Summary
We are now closing the blog. Here is a summary of events so far.
Moscow has said US missiles were likely used to destroy a bridge in Kursk. Yesterday two key bridges were destroyed in the region on the Seym River.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his forces were “strengthening” their positions in Russia’s Kursk region where Kyiv has been mounting a major ground offensive.
Ukraine’s air defences shot down all 14 Russian drones fired in an overnight attack, the Ukrainian air force said on Saturday. In a statement, it said that the Shahed drones were downed over six Ukrainian regions in the south and centre of the country.
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has derailed plans to hold indirect talks in Qatar on halting strikes on energy infrastructure, the Washington Post has reported, citing undisclosed official sources.
Russia has lost 598,180 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, according to the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. This number includes 1,230 casualties Russian forces suffered over the past day.
On Saturday, Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukraine of planning to attack the Kursk nuclear power plant and blame such a “provocation” on Moscow, Interfax news agency reported. The ministry said Russia would respond harshly in the event of such an attack, which it said would contaminate a large surrounding area. Kyiv denied Russia’s claims, calling them “insane propaganda”.
The Russian management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant said on Saturday a Ukrainian drone dropped an explosive charge on a road outside the plant, endangering its staff who use the road, the TASS news agency reported.
Russia has accused Nato and the west more widely of aiding the Ukrainian incursion, including by permitting the use of western-supplied equipment. But British officials said Ukraine was entitled under international law to use British-donated equipment in operations, including within Russia.
Reporters from the Associated Press said that, on a trip through Kursk organised by the Ukrainian government, they witnessed a “trail of destruction”.
Germany, the second largest contributor of aid to war-torn Ukraine, plans to halve its bilateral military aid to Kyiv in 2025, a parliamentary source told AFP on Saturday.
Russia is restricting access to information in a bid to limit criticism of its invasion of Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said. In a post on X, the MoD said Russian authorities are “deliberately slowing” traffic on WhatsApp and YouTube and that the latter could be “blocked altogether in autumn 2024”.
Ukraine’s extraordinary incursion into Kursk has changed the narrative of the war – but is a high-risk strategy
The immediate impact of Ukraine’s incursion into the Russian region of Kursk that began on 6 August has been a transformation in the morale of the Ukrainian public and even more so the narrative among Ukraine’s international partners.
The slow but inexorable loss of ground in Donbas that painted a grim picture of retreat has been replaced by images of a dynamic front. While deceptive, this new narrative is important in reminding Ukraine’s international partners that outcomes in war are not inevitable.
Politically, the purpose of the operation is to build leverage ahead of possible negotiations. If Donald Trump wins the US presidency in November, the threat of withdrawing military-technical assistance is likely to force Kyiv to negotiate. The Ukrainian government wants to make sure that if it has to enter that process, it has things that Russia wants to trade for concessions. The Ukrainian military, therefore, must take and hold a sizeable chunk of Russian land for the duration of potential negotiations.
Another important element of the offensive is that Ukraine succeeded in maintaining operational security before launching the assault. This has been a significant problem with past Ukrainian operations, and the competence in the preparation and planning demonstrates lessons being learned from last year’s offensive that will encourage partners about the prospects for future operations.
It helped that Russian military intelligence appears to have suffered once again from a chronic lack of curiosity or imagination as Ukrainian forces were withdrawn from the line in Donbas.
You can read the full piece here.
Germany, the second largest contributor of aid to war-torn Ukraine, plans to halve its bilateral military aid to Kyiv in 2025, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported.
Citing a parliamentary source AFP spoke to on Saturday, the news agency said the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz will instead bank on money generated by frozen Russian assets to continue supporting Kyiv, and is not planning any “additional aid” to the four billion euros ($4.4 billion) set aside in next year’s budget.
This year aid from Berlin amounted to eight billion euros ($8.8 billion).
To compensate, Germany is counting on “the creation, within the framework of the G7 and the European Union, of a financial instrument using frozen Russian assets”, said a separate source from inside the finance ministry.
The sources were confirming press reports, with the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung saying in its weekend edition that the move was part of an agreement between the chancellor of the centre-left Social Democratic party and the liberal finance minister Christian Lindner.
Ukraine’s allies have been working on a mechanism to allow part of the $300 billion of Russian assets frozen worldwide to be used to support Kyiv in its war with Moscow.
The Kursk attack has humiliated Putin – and changed the narrative over how the war is fought
When video footage of the Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region began appearing on social media, a joke started doing the rounds with Vladimir Putin asking Stalin what he should do about the German tanks rolling towards Kursk. Stalin’s ghost responds that the recipe for victory is simple: send the best Ukrainian divisions into battle, like he did in 1943, and then ask the Americans for tanks and money. But neither of these options is available to Putin. He is now facing the Ukrainian army on his own soil, and regards the US as his primary enemy.
Every year since the Russian invasion, Ukraine has surprised the world. First, at the very start of the war in 2022, its forces repelled a Russian assault on the capital, Kyiv. Then, in 2023, they liberated Kherson. Now, their tanks are rolling in to Russian territory. Ukrainian armed forces have been advancing for the past 10 days. They already control about 1,000 sq km of land and more than 80 settlements. Russian flags have been taken down; in the city of Sudzha, a military administration has been set up to govern the territory, and hundreds of prisoners of war have been captured.
Kyiv’s territorial gains, in contrast to the size of Russia’s territory, are, of course, small. The Ukrainian army has taken the equivalent of about 10% of Greater London. The Kursk incursion may not be a decisive battle in this war, but it radically changes the prevailing narrative about how it is being fought and how it might end. It strikes at the root of the Kremlin’s strategy, which has been to have the west “freely reason to a conclusion that Russia’s prevailing in Ukraine is inevitable and that we must stay on the sidelines”, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
You can read the full article here.
Ukrainian forces strengthening positions in Kursk, says Zelenskiy
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his forces were “strengthening” their positions in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv has been mounting a major ground offensive.
Ukrainian army chief Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi “reported on the strengthening of the positions of our forces in the Kursk region and the expansion of stabilised territory”, Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram on Saturday, Agence France-Presse reports.
“As of this morning, we have replenished the exchange fund for our country,” Zelenskiy said, referring to Russian soldiers Ukraine has captured to be used in future prisoner swaps.
He added:
I thank all the soldiers and commanders who are taking Russian soldiers prisoner and thus bringing the release of our soldiers and civilians held by Russia closer.
Zelenskiy said the situation on the eastern front near the towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk was “under control”, after Russia reported it had made a string of advances towards them in recent weeks.
“(There were) dozens of Russian assaults on our positions over the last day,” Zelenskiy said. “But our soldiers and units are doing everything to destroy the occupier and repel the attacks.”
Updated
Russia’s defence ministry has accused Ukraine of planning to attack the Kursk nuclear power plant and blame such a “provocation” on Moscow, Reuters has reported, citing Interfax news agency.
The ministry said that Russia would respond harshly in the event of such an attack, which it said would contaminate a large surrounding area.
The Kursk nuclear power plant remains under Russia’s control.
Kyiv denied Russia’s claims, calling them “insane” propaganda.
Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi posted on X:
We are seeing another surge in insane Russian propaganda about alleged Ukrainian plans to use ‘dirty bombs’ or attack nuclear plants. We officially refute these false claims.
Ukraine has no intention or ability to take any such actions.
We are seeing another surge in insane Russian propaganda about alleged Ukrainian plans to use "dirty bombs" or attack nuclear plants. We officially refute these false claims. Ukraine has no intention or ability to take any such actions. Russia must stop spreading dangerous lies.
— Heorhii Tykhyi (@SpoxUkraineMFA) August 16, 2024
Updated
‘We were sure the Russian army would protect us’: fury after Ukrainian incursion into Kursk
As tens of thousands flee their homes in border region, many say government downplayed threat of invasion
A report by Nataliya Vasilyeva for The Observer
Lyubov Antipova last spoke to her elderly parents almost two weeks ago, when she first heard rumours of a Ukrainian incursion and begged them to leave their village in Russia’s Kursk region.
The threat seemed unreal – Russian soil had not seen invading forces since the end of the second world war – and Russian state media initially dismissed the invasion as a one-off “attempt at infiltration”, so Antipova’s parents, who keep chickens and a pig on a small plot, decided to stay in Zaoleshenka.
Next day, Antipova saw photos online of Ukrainian soldiers posing next to a supermarket and the office of a gas company. She recognised the place immediately: her parents live about 50 metres away.
“All those years my parents didn’t think they would be affected,” Antipova told the Observer by phone from Kursk, carefully avoiding using the word “war”, which has been officially outlawed in Russia. “We were sure the Russian army would protect us. I’m amazed how quickly the Ukrainian forces advanced.”
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has laid bare the apparent complacency of Russian officials in charge of the border. Many local people accuse the government of downplaying the Ukrainian attack or misinforming them of the danger.
Read the full report here:
Russia is restricting access to information in a bid to limit criticism of its invasion of Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.
In a post on X, the MoD said Russian authorities are “deliberately slowing” traffic on WhatsApp and YouTube and that the latter could be “blocked altogether in autumn 2024”.
Russian state control over information “is increasing”, the MoD post added.
Russia is restricting access to information to limit criticism of its destructive invasion of Ukraine.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) August 17, 2024
Communications channels are being pulled away as the Kremlin tightens its grip on free expression.
#StandWithUkraine🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/GvRZTasHpF
Here are some of the latest images coming to us over the wires.
Updated
Ukraine's incursion 'derails efforts for partial ceasefire with Russia', WP reports
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has derailed plans to hold indirect talks in Qatar on halting strikes on energy infrastructure, the Washington Post has reported, citing undisclosed official sources.
According to the report:
Ukraine and Russia were set to send delegations to Doha this month to negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides, diplomats and officials familiar with the discussions said, in what would have amounted to a partial cease-fire and offered a reprieve for both countries.
But the indirect talks, with the Qataris serving as mediators and meeting separately with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, were derailed by Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region last week, according to the officials.
The report added that a diplomat said Russia “didn’t call off the talks, they said give us time.”
Ukraine had wanted to send its delegation to Doha anyway, the person added however, Qatar declined as it did not see a one-sided meeting as beneficial.
The Russian management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant said on Saturday a Ukrainian drone dropped an explosive charge on a road outside the plant, endangering its staff who use the road, the TASS news agency reported.
Russia has been in control of the Zaporizhzhia plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, since soon after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of trying to sabotage its operations.
Russia has lost 598,180 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, according to the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
This number includes 1,230 casualties Russian forces suffered over the past day.
According to the report, Russia has also lost:
8,501 tanks
16,473 armoured fighting vehicles
22,913 vehicles and fuel tanks
16,985 artillery systems
1,160 multiple-launch rocket systems
923 air defence systems
367 aircraft
328 helicopters
13,714 drones
28 warships and boats
1 submarine
Here are some pictures coming to us over the wires.
Updated
Ukraine’s lightning offensive into several Russian border regions is designed to persuade Moscow to engage in “fair” talks about its war in Ukraine, an aide to Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, as Russian forces close in on the strategic city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region.
“We need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia,” the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “In the Kursk region, we clearly see how the military tool is objectively used to convince the Russian Federation to enter into a fair negotiation process.
“We have proven, effective means of coercion. In addition to economic and diplomatic ones … we need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia.”
Podolyak made his comments as it appeared that Ukraine had largely cut off a significant area of Glushovsky district of Kursk.
Ukraine’s air defences shot down all 14 Russian drones fired in an overnight attack, the Ukrainian air force said on Saturday.
The air force said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that the Shahed drones were downed over six Ukrainian regions in the south and centre of the country.
Here are some of the latest changes to the frontline in Russia and Ukraine:
Is Ukraine using western missiles inside Russia?
Russia has accused Nato and the west more widely of aiding the Ukrainian incursion, including by permitting the use of western-supplied equipment. But British officials said Ukraine was entitled under international law to use British-donated equipment in operations, including within Russia.
“There has been no change in UK government policy; under article 51 of the UN charter, Ukraine has a clear right of self-defence against Russia’s illegal attacks, [and] that does not preclude operations inside Russia,” the Ministry of Defence said.
It appears, however, there has been no change in the UK’s refusal to allow Ukraine to use British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles against targets inside Russia, suggesting a delicate balancing act.
The US so far has also deemed the incursion a protective move in which it is appropriate for Kyiv to use US equipment, officials in Washington said. But they expressed worries about complications as Ukrainian troops pushed further into enemy territory.
One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that if Ukraine started taking Russian villages and other non-military targets using US weapons and vehicles, it could be seen as stretching the limits Washington has imposed, precisely to avoid any perception of a direct Nato-Russia conflict.
Ukraine has said that one of the aims of its current incursion into Russia is to counter artillery and missile fire into Ukraine and create a buffer zone.
Ukrainian forces 'leaving trail of destruction' in Kursk, say AP reporters on the ground
Reporters from the Associated Press say that, on a trip through Kursk organised by the Ukrainian government, they witnessed a “trail of destruction”.
They report:
A trail of destruction lies in the path that Ukrainian forces carved on their risky incursion into Russia, blasting through the border and eventually into the town of Sudzha.
Artillery fire has blown chunks out of a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin that stands in a central square of the Russian town, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday was fully under his troops’ control. The windows of an administrative building are blasted out, and its bright yellow facade is scorched and pockmarked with bullet holes.
Ukrainian forces have overrun one Russian settlement after another in the surprise operation that Kyiv hopes will change the dynamic of the two-and-a-half-year-old conflict.
Russia’s military has so far struggled to mount an effective response to the attack on its Kursk region, the largest on the country since World War II. Sudzha, which is 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border, is the biggest town to fall to Ukraine’s troops since the incursion began Aug. 6.
Evidence of Ukraine’s lightning march lines the roads to the town. On grass littered with debris lies a sign blasted with bullets that has arrows in two directions: Ukraine to the left and Russia to right. A burned-out tank stands by the side of a road.
Updated
Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said yesterday that Kyiv’s forces were advancing between 1 and 3 kilometres (0.6 to 1.9 miles) in some areas in the Kursk region, 11 days since beginning an incursion into Russia.
Kyiv has claimed to have taken control of 82 settlements over an area of 1,150 square kilometres (440 square miles) in the region since 6 August.
The Guardian has not been able to independently verify these claims.
Moscow says US missiles used to destroy bridge in Kursk
Yesterday, two key bridges were destroyed in Russia’s Kursk region on the Seym River.
Now, Moscow says Ukraine likely used missiles supplied by the US.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, said on the Telegram messaging app:
For the first time, the Kursk region was hit by Western-made rocket launchers, probably American HIMARS.
As a result of the attack on the bridge over the Seym River in the Glushkovo district, it was completely destroyed, and volunteers who were assisting the evacuated civilian population were killed.
The US, which has said it cannot allow Russian president Vladimir Putin to win the war he launched in February 2022, so far deems the surprise incursion a protective move that justifies the use of US weaponry, officials in Washington said.
Updated
Opening summary
Hello, we are restarting our rolling coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Moscow claims western-made missiles were used in the destruction of two key bridges in the Kursk region, as Ukraine continues its incursion into Russia as it bids to change the course of the two-and-a-half year war.
Russia’s foreign ministry said Ukraine had likely used US-made HIMARS to destroy a bridge over the Seym river, killing volunteers trying to evacuate civilians.
More on that shortly. In other developments:
Military authorities in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk urged civilians to speed up their evacuation on Friday because the Russian army was quickly closing in on what has been one of Moscow’s key targets for months. Pokrovsk officials said in a Telegram post that Russian troops were “advancing at a fast pace. With every passing day there is less and less time to collect personal belongings and leave for safer regions.” Pokrovsk is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the eastern Donetsk region. Its capture would compromise Ukraine’s defensive abilities and supply routes and bring Russia closer than ever to its stated aim of capturing the whole region.
Ukraine’s lightning offensive into several Russian border regions is designed to persuade Moscow to engage in “fair” talks about its war in Ukraine, an aide to Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday. “We need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia,” the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “In the Kursk region, we clearly see how the military tool is objectively used to convince the Russian Federation to enter into a fair negotiation process.”
Ukraine’s army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Friday that Kyiv’s forces were advancing between one and three kilometres in some areas in Russia’s Kursk region. Ukraine has said it has taken control of 82 settlements over an area of 1,150 sq km (444 sq miles) in the region after it launched a major cross-border attack on 6 August. Briefing President Volodymyr Zelenskiy via video link, Syrskyi reported fighting in the area of Malaya Loknya, some 11.5km from the Ukrainian border.
It appeared that Ukraine had largely cut off a significant area of Glushovsky district of Kursk and Russian troops there after blowing up two important bridges on the Seym river. A mass evacuation is under way in the Glushkov district, home to 20,000 people, and the destruction of one bridge had hindered their evacuation, the Russian news agency Tass reported.
Later, Russia’s foreign ministry said Ukraine had used western rockets, likely US-made Himars, to destroy one bridge, killing volunteers trying to evacuate civilians. “For the first time, the Kursk region was hit by western-made rocket launchers, probably American Himars,” Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, said late on Friday on Telegram. “As a result of the attack on the bridge over the Seym River in the Glushkovo district, it was completely destroyed, and volunteers who were assisting the evacuated civilian population were killed.” The account could not immediately be verified.
Italy’s ambassador to Moscow defended media “independence” on Friday after Russian authorities summoned her over an Italian television report in the embattled Kursk region, the foreign ministry said. Cecilia Piccioni faced a “strong protest” over the Italian broadcaster RAI’s reporting team, which “illegally entered Russia to cover the criminal terrorist attack by Ukrainian soldiers against the Kursk region”, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. Piccioni explained during the meeting that RAI, “and in particular the editorial teams, plan their activities in a totally free and independent way”, an Italian foreign ministry spokesman told Agence France-Presse.
Economic sanctions imposed by the West on Russia will remain in place for decades, even if there is a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, a senior Russian foreign ministry official said on Friday. Russia became the most sanctioned country by the west after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, surpassing Iran and North Korea. “This is a story for decades to come. Whatever the developments and results of a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, it is, in fact, only a pretext,” said Dmitry Birichevsky, head of the economic cooperation department at the foreign ministry.
Russia added at least nine more people linked to late opposition leader Alexei Navalny to its blacklist of “terrorists and extremists” on Friday, exactly six months after he died in prison. Among those listed were Navalny’s former spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh and the chair of his Anti-Corruption Foundation, Maria Pevchikh, according to the website of Russian financial monitoring service Rosfinmonitoring.
More than 200 vehicles that fell foul of London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) have been sent to Ukraine to aid the country’s war effort, despite initial legal concerns over the plan. Transport for London said on Friday that 330 vehicles had been given the green light to be sent to Ukraine under the Ulez vehicle scrappage scheme. More than 200 are already in the eastern European country.
Updated
