Russia says it has succeeded with an offensive in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. State news agency RIA cited the ministry as saying that Ukraine had lost four Stryker armoured vehicles. It is the first time Russia has claimed to hit the US-supplied vehicles.
Thursday 17 August 2023 22:33, UK
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
More than 160,000 Ukrainians came to the UK after the outbreak of war – and many have settled here.
If you’re one of them, we want to hear from you about your experiences here in the UK, how you’ve been welcomed, your plans for the future as war rages on in your homeland and your view of the conflict.
You can get in touch via WhatsApp here – and we may feature you in this blog.
By sending us your video footage, photographs or audio you agree we can publish, broadcast and edit the material.
Vladimir Putin has suggested expanding Russia’s high-speed rail network, to boost cooperation between Russia, its key ally Belarus, and its occupied territory.
Speaking at a launch event for new commuter railway systems in Moscow on Thursday, he said he was considering new lines to link the Russian capital with Minsk and the occupied cities of Luhansk and Donetsk.
“It will be necessary to think about how to connect both Luhansk and Donetsk,” he was heard saying.
“It seems to me that this issue [the launch of high-speed line] should be worked out with the government of Belarus. I will talk with the president.”
“The Minsk direction would be in great demand both by our residents and the residents of Belarus,” he added.
The introduction of a new line would be a major innovation to Russian railways.
Only three high-speed lines were in operation by the start of the war: one connecting Moscow and St Petersburg, another linking St Petersburg with the Finnish capital Helsinki, and a third connecting Moscow with the city of Nizhny Novgorod.
The ups and downs of Anna Netrebko’s recent soprano career have posed some of the biggest geopolitical challenges to the opera world in years.
The top Russian soprano openly backed Vladimir Putin before the war, but has notably – and controversially – refused to condemn the invasion despite widespread pressure.
The controversy has forced the Czech government to cancel her scheduled performance in Prague in October, over “political pressures”.
The government’s coalition partners have said they “unequivocally” opposed the concert, calling it “insensitive”. The Czech Republic has been a firm supporter of Ukraine since the start of the war.
Organisers confirmed Ms Netrebko will not demand compensation for the cancellation.
But Ms Netrebko didn’t go as quietly with her former employer, New York City’s Metropolitan Opera.
She was dropped weeks after the start of the war because of her vague stance on it.
The Met was ordered to pay nearly £200,000 in compensation for the lost performances, and Ms Netrebko is now suing the opera house and its manager for damages.
It’s hard to know exactly how many children have fled Ukraine since the start of the war. The UN estimated more than two million had fled the country in the first five weeks of war.
Many of those who were lucky enough to escape have experienced unimaginable horrors, and seen the brutality of war with their own eyes. For some, their way of dealing with it was by keeping diaries.
And now, some of those diaries are being displayed at a new exhibition at Amsterdam’s City Hall.
It was the brainchild of Khrystyna Khranovska, who says it’s about describing the pain of war through the eyes of children.
She adds: “It strikes into the very heart of every adult to be aware of the suffering and grief that the Russian war has brought our children.”
These drawings below are by 15-year-old Mykola, who spent 21 days under siege in Mariupol.
Many of his pictures are in blue ballpoint pen on pieces of paper torn out of notebooks – that’s all he had in the tiny basement sheltering him and his family.
“I put my soul into all of these pictures because this is what I lived through in Mariupol,” he says. “What I saw, what I heard. So this is my experience and this is my story.”
Oleksandra Antonenko was just 12 when she drew this in her own diary.
The exhibition houses objects too, including the burnt mobile phone and military ID tag of Illich Rumiantseva. The objects were provided by his daughter, Ivanna.
Organisers say the location was deliberate – it’s the city where Anne Frank wrote her diaries while hiding from Nazi occupation with her family.
Its main curator, Katya Taylor, said “the story of Anne Frank are repeating in a way, that there are also kids who are writing the diaries as she did and we hope that they will never repeat her destiny”.
“It is horrible that after almost 80 years after the Second World War, after all the conversations, all that organisations that been created, all of the statements, there are no safe future for children in Europe and this is horrible.”
The most recent UN data suggests at least 8.25 million have fled Ukraine since the start of the war. That’s about a fifth of the pre-war population.
The International Organisation of Migration said last month that just over half of them have since returned. And a new UN study suggests the majority of those still outside Ukraine want to return as well.
The survey found 76% of Ukrainian refugees living abroad intend to return. It’s a slightly higher percentage – 82% – for internally displaced Ukrainians.
But perhaps most surprisingly for a war that shows little sign of ending soon, 15% of those surveyed said they intend to return within the next three months.
Explaining the figures to a podcast, the deputy head of the UN Refugee Agency in Ukraine, Karen Whiting, said it shows that while there’s a clear desire for Ukrainians to return home, those who want to integrate in their host countries find more opportunities.
“We see that the local authorities in a number of western and central regions are making efforts to get internally displaced persons to the services of social security offices, as well as to schools and the labour market,” Ms Whiting said.
One of the great unknowns of the war this summer has been what Wagner is getting up to in Belarus.
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary group has been based there for the best part of two months, alarming Belarus’s NATO-member neighbours – Poland, Latvia and Lithuania – that they might be planning an attack.
The US and UN have both said there’s little evidence to suggest that is the case.
But what if Wagner did invade Poland?
Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of US armed forces in Europe, suspects they wouldn’t last long.
“The Wagner contingent in Belarus would be crushed by Polish forces if they actually tried to cross the border,” he told Newsweek.
“And if the Wagner forces do ever find themselves in any sort of engagement with NATO troops, Russia would try to disassociate themselves from whatever happened.”
Mr Hodges was speaking after a week in which Poland has made clearer than ever the scale of its military operation.
Fuelled by a surge in attempted illegal migration and concerns over Wagner’s presence at a training camp in Brest, Belarus’s sixth-largest city and just across the Polish border, Poland has sent thousands of troops to its 250-mile eastern border with Belarus.
And earlier this week, Warsaw showcased its latest equipment in the country’s largest military parade since the Cold War.
Poland has invested huge amounts in defence this year, with a budget more than 60% higher than last year. Military spending will be around 4% of GDP this year – double the NATO commitment and the highest of any NATO member.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank has also noted that Wagner troops in Belarus are just a fraction of the number that tried to invade Ukraine.
“The Russian army failed to take Kyiv with 30,000 troops in 2022,” explained the ISW’s George Barros.
“Four thousand largely isolated Wagner personnel do not pose a serious threat to anyone in the immediate neighbourhood of Belarus, whether that be to Poland, Lithuania, or Ukraine.”
He added: “There’s no evidence that they have field artillery, or infantry fighting vehicles, or main battle tanks, or any of the other equipment they would need in order to mount a serious offensive against the military of a neighbouring nation state.”
Vladimir Putin’s strongest ally has insisted he is not being drawn into the Ukraine war by the Kremlin.
Speaking in an interview with a pro-Russia Ukrainian journalist, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko claimed Moscow has already achieved its goals in Ukraine.
“Ukraine will never behave so aggressively towards Russia after the end of this war, as it did before the war,” he said.
“If you Ukrainians do not cross our border, we will never participate in this war. In this hot war. But we will always help Russia – they are our allies.”
He then said, somewhat contradictorily: “To involve Belarus… what will that give? Nothing.”
President Lukashenko added that Ukraine and Russia should sit at the negotiating table and be ready to discuss all the issues, including the future of Crimea and other Ukrainian territories that Moscow claims.
International observers have said Belarus is essentially a Russian satellite state since the start of the war, concerns backed up by Putin’s recent claim that an attack against Belarus is an attack against Russia.
Mr Lukashenko voiced similar views in today’s online interview, warning Belarus would respond to any external aggression – including through Russia’s nuclear weapons.
“There can be only one threat – aggression against our country. If aggression against our country starts from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, we will respond instantly with everything we have,” he said.
For some in Ukraine and the West, the main hope for ending the war is getting Putin out of the Kremlin, and replacing him with someone less ultranationalist.
There’s no way of knowing when that might happen, but so-called Kremlinologists (aka observers following the twists and turns of Russian politics) say Putin and the justification for autocratic rule of a single man has been weakened by the war.
Duncan Allan from Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia programme has previously suggested it’s possible that “the initial phase of a post-Putin presidency would resemble a collective leadership, of which there have been several examples during the last 100 years.”
But are we kidding ourselves to think the end of Putin will be the end of staunch Russian nationalism?
Foreign relations and war researchers Jade McGlynn and Kirill Shamiev think so. In an article for Foreign Affairs, they write that trends in Russian history suggest the country will shift to an even more pronounced form of nationalism.
“What Russians are likely to crave after Putin, however, is a leader who shares their anti-elitism and promises to salve their wounded pride,” they write.
They point out there is a strong theme in Russian politics: what they call ethnonationalism. It’s the idea that all of Russia’s problems are caused by Muslims, Central Asian migrants, and corrupt elites. Ethnic Russians are absolved of blame.
“Russian ethnonationalists promise to make Russia great again,” they say.
“They argue that the state should start serving the needs of ethnic Russians. It is easy to imagine their appeal growing in the embers of Russian imperialism.”
Exploring how Russia has become more diverse over the past century, in part because Putin encouraged large-scale immigration from central Asia, McGlynn and Shamiev say ultranationalism has been allowed to foster.
They add that Putin has headed off the nationalist threat through a mix of repression and crackdowns that have weakened opposition, as well as by using the war in Ukraine as a dumping ground for troublemakers.
“Popular elation over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine stole the nationalists’ thunder,” they argue.
“Putin is often portrayed as a nationalist […] but he is better understood as a statist, a leader who subordinates the needs of the people to those of the state. In his view, the needs of the state are primarily imperial.
“Putin has invoked this vision of Russia to justify wars of aggression abroad and quell dissent at home.”
In other words, Vladimir Putin is using foreign wars as a distraction.
But the war in Ukraine isn’t as effective a rallying cry as it used to be, McGlynn and Shamiev argue.
Battlefield setbacks, many thousands of Russian deaths, and a growing reliance on regional leaders and mercenaries like Wagner have allowed ultranationalism to flourish.
The rebellion by Yevgeny Prigozhin demonstrates the power of emerging nationalism strains, they say. Prigozhin has long portrayed himself as a straight-talker, telling Russians the truth that the war is being fought incompetently.
“It is a powerful narrative: Russia is still great and its soldiers are heroes, but they have been betrayed and misled by treacherous elites and corrupt generals. Such framings console the many thousands of Russians who have lost loved ones in Ukraine and feel disoriented by the war but still belong, and want to belong, to the imagined national community of Russia.
“These narratives are particularly popular among ethnonationalists, who are trying to explain the war’s failures without blaming the Russian people.”
One of McGlynn and Shamiev’s final arguments is the lack of Russia’s national symbols. The flag has become intrinsically linked to Putin. The language remains in use across much of the former Soviet Union. The traditions are largely forgotten. The history is too dominated by wars, dictators and imperialism. All of that has left Russia with a fluid sense of national identity.
After Putin, “it will be entirely up to Russians to reinvent Russian nationalism,” they write.
“They will need to accept that much divides them while focusing on what unites them. They will need to stop sniping at one another and instead consider themselves compatriots engaged in a joint effort to change, and thus save, the country they love.”
There will eventually be an end to the war in Ukraine and to Vladimir Putin’s rule. No-one knows which will happen first, but the power vacuum that follows could throw Russia, and the rest of the world, into deep uncertainty.
Russia has ramped up its attacks on the northeastern Kharkiv region over the past week, and regional officials have been painting a picture of the latest damage.
Writing on Telegram, regional administrative chief Oleg Sinegubov describes the destruction of homes in villages across the region, with shelling starting a forest fire near the village of Velika Rohan.
He added that a 55-year-old man was killed in the city of Kupyansk, when his house was damaged in a shelling attack.
Officials are acknowledging that Russia is making a renewed push onto the region. The head of Ukraine’s land forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said yesterday that Ukrainians are seeing “complications” around Kupyansk.
“The enemy is trying to break through the defense of our troops with assault units, staffed mainly by prisoners, every day, in different directions, with the aim of blocking and then capturing Kupiansk,” Mr Syrskyi said in a Telegram yesterday.
By military analyst, Sean Bell
President Zelenskyy has kept the Ukraine war near the top of the international news agenda – vital if he is to retain the invaluable support of western allies.
By continuing to focus on requests for specific military capability, such as tanks and long-range missiles, he has been remarkably effective at moving the international community from a collective “no” to a hesitant “yes, but….”
But while the West has finally agreed to provide fighter-pilot training for Ukrainian pilots, it has yet to agree if or when fighter jets – and indeed the various missile/radar/weapons options – might be considered.
Notwithstanding the impact that air power could have on Ukraine’s prospects in the war, it appears increasingly likely that the offer of western support to build a credible Ukrainian air power capability is focused on the post-conflict period.
In the near-term, President Zelenskyy will be concerned at the lack of progress with the so-called spring offensive. Despite a number of tactical victories for Ukrainian forces, success will not be measured by rounds fired or casualties imposed, but in territory gained.
Failure to achieve some form of momentum will erode western confidence in Ukraine’s ability to achieve its stated objective of liberating all occupied territories, and could increase pressure on its president to pursue some form of negotiated peace settlement.
The stakes could not be higher for Ukraine.
Realistically, giving Ukraine F-16s would not prove decisive. They are only one element of a comprehensive suite of capabilities required to develop a credible air power capability.
If the West were to impose a No Fly Zone (NFZ) over Ukraine, that could swing the balance of the war in Kyiv’s favour.
But – and it’s a big but – the West has so far been reluctant to commit combatants to the conflict for fear of escalation, and imposing a NFZ would definitely risk a significant escalation.
Never say never, though. The longer that Ukraine is embroiled in a battle of attrition with Russia, the greater the risk that Ukraine erodes its combat capability and increases its vulnerability to a renewed Russian offensive.
With limited additional western weapons available to support Ukraine, the crucial question is what other measures could the West consider to make sure Ukraine survives?
Four Russian nationals accused of being involved in the poisoning of top Putin critic Alexei Navalny in 2020 have been sanctioned by the United States.
The US treasury department said the four sanctioned are all linked to Russia’s FSB security service. Two of them are among the main reported perpetrators of the poisoning.
Mr Navalny was taken ill on an internal Russian flight in August 2020, and was admitted to hospital in Berlin in a critical condition. He was poisoned using a Novichok nerve agent, the same used in the 2018 Salisbury poisonings.
Describing the poisoning as an assassination attempt, a US treasury spokesperson said it represents “the Kremlin’s contempt for human rights, and we will continue to use the authorities at our disposal to hold the Kremlin’s willing would-be executioners to account”.
They added: “Today we remind Vladimir Putin and his regime that there are consequences not only for waging a brutal and unprovoked war against Ukraine, but also for violating the human rights of the Russian people.”
Mr Navalny is currently in a penal colony on extremism charges that most international observers dismiss as politically motivated. His term was extended by a further 19 years earlier this month.
Russia’s Washington embassy has not commented so far.
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free
