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.
Ukraine breaks Russian stronghold’s first line of defence
Ukrainian forces have decisively breached Russia’s first defensive line near Zaporizhzhia after weeks of painstaking mine clearance, and expect faster gains as they press the weaker second line, the general leading the southern counteroffensive said this week.
The news might give rise to hopes that, after three months of counteroffensive slog, it will be possible for Kyiv’s forces to make faster progress in expelling the Russian invaders, Dan Sabbagh reported.
Meanwhile a Russian strike hit a crowded market in the Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka, killing at least 17 people, as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was in Kyiv for an unannounced visit, his first for a year to the Ukrainian capital. Shaun Walker and Dan Sabbagh reported.
While Blinken was in Kyiv, the US announced a new package of military assistance, which included depleted uranium shells for the US M1 Abrams tanks that are due to be delivered by the end of this year. The armour-piercing rounds were developed by the US during the cold war to destroy Soviet tanks, including the same T-72 tanks that Ukraine faces in its counteroffensive. Here is an explainer on what they are and what risks they pose.
Russia seeks help from North Korea
After years of backing UN sanctions targeting North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, Russia is now reaching out to its neighbour for help. The war in Ukraine has forced the Kremlin to reassess its relationship with Pyongyang as it seeks to secure weapons to replace its own depleted stocks, writes Justin McCurry.
A possible meeting between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un later this month in the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok would add geopolitical substance to the symbolic meeting of minds that has unfolded between the leaders of the pariah states over 18 months of fighting in Ukraine.
With Russia quickly using up its munitions, Putin is expected to build on recent high-level diplomatic exchanges, including a visit to the North by his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, to secure North Korean artillery shells and antitank missiles.
British Challenger 2 tank destroyed in combat for first time
A battlefield video circulating on social media overnight showed the destruction of a British Challenger 2 from a mine and Russian drone in Ukraine, which would be the first time one of the tanks has been destroyed in combat, Dan Sabbagh reported.
At the beginning of the clip, filmed from a car involved in the fighting, the Challenger 2 with its distinctive gun barrel is seen shrouded in thick, grey smoke after the battlefield incident.
Western sources indicated on Tuesday night that the tank first struck a Russian mine on Monday, which blew a rear fuel compartment, causing it to be immobilised. The crew then evacuated safely, but as it lay dormant it was then hit by a Lancet drone.
There was no confirmation of the location but it is likely to have been on the southern Zaporizhzhia front, where the brigade of which the tanks are a part has been reported to be fighting.
Image appears to show Russian general Sergei Surovikin for first time since Wagner mutiny
A photo has emerged that appears to show Russian general Sergei Surovikin, who is regarded as an ally of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner and has not been seen in public since the militia’s brief rebellion in June.
“General Sergei Surovikin is out. Alive, healthy, at home, with his family, in Moscow. Photo taken today,” Ksenia Sobchak, a Russian journalist and the daughter of Vladimir Putin’s one-time boss, said on Telegram.
The photo, which has not been verified, showed a man in sunglasses and a cap walking alongside a woman resembling Surovikin’s wife, Anna.
Rustem Umerov: who is Ukraine’s next defence minister?
Rustem Umerov, who is poised to become Ukraine’s new defence minister, is a leading member of the Crimean Tatar community who has represented his country in sensitive negotiations with Russia.
In a video address on Sunday night, Volodymyr Zelenskiy named Umerov as the successor to Oleksii Reznikov, who is stepping down after 22 months in the job.
Umerov was born in Soviet Uzbekistan, the country his family had been exiled to under Stalin, and moved back to Crimea in Ukraine as a child when the Tatars were allowed to return in the 1980s and 1990s. Luke Harding wrote this profile.
Kremlin’s propaganda film about Ukraine war plays to empty cinemas
Alexei wasn’t sure if he had entered the right cinema auditorium as he put down the popcorn and plunged into his chair. The room was dark and quiet, with only three other audience members scattered across the large Moscow theatre that could fit more than 100 people.
It was a Friday evening and Alexei had come to see The Witness, Russia’s first feature-length film about its invasion of Ukraine that premiered across the country on 17 August.
The Witness centres on a fictional character called Daniel Cohen, an esteemed Belgian violinist who arrives in Kyiv to perform in February 2022, days before Russian troops entered Ukraine.
As Russia launches its war, Cohen gets caught up in the fighting, witnessing a series of “inhuman crimes and bloody provocations by Ukrainian nationalists”, according to the movie’s premise.
At one point, a Ukrainian commander is seen walking around with a copy of Mein Kampf, while other Ukrainian soldiers pledge their allegiance to Adolf Hitler. As a witness to these unspeakable horrors, Cohen sets out to tell the world the “truth” about the conflict. Pjotr Sauer wrote about the film.
‘The world needs tools’
“We pay salaries and we pay taxes, and it is important we should carry on,” says Serhii Ivin, an artisan toolmaker in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
After the Russians invaded in February 2022, Ivin joined up full-time as part of a Ukrainian army scouting unit. But three months into the war, he decided to reopen the forge, leaving his foreman in charge of the day-to-day running of the business, which makes hand-forged axes, carving knives and other woodworking tools.
“Someday the war will end,” he told Jamie Wilson and Nick Hopkins during a brief spell of leave from the frontline. “We want to save this place and this business and we want to save the team, because people want to eat, they want to have a future. And the rest of the world needs tools.”
