
Concern has grown in Ukraine about global support, with conflict in the Middle East taking attention away from the country, and longer-term questions about western financial backing as the US heads into an election cycle.
“Now, you know, the world is not focused on the situation on our battlefield in Ukraine, and is divided for focus,” said Zelenskiy. “It really doesn’t help, and we are thankful that UK has always supported Ukraine.”
Into a bomb shelter mid-match with Mariupol Women
Mariupol Women’s football players huddle around their phones and try to work out how long the delay will last. “A MiG-31 took off, that’ll be about an hour,” reckons one voice, but nobody can ever know for sure.
Ten minutes ago they were holding their own against EMC-Podillya when the air raid siren sounded. Now they are sitting in an air raid shelter 500 metres around the corner. Karyna Kulakovskaya and Yana Vynorukova offer instructions to their squad. “They’ve got one player who can affect things, but if you switch her off that’s it,” Vynorukova says. “We’re going to come back fully rested, stretched and prepared, and we’re going to change the game.”
Keeping everyone warmed up and mentally engaged will be crucial if this pause, the third to have affected Mariupol this season, is prolonged. Seven hours ago, at 6am, they had gathered outside a supermarket in Kyiv’s outskirts for the four-hour drive south-west to Vinnytsia. “Imagine you’re seasonal workers going to pick strawberries,” Vynorukova had joked.
Two hours and 41 minutes after they were called inside, play restarts. The outcome? Read to the end of this Nick Ames match report with a difference.
Finely balanced, but not a stalemate
Ukraine’s counteroffensive has stalled, with progress on the two principal axes on the southern front modest since it began on 4 June, Dan Sabbagh assessed. Some blame western politicians for taking so long to supply tanks, long-range missiles and F-16 fighters to Ukraine.
“We gave Russians so much time to put in their defences,” says Ben Hodges, a former commanding general of the US army in Europe. The word “stalemate” is used but the situation on the frontline is more dynamic. Russia continues to mount repeated, unsophisticated, attacks, now centred on Avdiivka. Moscow retains a substantial advantage in personnel while incurring heavy casualties. It has been able to produce and source large amounts of artillery ammunition.
However, Russian logistics – with depots successfully targeted by the Ukrainians with long-range Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles – are uneven. The war is likely to remain finely balanced – although not stalemated – with both sides chasing a technological or political breakthrough.
‘A monstrous fact of injustice, a desecration’
A former Russian detective who was convicted for his role in the 2006 killing of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya has been pardoned by President Vladimir Putin after fighting in Ukraine, Pjotr Sauer reported.
Sergei Khadzhikurbanov was given a 20-year prison sentence in 2014 for his role in organising the murder of Politkovskaya, a prominent reporter at the liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta who was shot dead in 2006 in the lift of her Moscow apartment block.
Khadzhikurbanov’s lawyer, Alexei Mikhalchik, told Russian media on Tuesday that his client received a presidential pardon after completing a six-month military contract in Ukraine and had since remained in the armed forces.
In a joint statement with Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya’s two children Vera and Ilya said: “For us, this ‘pardon’ is not evidence of atonement and repentance of the killer. This is a monstrous fact of injustice […] Desecration of the memory of a person killed for her beliefs and professional duty.”
Khadzhikurbanov was one of five people jailed over the murder of Politkovskaya, a fierce Kremlin critic who had extensively covered Russia’s wars in Chechnya. Russia’s defence ministry and the Wagner mercenary group have recruited tens of thousands of prisoners, including murderers and domestic abusers, to fight in the war in Ukraine.
Flights, cameras and frontline action
On 23 February 2022, on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yaroslav Pilunskiy was working in Rome, colour-editing a film with a big international team. His only contact with drones, at that point, had been flying a simple model to scout movie locations. Now he is a crack military drone operator for the armed forces of Ukraine, Charlotte Higgins wrote.
Recently, Pilunskiy has been joined in the drone unit by Ivan Bannikov, one of Ukraine’s most respected film editors and fellow member of a film collective called Babylon 13. Before the invasion, Bannikov says, “I was making films, trying to enjoy life, being with my family. I never dreamed there were creatures in the world capable of doing what the Russians have done.
“When you look at the enemy on the screen, it reminds you of when you are planning a scene at the editing desk – looking for the shot, then the reaction. It’s the same here, you are looking for the right angle.”
Pilunskiy says that sometimes, if the situation allows on Ukraine’s brutal eastern frontline, he will fly his drone to “a place I know where the Russians are constantly shelling over a lake, against a beautiful sunset.”
