Sky News defence analyst Michael Clarke says Ukraine could meet Russia’s strongest defences yet in the coming days as the counteroffensive continues. Meanwhile, several people are dead after Russia’s security service thwarted what it says were Ukrainian “saboteurs”.
Wednesday 16 August 2023 23:04, UK
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Russia has claimed a Swedish factory in Ukraine that it bombed yesterday was a legitimate military target, according to reports.
Missiles killed three employees at civilian vehicle bearings maker SKF on Monday night, the company said.
Now an official from the Russian Embassy in Sweden has told European Pravda the plant was “part of the Ukrainian military industry” before appearing to make threats of further attacks.
“Not only the Swedish equipment supplied to the [Ukrainians] but also the enterprises of the military-industrial complex that work for them will be in trouble,” the news site reported the official as saying.
SKF has around 1,100 employees in Ukraine, the vast majority of which work in the Ltusk factory, according to the company’s website.
A 26-year-old man tried to pose as a 15-year-old boy in an attempt to escape Ukraine, according to local media.
The resident of the Western-most Zakarpattia region presented a boy’s birth certificate at a checkpoint – while carrying a passport of a bearded man, New Voice of Ukraine reported.
Since 24 February 2022, men aged 18 to 60 have been barred from leaving the country under martial law.
Border guards said the boy’s documentation did not belong to the man and he was denied exit from the country.
The Wagner Group has been registered as a Limited Liability Company engaged in “educational activities” in Belarus, according to reports.
The main activity of the group has been categorised as “other types of education” in the state register of legal entities, Ukrainska Pravda reported.
The address given is a field camp in Tsel where mercenaries arrived from Russia and where a company belonging to Yevgeny Prigozhin is registered.
Mr Prigozhin’s company is named Concord Management and Consulting, the news site said.
Wagner mercenaries relocated to Belarus following an abortive coup to topple Russia’s military elite in June.
The level of presence they maintain in the country – and whether it will continue – has been the subject of conflicting reports.
It remains unclear whether the paramilitary group intends to stay in Belarus, return to Russia, or has been fragmented between the two countries and the African continent.
Urozhaine may not sound like a particularly important village. It was once home to about a thousand people, in a very rural area along a relatively minor river, the Mokri Yaly.
But it holds big strategic and symbolic importance. That’s why Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a tense back-and-forth for control in recent days.
Ukraine finally claimed control of it this morning. Remarkably, it’s the first settlement Ukraine has recaptured since 27 July.
The Ukrainian armed forces have released this video showing that intense battle to retake the village, and the tough measures they’ve had to take.
The man who temporarily led Russia’s armed forces in Ukraine has died after a long illness, according to a Russian official.
Colonel General Gennady Zhidko took charge of Russia’s “special military operation” in late May 2022, when Russia’s offensive had already started stagnating.
But his brief tenure was unsettled. Achieving few successes in his early weeks, he was then demoted to leading a military district the following month, according to the Washington Post.
His removal from operations in Ukraine was publicly announced last October, with no reason given.
He had previously been in charge of Russia’s operations in Syria, for which he was awarded the prestigious ‘Hero of Russia’ title in 2017.
His warfare tactics, which led to significant civilian deaths, led to him being dubbed “The Syrian Butcher” by observers.
Announcing Mr Zhidko’s death on Telegram, the governor of the Khabarovsk region, Mikhail Degtyarev described him as a “simple soldier, and very demanding in service.”
The White House has criticised Russia’s repeated attacks on grain storage facilities and infrastructure around the Black Sea, saying it’s a sign that “President Putin does not seem to care about global food security”.
A spokesperson for the US state department called on Moscow to immediately return to the UN-brokered grain deal.
Tomorrow marks one month since Moscow unilaterally quit the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which is estimated to have facilitated about 30 million tonnes of grain exports from Ukraine in the past 18 months.
Russia has intensely shelled Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, particularly around Odesa, ever since. The latest attack took place last night.
The most damaging attack last month destroyed around 60,000 tonnes of grain, supposedly destined for China, Israel and African nations, in one go.
President Putin pledged to send 50,000 tonnes of Russian grain to six African countries, for free, days later.
The state department’s comments come the day after the Wall Street Journal reported that the US is considering various options to ensure Ukraine can export grain, including a “military solution”.
Citing Washington officials, the newspaper says the US is holding talks with Turkey and other Ukrainian neighbours over how to safely get grain shipped out via the Danube and to nearby Romanian ports.
Ukraine has managed several successful attacks on Russian ships and infrastructure over recent months.
But there’s been an interesting shift in Kyiv’s approach to the aftermath. They cautiously denied responsibility in the initial attacks, but have recently grown much more confident in saying they were behind them.
Earlier this morning, Ukraine even released a video of the so-called ‘Sea Baby’ – the drone used to blow up the Kerch Bridge last month.
Our defence analyst Professor Michael Clarke explains why Ukraine is suddenly changing tack.
Back at 8.11am we told you about the latest Russian attack on a Ukrainian grain storage facility near Odesa.
The governor of the Odesa region on the Black Sea says the region was hit “twice last night with attack drones”, with no casualties reported.
“The main target is port and grain infrastructure in the south of the region,” Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.
The Danube ports have been a target for Russian missiles, because of their importance to Ukraine’s transport of grain.
The regional authorities have now released these pictures from inside the warehouse, showing the extent of the damage.
It’s not every day that a rural meeting involving Russia’s ruling political party gets national attention – but that’s what has happened today.
With local elections due in the Smolensk region early next year, President Putin’s party United Russia has controversially nominated a man who happens to have the surname Zelenskyy.
Alexandr Zelenskyy was picked because he already sits on the local city council.
By coincidence, President Zelenskyy’s own father is called Oleksandr.
The coincidence was too uncomfortable for one voter, who is reported by state media as demanding the candidate change his surname or be removed from the nominations list.
The angry voter is said to have shouted that the coincidence is “insulting to the participants of the special military operation [what Russians continue to call the war] and patriots”.
The United Russia party’s regional branch dismissed the complaint, saying a surname is not grounds for withdrawing from an election.
“A man is not responsible for his namesakes,” an official said.
Much of our sense of the scale of damage in Ukraine is based on statistics: the number of dead, injuries caused, buildings destroyed, missiles launched.
But we should also pay attention to the environmental damage and its unpredictable consequences – that’s according to Andriy Yermak, who leads President Zelenskyy’s office.
In a Guardian opinion piece co-written by former Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallstrom, Mr Yermak accuses Russia of deliberately targeting Ukraine’s environment.
“Many of Ukraine’s natural reserves – its animal and sea life, water and impressive biodiversity – have been terribly damaged or polluted,” they write.
“Toxins leak from its damaged industries and infrastructure. Global food security is at risk.
“The world cannot afford to ignore this growing environmental threat.”
Mr Yermak and Ms Wallstrom point to the blowing up of the Nova Kakhovka dam in June as a key example, saying it unleashed a flood that has ruined dozens of towns and spilled tonnes of oil across one of the world’s most valuable agricultural regions.
“Today, we worry that an environmental disaster of even greater magnitude is looming at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” they add.
“Playing with explosives at a nuclear power plant risks environmental doom – for Ukraine and for all of Europe. Nuclear contamination does not stop at borders.”
The authors saying that while much of what Russia has done in Ukraine is rightly being investigated as war crimes, some of those crimes qualify as “ecocide” under Ukrainian and Russian law.
Ukrainian law describes ecocide as “the mass destruction of flora and fauna, poisoning of air or water resources, and any other actions that may cause environmental disaster”.
“Russia will face justice,” Mr Yermak writes. “But urgent action is needed now. Measures to prevent further environmental catastrophe or mitigate damage should be prioritised – even during war.”
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