Every week we wrap up the must-reads from our coverage of the war in Ukraine, from news and features to analysis, visual guides and opinion.
Moscow recruits Serbs to replenish military forces
At the beginning of September, Branko boarded a direct flight from Belgrade to Moscow.
After a few days in the Russian capital, Branko, with three other Serbian nationals, was driven to a military recruitment centre in Krasnogorsk, a city on the outskirts of Moscow, where the group signed a contract with the Russian military, Pjotr Sauer reported.
“It all went very fast; in one day I became a soldier for Russia … Now I am waiting to be sent to Ukraine,” Branko said in a text exchange on Telegram, requesting anonymity so he could speak freely.
Branko, not his real name, was part of Moscow’s latest drive to recruit Serbs to fight for the Russian army in Ukraine, as the Kremlin seeks to replenish its forces, depleted by 18 months of fighting.
Russia’s biggest offensive in months failing, says Ukraine
A top Ukrainian commander has claimed that Russia’s biggest offensive in months – involving tanks, thousands of soldiers and armoured vehicles in an attack on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka – is failing, as he admitted Kyiv’s own attempts to advance in the south were proving “difficult”.
Russian forces have pummelled the town over the past week, a key bulge surrounded by Russian-held territory on the eastern Donbas front, Luke Harding reported.
It is one of the largest assaults by Moscow since last year’s full-scale invasion and comes at a time when Ukraine’s counteroffensive is moving slowly, and the world is focused on the imminent Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.
But the Russians have suffered serious losses. At least 36 Russian tanks and armoured vehicles were destroyed in the first 24 hours. According to the Kyiv Post, that figure has risen to 102 tanks and 183 armoured vehicles lost, with 2,840 troops killed. There were chaotic scenes. One tank fell off a pontoon bridge into a river. Another crushed a Russian soldier as it reversed; a Ukrainian munition then blew it up.
US-Russian journalist detained in Russia
A Russian-American journalist was detained in Russia on charges of violating its foreign agents law, reportedly due to her coverage of Russia’s military mobilisation for its invasion of Ukraine, Andrew Roth reported.
Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor with Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty’s (RFE-RL) Tatar-Bashkir service, was detained on Wednesday by masked Russian law enforcement agents.
RFE-RL confirmed her detention in a statement on Thursday and said Kurmasheva had been charged with failure to register as a foreign agent and faced up to five years in prison.
Kurmasheva is the second American journalist to be detained in Russia since the war began. Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was arrested in March and charged with espionage.
Xi Jinping welcomes ‘dear friend’ Putin to Beijing
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, welcomed his “dear friend” Vladimir Putin to Beijing, as it hosted representatives of 130 countries for a forum on Xi’s vast trade and infrastructure project, the belt and road initiative (BRI).
At the top of the guest list was the Russian president, on his first trip to a major global power since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine threw his regime into international isolation.
At an official banquet, Xi delivered a toast in which he alluded to recent geopolitical conflicts but added that “the historical [trend] of peace” was “unstoppable”, while in an interview with Chinese state media Putin described Xi as a true leader.
Meanwhile, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov visited North Korea, for meetings seen as setting the stage for a visit by President Vladimir Putin. His trip came just days after the US said Pyongyang had transferred munitions to Russia.
Biden links Putin to Hamas in rare Oval Office address
Joe Biden compared his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin with Hamas in a rare Oval Office address in which the president urged Americans to support fresh funding for both Ukraine and Israel, David Smith reported.
“Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: they both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy,” Biden said. But his request for tens of billions of dollars more in military aid for Ukraine comes as the House of Representatives is paralysed by the Republicans, who struggled to elect a new Speaker this week to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy.
Those ripples of dysfunction could soon be felt across a troubled world, David wrote in a separate analysis.
Biden has already requested $24bn in additional funding for Ukraine but this remains in limbo because without a speaker, legislative business comes to a standstill.
And although the White House has claimed that the vast majority of House Republicans still support such assistance for Ukraine, there has been growing dissent in recent weeks and the issue was a factor in McCarthy’s downfall.
Earlier this month hard-right congressman Matt Gaetz accused the then speaker McCarthy of cutting a “secret side deal” with Biden to provide additional funding to Ukraine, Joan E Greve wrote in a separate analysis. The day after Gaetz delivered that speech, McCarthy was out of a job, becoming the first House speaker in US history to be ejected from office.
Ukraine uses long-range US Atacms missiles for first time
Ukraine’s military used US-provided long-range Atacms missiles for the first time, Pjotr Sauer reported, striking one of the worst blows against Russian aviation since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukraine said it had destroyed nine Russian military helicopters, an anti-aircraft missile system and an ammunition warehouse at two airfields in Russian-occupied territory this week. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the missiles, which can strike targets more than 100 miles away and deliver salvoes with cluster munitions, had “proven themselves”, and the strikes were “executed very accurately”.
Later in the week, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the delivery of the ballistic missiles to Kyiv “another mistake” by the US, Andrew Roth reported. He also claimed their use would “not do Ukraine any good either. It will simply prolong [their] agony.”
‘Music of War’: Ukraine’s national orchestra on tour
In the face of the terror and uncertainty of the full-scale invasion on 24 February last year, many of National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine’s musicians scattered, according to its chief executive, Oleksandr Hornostai, heading west to safety.
Some stayed, volunteering in field kitchens, doing what they could to help the effort to push back the Russians from the capital. And it wasn’t long before the orchestra started performing again – reuniting first at La Fenice, Venice’s opera house, in April 2022.
Now comes another tour, with concerts in 17 venues across the UK, including Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall and London’s Cadogan Hall, Charlotte Higgins reports.
Some of the musicians also played at the Houses of Parliament. It was a reminder that this tour is not just about sharing music, but plays a role in soft diplomacy: culture and politics can never be disentangled.
