Tag: RussiaUkraine

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 172nd day, we take a look at the main developments.

Here are the key events from Sunday, August 14.

Fighting

• Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for the latest round of shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, which is in Russia’s control and has come under fire repeatedly in the past week.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday said any Russian soldier who shoots at the plant or uses it as cover would become a “special target”, repeating accusations that Moscow was using the power station as nuclear “blackmail”.
• Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak accused Russia of “hitting the part of the nuclear power plant where the energy that powers the south of Ukraine is generated”.
• Pro-Moscow officials in the occupied area have blamed the shelling on Ukrainian forces, with Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Moscow-installed administration, saying the Zaporizhzhia plant, and the town where it is located, Energodar, “are again under fire by Zelenskyy’s militants”.
• Western powers have expressed increasing concern over the plant since Russian forces took control of the facility in early March. They have called on Moscow to withdraw its troops from the plant, which is still run by Ukrainian technicians.
• The United Kingdom’s military intelligence said Russia’s priority in the last week has likely been to “reorient units to reinforce southern Ukraine” amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Diplomacy

• The head of the North American department at the Russian foreign ministry has said any possible seizure of Russian assets by the US will completely destroy Moscow’s bilateral relations with Washington, according to the TASS news agency. The US has seized billions of dollars of assets of Russians under sanctions since the invasion began.
• Russia has also told the US that diplomatic ties would be badly damaged and could even be broken off if Washington declares Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism”, TASS cited a top foreign ministry official as saying. Zelenskyy and several US legislators have called for Russia to be designated as such.

Economy

• Two more ships left from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports on Saturday, Turkey’s defence ministry said, bringing the total number of ships to depart the country under a United Nations-brokered deal to 16.
• A UN-chartered ship, MV Brave Commander, is set to become the first humanitarian food shipment for Africa to depart from Ukraine since the Russian invasion. A UN official has said the ship will travel in the coming days from the Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi to Ethiopia along the Black Sea corridor brokered by the UN and Turkey. It is set to carry 23,0000 tonnes of wheat.
• Zelenskyy’s chief economic adviser has said securing a new $5bn loan from the IMF would help assure Ukraine’s other creditors that its macroeconomic situation was under control.
• The US has expressed concern that an Indian ship earlier this year used a high-seas transfer to export fuel to New York made from Russian crude, a top Indian central banker said. US sanctions on Russia prohibit imports to the US of Russian-origin energy products, including crude oil, refined fuels, distillates, coal and gas.
• Hungary said Russia has begun to deliver additional gas to the country following a July visit to Moscow by its foreign minister. Hungary has resisted European Union’s efforts to reduce Russian gas consumption.

Here are the key events on Thursday, August 11.

Fighting

• Ukraine accused Russia of firing rockets from the captured Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, killing at least 13 people and wounding 10, in the knowledge it would be risky for Ukraine to return fire.
• Russia launched 80 Grad rockets at the town of Marhanets across the Dnieper river from the nuclear plant on Tuesday, Valentyn Reznychenko, the governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region said, adding that more than 20 buildings were damaged.
• Two US newspapers cited unnamed Ukrainian officials as saying the country’s special forces had carried out an attack on Tuesday on an airbase on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula, destroying military aircraft.
• Russian attacks on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut killed at least six people and wounded three others, the regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

Diplomacy

• The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) economic powers have called on Moscow to immediately return Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to full Ukrainian control amid growing fears of a potential disaster.
• China has accused the United States of being the “main instigator” of the Ukraine crisis, saying Washington’s “ultimate goal is to exhaust and crush Russia”.
• Russian authorities raided the home of a former state TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova and detained her as part of a criminal investigation for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian armed forces, her lawyer said on social media.
• The Russian independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta said it had been fined 350,000 Russian roubles ($5,700) for “abusing media freedom”.

Economy

• Ukraine’s overseas creditors backed its request for a two-year freeze on payments on almost $20bn in international bonds, a move that will allow it to avoid a debt default.
• Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the move will save the country almost $6bn, helping stabilise its economy and strengthen its army.
• The second commercial ship to arrive in a Ukrainian port since the start of Russia’s invasion has docked in the port of Chornomorsk and is ready to load grain, Ukraine’s Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov said.
• Russians are snapping up Western fashion and furniture this week as H&M and IKEA sell off the last of their inventory in Russia, moving forward with their exit from the country after it sent troops into Ukraine.

Here are the key events so far on Wednesday, August 3.

Grain ships and diplomacy

• The first grain-carrying ship to leave Ukrainian ports in wartime anchored off Turkey’s coast on Tuesday, while a senior official said Ankara expected roughly one grain ship to leave Ukraine daily as long as the export deal holds.
• “A first success is the grain deal, perhaps that can be slowly expanded to a ceasefire,” Germany’s ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said.
•  Russia has said the United States was directly involved in the conflict because US spies were approving and coordinating Ukrainian missile strikes on Russian forces.
• The US has imposed sanctions on Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast the Treasury Department described as having a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• The G7 is looking at blocking the transportation of Russian oil, among other options, to deprive Moscow of bumper revenues.
• The Russian trial of US basketball star Brittney Griner is expected to conclude this week.

Fighting

• Ukraine’s military has reported heavy Russian shelling of Kharkiv and other towns and villages in its vicinity, and air and missile strikes on civilian installations. Russia denies targeting civilians.
• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that despite arms supplies from the West, his country’s forces could not yet overcome Russian advantages in heavy guns and manpower.
• The British Defence Ministry said that the rail link connecting Russian-occupied Kherson in southern Ukraine with Crimea is highly unlikely to be operational due to a Ukrainian strike against a Russian ammunition train.
• Russia’s top court designated Ukraine’s Azov Regiment as a terrorist group paving the way for captured soldiers to be tried under stringent anti-terror laws and jailed for up to 20 years.
• Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said Russian forces had destroyed six US-made HIMARS missile systems since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, Interfax has reported.
• The Pentagon denied the claims, saying Russia regularly says it has hit HIMARS but has not shown proof.

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 160th day, we take a look at the main developments.

Here are the key events so far on Tuesday, August 2.

Diplomacy and energy

• The first ship to depart Odesa under a landmark grain deal is continuing its journey towards Istanbul, where it will be inspected before heading to Lebanon.
• Still, there are many hurdles to overcome before millions of tonnes of Ukrainian grain depart from the country’s Black Sea ports.
• Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of laying mines that now float around the Black Sea, drifting far from Ukraine’s shores, with Romanian, Bulgarian and Turkish military diving teams defusing those that have ended up in their waters.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was little Russia could do to help with urgent repairs required to malfunctioning Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline equipment, following further falls in Gazprom production and exports.
• Russia also said it was blacklisting 39 British citizens, including the leader of the main opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, and former Prime Minister David Cameron.

‘Nuclear shield’

• United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was being used as a “nuclear shield” by Russian troops who established a base there.
• Ukraine’s deputy foreign affairs minister Mykola Tochytskyi said “robust joint actions are needed to prevent nuclear disaster” and called for the international community to “close the sky” over Ukraine’s nuclear power plants with air defence systems.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said there could be no winners in a nuclear war, and no such war should ever be started.

Fighting

• Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said about 22,000 Russian troops were preparing to advance on the cities of Kryvyi Rih and Mykolaiv, where a “sufficiently large” Ukrainian force lay in wait.
• In the southern Kherson region, which is mostly under Russian control, Ukrainian troops had liberated some 50 towns, said Yuri Sobolevsky, deputy head of the former Kherson regional council.
• Serhiy Haidai, governor of Luhansk region, which is nearly all under Russian control, said foreign fighters were arriving and that partisans were destroying key infrastructure, including gas and water networks, in battered Luhansk towns to slow Russian forces.
• The US announced a new tranche of weapons for Ukraine’s forces worth $550m, including ammunition for rocket launchers and artillery guns.

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 157th day, we take a look at the main developments.

Here are the key events so far on Saturday, July 30.

Get the latest updates here.

Fighting

Ukraine’s southern command said more than 100 Russian soldiers and seven tanks had been destroyed in fighting in the southern regions of Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa.

Russia and Ukraine traded blame for the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war in the Donetsk region this week. Moscow-backed separatists said Kyiv targeted the facility with US-made rockets. Ukraine’s armed forces said Russian artillery had targeted the facility to hide the mistreatment of prisoners.

Ukraine said at least five people were killed and seven wounded in a Russian missile attack on the southeastern city of Mykolaiv, a river port just off the Black Sea.

Two people were killed and 19 wounded in Russian shelling of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, according to the regional governor.

Russian-installed authorities in occupied territories in southern Ukraine may be preparing to hold referendums on joining Russia later this year and are “likely coercing the population into disclosing personal details in order to compose voting registers,” UK military intelligence said.

Diplomacy

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov held their first call since Russia’s February 24 invasion, to discuss a US-proposed prisoner swap.

Blinken said the world expected Russia to fulfil its commitments under a deal with Ukraine to reopen grain and fertiliser exports.

Lavrov said US sanctions complicated the global food situation.

He said Russia will meet the aims of its “special military operation” and that Western arms supplies to Kyiv were prolonging the conflict.

Russia’s foreign ministry announced sanctions against 32 officials and journalists from New Zealand for supporting what it called the country’s “Russophobic agenda.”

Russian gas producer Gazprom said it stopped supplying neighbouring Latvia with gas, accusing it of violating supply conditions.

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 147th day, we take a look at the main developments.

Here are the key events so far on Wednesday, July 20.

Get the latest updates here.

Fighting

• Russia’s offensive in Ukraine’s Donbas region continues to make minimal gains as Ukrainian forces hold the line, British military intelligence said.
• Russia is laying the groundwork for the annexation of Ukrainian territory, using the same tactics as it did in Crimea in 2014, according to the White House.
• Ukraine’s general staff reported widespread shelling and attacks in various areas of the country.
• At least one person was killed in a Russian missile strike on the centre of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, authorities said.

Diplomacy

• Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei in Tehran, his first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the February invasion of Ukraine.
• Putin said Moscow does not see any desire from Ukraine to fulfil the terms of what he described as a preliminary peace deal agreed to in March.
• Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska will address the United States Congress at 11am local time (15:00 GMT), according to a statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.
• Ukraine’s parliament dismissed the domestic security chief and prosecutor general two days after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suspended them for failing to root out Russian spies.
• Ukraine joined the US-aligned International Energy Agency as an association country, the watchdog said, binding Kyiv closer to the mostly Western countries which oppose Russia’s invasion.

Economy

• Alexander Matsegora, Russia’s ambassador to North Korea, suggested the country’s construction workers could be sent to occupied Donbas to help rebuild after North Korea last week recognised the Kremlin-backed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics as “independent”.
• Portugal’s Sines port is ready to start the onward shipment of liquefied natural gas, which arrives in large tankers and will be transferred to smaller vessels to head to other European states, a government spokesperson has said.
• Putin said it is the West’s own fault the flow of Russian natural gas to European Union customers has dwindled and warned that it could continue ebbing.
• The Belarusian finance ministry said Western sanctions that have limited Minsk’s ability to deal in foreign currencies were pushing the country into default, despite Minsk being able to service its debts.

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 142nd day, we take a look at the main developments.

Here are the key events so far on Friday, July 15.

Get the latest updates here.

Fighting

• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admonished Moscow for carrying out a missile attack in the central city of Vinnytsia, calling it an “act of terrorism” and saying no other country in the world represents a greater “terrorist” threat than Russia.
• Authorities said at least 23 people have been killed, including three children under 10, while about 100 more were wounded in the attack. There was no immediate comment by Russia.
• In Ukraine’s east, Russian forces continue to slowly advance westwards from the town of Lysychansk in the Luhansk region towards Siversk in Donetsk, the United Kingdom’s defence ministry said.
• Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region suffered a “tense night of alarms and shelling”, Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said.

Diplomacy

• United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen condemned Russia’s “brutal and unjust war” in Ukraine and said Russian finance officials taking part in the G20 meeting in Bali shared responsibility for its “horrific consequences”.
• Canada’s finance minister told Russian officials at the G20 meeting that she held them personally responsible for “war crimes” committed during Russia’s war in Ukraine, a Western official told Reuters news agency.
• More than 40 countries agreed to work together to investigate suspected war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine during a conference at the headquarters of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
• A top Russian official said Moscow would respond positively should Kyiv be ready to resume peace negotiations, but that Ukraine must accept the “territorial realities” of the situation, the Interfax news agency reported.

Economy

• The International Monetary Fund expects Ukraine to continue to service its foreign debt, a spokesperson said, as speculation grows that Ukraine could default on its debt as the battle against Russia’s invasion rages on.
• Germany is earmarking an additional 2.4 billion euros ($2.4bn) this year to cover the financial expenses of caring for Ukrainian refugees in the country, labour minister Hubertus Heil said, adding approximately 800,000 people from Ukraine have sought refuge in Germany so far, of which 30 percent are under the age of 14.
• France must quickly learn to do without Russian gas, as Moscow is using cuts in supplies to Europe as a weapon in its war with Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron said, urging everyone to rein in their energy consumption.
• The US sought to facilitate Russian food and fertiliser exports by reassuring banks, shipping and insurance companies that such transactions would not breach sanctions. This is part of attempts by United Nations and Turkish officials to broker a package deal that would also allow for shipments of Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea port of Odesa to resume.

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 140th day, we take a look at the main developments.

Here are the key events so far on Wednesday, July 13.

Get the latest updates here.

Fighting

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not commented on a Russian-backed official’s claim that a Ukrainian strike on Nova Kakhovka, in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, killed at least seven people, including civilians, and wounded dozens more.
• Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko reported a significant buildup of Russian troops, particularly in the Bakhmut and Siversk areas, and close to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, as the region braces for a powerful offensive.
• The death toll from a collapsed apartment block in the Donetsk town of Chasiv Yar climbed to 45.
• The United Nations human rights office said more than 5,000 civilians had been killed in Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24, adding that the real death toll was probably much higher.

Diplomacy

• Military delegations from Ukraine, Russia and Turkey will meet UN officials in Istanbul on Wednesday to discuss a deal to export Ukraine’s grain from the Black Sea port of Odesa as a global food crisis worsens.
• Ukraine is getting an additional $1.7bn in assistance from the United States government and the World Bank to pay the salaries of its beleaguered healthcare workers and provide other essential services.
• The self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) opened an embassy in Russia, one of only two countries to recognise the separatist “statelet” in eastern Ukraine, and defended its right to impose capital punishment.

Economy

• G20 finance leaders will meet in Bali this week for talks that are due to include issues like global food security and soaring inflation, as host Indonesia tries to ensure frictions over the war in Ukraine do not blow discussions off course.
• The Polish cabinet backed legislation loosening gas trading rules, extending tariff protection for consumers, and contingency planning for grid operators to allow for a swift reaction if the energy crisis deteriorates.
• The European Union has so far frozen 13.8 billion euros ($13.83bn) worth of assets held by Russian oligarchs, other individuals and entities sanctioned for Russia’s war against Ukraine, the bloc’s top justice official said.
• Brazil’s Foreign Minister Carlos França said his country wants to buy as much diesel as it can from Russia following a deal with Moscow.

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 139th day, we take a look at the main developments.

Here are the key events so far on Tuesday, July 12.

Get the latest updates here.

Fighting

• At least seven people have been killed and 40 injured as a result of a Ukrainian air raid on the city of Nova Kakhovka in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, according to Moscow’s state news agency TASS, citing a Russian-backed official.
• The death toll from a Russian rocket attack that hit an apartment block in the Donetsk town of Chasiv Yar over the weekend has risen to 33, Ukraine’s ministry of internal affairs reported.
• Russian troops are making small, incremental territorial gains in the Donetsk region, with Russia claiming to have seized control of the village of Hryhorivka, the United Kingdom’s defence ministry said.
• About 80 percent of residents have been evacuated from the Donetsk region since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said, according to Ukrinform.

Diplomacy

• The United States alleged Russia is turning to Iran to provide it with “hundreds” of unmanned aerial vehicles, including weapons-capable drones, for use in Ukraine.
• The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), a Russian-backed secessionist territory in eastern Ukraine, will open an embassy in Moscow today, Monocle magazine reported.
• The prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv and reaffirmed his country’s support for Ukraine “politically, militarily and economically”.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree expanding a fast track to Russian citizenship to all citizens of Ukraine, a document published on the government’s website showed.

Economy

• Europe’s dependence on Russian energy was preoccupying policymakers and businesses as the biggest pipeline carrying Russian gas to Germany began 10 days of annual maintenance. Governments, markets and companies are worried the shutdown might be extended because of the war.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has offered to mediate on the grain issue, discussed it with Putin by telephone. The Kremlin said the talks took place in the run-up to a Russian-Turkish summit scheduled for the near future.
• French carmaker Renault reported a plunge in its vehicle sales by 30 percent in the first half of 2022 after shutting down activities in Russia, its second-biggest market.
• Latvia may have to increase its defence spending and introduce compulsory military service for citizens regardless of their gender to contain any possible security risks arising from Russia, President Egils Levits said.