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.
Friday 18 August 2023 07:04, UK
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More than 160,000 Ukrainians came to the UK after the outbreak of war – and many have settled here.
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Schools in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine will receive a new textbook praising Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the UK’s defence ministry said.
In its daily update on the war, the MoD said the book will also describe Ukraine as “an ultra-terrorist state”.
Moscow is aiming to “erode Ukrainian national identity” and create a pro-Russian narrative in occupied territory, it said.
The MoD reported that Sergey Kiriyenko, first deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, visited schools in occupied Donetsk earlier this week to “check their integration into the Russian education system”.
Reports of a Ukrainian “drone attack” on Moscow overnight came hours after Russia’s defence ministry claimed a separate attempted assault on its Black Sea fleet.
The ministry said two Russian warships repelled a Ukrainian attack with an unmanned boat near Crimea last night.
Patrol ships “Pytlivy” and “Vasili Bykov” reportedly fired at the Ukrainian boat and destroyed it.
The commander of a Russian separatist group said Russia won’t be able to topple Ukraine’s military in the short-term and called for a freezing of the conflict.
Alexander Khodakovsky, who leads the “Vostok” battalion, said Russian forces “are unlikely to easily occupy additional Ukrainian cities”, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
He suggested Russia would need to come to a “truce” and that it would enter a phase of “neither peace nor war” with Ukraine.
But military analysts have long said a ceasefire along current frontlines would only serve to benefit Russia.
The ISW thinktank, which provides daily analysis of the conflict, said: “Khodakovsky suggested that Ukraine would be sufficiently weakened in this state of frozen conflict and that Russia would be able to exert more influence over Ukraine in such a situation than it currently can.”
His comments echoed those made earlier in the year by Wagner paramilitary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, and come after Ukrainian troops managed to liberate the village of Urozhaine in the eastern Donetsk region two days ago.
They suggest “recent Ukrainian advances may be significantly weakening confidence in the Russian defence along the wider front in southern Ukraine”, the ISW added.
Pictures have emerged from Moscow this morning after officials claimed Ukraine attempted a drone attack on the city in the early hours.
Investigators are working near a building which was damaged when the drone was reportedly shot down.
Police have also secured the scene near the “attack” site.
The British ministry of defence has signed three contracts worth over £90m to provide Ukraine with air defence equipment.
The biggest of the three is a £56m pound contract for uncrewed aerial systems, also called UAS equipment, with Norwegian defence company Kongsberg.
It will pay for vehicle-mounted counter-drone systems for Ukraine to use in order to detect, track, destroy and disrupt Russian UAS.
Uncrewed aerial systems are a broad category, covering electronic warfare, guiding artillery, and night operation equipment.
An example of the equipment the deals will provide is the CORTEX Typhon system, which can be operated by as few as two users. It can be quickly deployed and repositioned at a moment’s notice.
The other two deals are also for air defence, but the defence ministry hasn’t given any specific details.
The deals have been arranged as part of the International Fund for Ukraine (IFU), which has so far raised over £770m globally to spend on lethal and non-lethal military support for Ukraine.
Outgoing defence secretary Ben Wallace has said the IFU “highlights the unity and resolve of our allies to work together to provide Ukraine with cutting-edge equipment to meet its capability requirements.”
It’s day 541 of the war in Ukraine – welcome back to our live coverage with all the latest updates.
Russian officials claimed overnight that a Ukrainian drone damaged a building in Moscow after being shot down by air defences, briefly halting air traffic around the capital.
No casualties were reported.
Kyiv is yet to comment on the latest accusation that it has targeted Russian territory with drones.
Here’s a round-up of what’s happened over the past day:
A Ukrainian drone attack has hit a building in Moscow, causing a blast that was heard across the city’s business district, Russian officials have said.
A witness who was in the area told Reuters it was “a powerful explosion”.
According to Russian state media agency TASS, Moscow’s airspace has been closed as a result.
In a statement the Russian defence ministry said: “The UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), after being targeted by air defence weapons, changed its flight path and fell on a non-residential building in the Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment area of Moscow.”
Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin said on Telegram that “debris of the UAV fell down in the area of Expo centre,” he said referring to a large exhibition space in central Moscow, about 3 miles away from the Kremlin.
It “did not cause any significant damage to the building”, he added.
A video published by Russian media outlets showed thick smoke rising next to skyscrapers.
There has been no immediate comment from Kyiv.
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.”
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