Anti-Kremlin activist Ildar Dadin, who was once imprisoned in Russia for protesting against Vladimir Putin, was killed on the frontline while fighting on the Ukrainian side, his relatives and Russian media said Sunday. “It is with deep regret that I must inform you that Ildar Dadin – call sign Gandhi – died yesterday in combat in the Kharkiv region” in north-east Ukraine, said his friend and former Russian MP Ilya Ponomarev, who is living in exile. Dadin was the first Russian citizen to be convicted under a 2014 law clamping down on protests in the country.
A major oil depot was burning in the Crimean coastal city of Feodosia on Monday morning after a Ukrainian attack overnight in the territory illegally annexed by Russia.
The Ukrainian military said it struck the oil terminal. “The Feodosia terminal is the largest in Crimea in terms of transshipment of oil products, which were used, among other things, to meet the needs of the Russian occupation army,” Ukraine’s military said in a statement via the Telegram messaging app.
A state of “technical” emergency was introduced in Feodosia due to the fire, Russian-appointed officials said. The Baza Telegram news channel, which has sources among Russia’s security services, reported that several fuel tanks were on fire in Feodosia, which sits on the Black Sea coast.
The Dutch defence minister, Ruben Brekelmans, said on a surprise visit to Kyiv on Sunday that his country will invest €400m in advanced drone development with Ukraine and deliver more F-16s in the coming months. “Both surveillance drones, more defensive drones, but also the attack drones, because we see that Ukraine needs those more offensive drones also to target military facilities,” Brekelmans said. The Netherlands has pledged €10bn in military support for Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion and spent around €4bn so far.
After visiting Kharkiv, pummelled by Russian glide bombs, Brekelmans said attacking military targets in Russia was the only way to defend the city. The Netherlands has driven international partners to supply Ukraine with F-16 jets and pledged 24 of them. The first batch is already operating in Ukrainian airspace, according to the minister, while the others will be delivered “in the upcoming months and maybe beginning of next year”. The Netherlands has announced a plan to assemble a Patriot air-defence system for Ukraine. While Brekelmans said it had struggled to source some parts, Ukraine was already using one Dutch-supplied Patriot radar and “three launchers are going to be delivered very soon”.
Russian forces attacked Ukraine overnight with 87 Shahed drones and four different types of missiles, officials said on Sunday. A 49-year-old man was killed in the Kharkiv region after his car was hit by a drone, said the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov. A gas pipeline was damaged and a warehouse set alight in the city of Odesa, Ukrainian officials reported. Ukraine’s air force said air defences destroyed 56 of the 87 drones and two missiles over 14 Ukrainian regions, including the capital, Kyiv. Another 25 drones disappeared from radar “presumably as a result of anti-aircraft missile defence”.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Sunday that it had shot down four Ukrainian drones over its Kursk, Voronezh and Belgorod regions.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he will present his “victory plan” at the 12 October meeting of the Ramstein group of Ukraine’s allies against Russia. Ukraine’s president presented it to Joe Biden in Washington last week but the contents have not been made public. It is known that the plan includes Ukrainian membership in Nato and the provision of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia. Biden, the US president, is due to attend the 12 October summit.
