Closing summary
This blog is now closing. Below is a roundup of today’s stories:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Friday the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is responsible for mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death.
The UK government announced British military and security services will monitor the Black Sea in a bid to deter Russia from striking cargo ships that are transporting grain from Ukraine to developing countries.
The first 10 Leopard 1 tanks donated by Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands have arrived in Ukraine and more are on their way, Denmark’s armed forces said on Friday.
A Russian airstrike killed three civilians and injured four other people in a village in Kherson on Friday, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.
A Russian missile slammed into a police building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Friday, killing a policeman and injuring many more people, Klymenko said.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry condemned “sham elections” being staged by Russia in occupied Ukrainian territories on Friday, saying they were “worthless” and would have no legal standing. Russia is holding regional elections, including in four Ukrainian regions that it does not fully control – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, also described the voting in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine as “sham elections” and said they were “illegitimate”.
Officials said air defences shot down 16 of the 20 drones fired by Russia overnight – the southern military command said 14 drones had been brought down over Odesa region and two more over the southern region of Mykolaiv.
Russia “must stop” its blockade of Ukrainian seaports after pulling out of a UN and Turkey-mediated deal to ensure grain shipments, the president of the European Council Charles Michel said on Friday.
Ukraine’s former defence minister has warned his western counterparts that negotiations with Moscow will not bring peace, and that Vladimir Putin remains determined to destroy Ukraine entirely and to “assimilate” its citizens into the Russian Federation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that his country’s allies had eased up on sanctions imposed on Russia and called for a renewed drive to impose further punitive measures on Moscow, Reuters reports.
“At this time, we see too long a pause by our partners in terms of sanctions,” he said in his nightly video address. “And very active Russian attempts to evade sanctions.”
Russia on Friday summoned the Armenian ambassador for a “harsh” protest about a list of what it termed “unfriendly steps”, the latest sign of strain between Moscow and the small ex-Soviet republic in a region Russia considers its back yard, Reuters reports.
In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry listed these as Yerevan’s decisions to sign up to the international criminal court and to host a military exercise with the United States, as well as a visit to Ukraine by the Armenian prime minister’s wife to deliver humanitarian aid.
The ministry said a “harsh representation” had been made to the ambassador, Vagharshak Harutyunyan, also complaining of “offensive statements” allegedly made by Alen Simonyan, chair of the Armenian National Assembly, about ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
Armenia, which hosts a Russian military base and relies almost entirely on Russia for its defence supplies, has complained bitterly in recent months that Russian peacekeepers have failed to end an Azerbaijani blockade of supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan.
Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies on Friday froze more than $80m in assets belonging to tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky for 48 hours as part of an embezzlement investigation, Reuters reports citing Ukrainian media outlets.
Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s richest men and a so-called oligarch, was ordered into custody on suspicion of money laundering last week, and, according to media reports, is being treated as a suspect in an embezzlement case.
A lawyer for Kolomoisky did not immediately respond to written requests for comment about asset seizures. The tycoon’s lawyers have not commented on the embezzlement case. Kolomoisky has denied wrongdoing in the past.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) said it had frozen more than 3 billion hryvnia in assets in addition to nearly 1,000 properties and more than 1,600 vehicles and vessels from the former owner of lender PrivatBank.
The NABU statement did not name Kolomoisky.
Kolomoisky is a former owner of PrivatBank, which was nationalised in late 2016 as part of a clean-up of the Ukrainian banking system.
He is among the tycoons who built their fortunes in the ashes of the Soviet Union and amassed political power in Ukraine’s fragile post-Soviet democracy.
The moves against him come as Kyiv is trying to signal progress during a wartime crackdown on corruption that is important to its hopes of joining the EU.
Ukrainian officials have also said that “de-oligarchisation” is an important step to building a stronger state after the war with Russia.
The Council of the EU on Friday announced additional sanctions on six people for serious human rights violations in connection with their action towards members of ethnic groups in Crimea, Reuters reports.
The individuals listed include prosecutors and judges active in courts established by Russia’s occupying force in Crimea who played a role in handing a prison term to a journalist who belongs to the Crimean Tatar community.
Friday’s listings also include two members of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) who either took part in torturing the journalist or participated in the investigation against him and members of the Crimean Tatar community and of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Crimea.
Updated
Reuters reports that Ukraine opposes the idea of easing sanctions on Russia in order to revive a grain deal between the two countries, foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said on Friday.
“Easing part of the sanctions regime against Russia in exchange for the resumption of the grain agreement would be a victory for Russian food blackmail and an invitation to Moscow for new waves of blackmail,” he wrote on Facebook.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been speaking at the Yalta European Strategy Forum in Kyiv, an annual event hosted by the Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. The two-day conference gathers Ukrainian politicians together with international policymakers and is naturally focused this year on the war effort. This year’s attendees include the former British prime minister Boris Johnson, whom Zelenskiy singled out for thanks for his support during the early stages of the war.
Zelenskiy said Russian president Vladimir Putin would attempt to use the threat of nuclear weapons to scare the West:
“Putin is left with just one step: instil fear in the west with his nuclear weapons … There will be moments when they are moving their nuclear weapons from one place to another to exert pressure on the United States,” he said.
Pressed on the slow speed of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Zelenskiy said:
“People tend to want everything immediately, and understandably so, but this is not a feature movie when everything can happen in an hour and a half.
”Some partners ask what’s up with the counteroffensive, what are the next steps. My current answer is ‘Our steps are faster than your sanction packages’”.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Friday Ukraine was finding it harder and slower to secure sanctions on Russia and weapon supplies to help fend off Moscow’s forces.
Speaking at a conference in Kyiv, he said Ukraine’s three-month-old counteroffensive would make faster gains in the south and east if the capital’s military received more powerful weapons, Reuters reports.
In comments from the conference that were posted on his website, Zelenskiy said:
The war is slowing down. This is true, we recognise this. All the processes are becoming harder and slowing down: from sanctions to the delivery of weapons.
The Kremlin says all possible causes of the plane crash that killed mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin will be investigated, including the possibility of foul play and called the suggestion that Putin ordered the deaths of Prigozhin and his men an “absolute lie”.
Prigozhin this summer led a brief mutiny in Russia that posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s rule since he rose to power in 1999. It prompted the Kremlin chief to accuse its authors of “treason” and a “stab in the back”, according to Reuters.
Killing of Prigozhin speaks to Putin's rationality and weakness, says Zelenskiy
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Friday the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is responsible for mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death.
Prigozhin died in a plane crash with his top lieutenants last month. Zelenskiy, who provided no evidence to back up his assertion, made the comment in passing at a conference in Kyiv as he was asked a question about Putin, Reuters reports.
He said:
The fact that he [Putin] killed Prigozhin – at least that’s the information we all have, not any other kind – that also speaks to his rationality, and about the fact that he is weak.
Updated
Ukraine’s defence ministry said Russians “systematically terrorise” innocent citizens in villages, towns and cities across Ukraine.
On Twitter, the ministry cited the attack in the village of Odradokamyanka in the Kherson region.
It added:
Yesterday, as a result of artillery shelling and a drone strike, three local residents were injured.
Today, a russian guided aerial bomb killed three villagers. Four people were injured. The small town of Orihiv in Zaporizhzhia region has been shelled several times a day for the past year and a half.
Today, the bodies of two local residents were found during the clearing of the rubble of a residential building. A woman was killed by a russian projectile in the village of Primorske, Zaporizhzhia region.
russians systematically terrorize the civilian population not only in large cities, but also in the villages and towns of Ukraine. In the last two days, they attacked the village of Odradokamyanka in Kherson region three times. Yesterday, as a result of artillery shelling and a… pic.twitter.com/r9yaai5ON7
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 8, 2023
These claims have not been independently verified.
The UK’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said on Friday that it was not his place to tell India what position it should take on Russia’s war in Ukraine, in an interview to news agency ANI.
When asked about India’s stance, he said:
It’s not for me to tell India what positions to take on international issues, but I know India rightly cares about the international rule of law, the UN Charter and respect for territorial integrity.
India has avoided blaming Moscow for the war and has called for a solution through dialogue and diplomacy.
The Financial Times reported on Friday that Sunak – who has arrived in New Delhi for the G20 summit – would urge his Indian counterpart to “call out” Russia on the war.
First Leopard 1 tanks have arrived in Ukraine, Denmark's armed forces say
The first 10 Leopard 1 tanks donated by Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands have arrived in Ukraine and more are on their way, Denmark’s armed forces said on Friday.
The three countries announced in February that they would donate 100 of the German-made tanks in the “coming months”.
“The first 10 tanks have been sent to Ukraine. And more are on the way,” the Danish armed forces said in a statement.
“A further 10 tanks have been delivered from the factory.”
Danish troops in Germany are training Ukrainian forces to use the vehicles, the army added, according to AFP.
“I have no doubt that it will help them win the defence battle they are fighting right now,” army commander Gunner Arpe Nielsen said in the statement.
The Leopard 1 used to be the main battle tank of West Germany’s armed forces, first being used in 1965, but it has since been replaced by the Leopard 2 model.
Georgia’s failure to integrate into the EU would play into Russia’s hands, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday.
The EU recognised Georgia’s “European perspective” last year but deferred its membership application, saying Tbilisi needed to make changes first.
On a visit to Georgia, Borrell was quoted by AFP as saying: “No doubt, Georgia belongs to the European family”.
But he stressed Tbilisi has so far only fulfilled three out of 12 requirements the EU has put forward as a precondition for granting formal candidacy status to the country.
“Russia will be very happy if we don’t succeed” to integrate Georgia to the EU, Borrell told a news conference alongside Georgia’s prime minister, Irakli Garibashvili, adding that “the EU will not abandon Georgia”.
Georgian authorities have faced mounting international criticism over a perceived backsliding on democracy and engaging with the Kremlin, seriously damaging Tbilisi’s ties with Brussels.
Updated
Two women and a 46-year-old man were killed in the Ukrainian village of Odradakamianka in the southern region of Kherson, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said (see earlier post at 10.17 for more details on the reported Russian airstrike).
Updated
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have signed a petition demanding that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, restore public access to officials’ online declarations of assets, stressing the need for transparency in wartime.
AFP reports:
The outcry comes on the heels of several corruption scandals that have led to the arrest or dismissal of public figures.
“At this time, hiding government declarations from Ukrainians means covering up total corruption in the country,” the petition on the Ukrainian presidency’s website says.
Published on Wednesday, the petition has already gathered more than 83,000 votes – passing the 25,000 threshold for consideration by the president.
The petition pushes for the president to veto a draft law passed by parliament in a second reading this week, which would restore mandatory electronic asset declaration for officials – but keep them out of the public eye for another year.
“Citizens and journalists were deprived of a tool for monitoring the actions of officials and the main safeguard against corruption,” the petition says.
The Russian missile attack on Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine killed one policeman and injured at least 52 others, emergency officials said, according to the Associated Press (see post at 09.25).
Summary of the day so far...
The UK government announced British military and security services will monitor the Black Sea in a bid to deter Russia from striking cargo ships that are transporting grain from Ukraine to developing countries.
A Russian airstrike killed three civilians and injured four other people in a village in Kherson on Friday, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.
A Russian missile slammed into a police building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Friday, killing a policeman and injuring many more people, Klymenko said.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry condemned “sham elections” being staged by Russia in occupied Ukrainian territories on Friday, saying they were “worthless” and would have no legal standing. Russia is holding regional elections, including in four Ukrainian regions that it does not fully control – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, also described the voting in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine as “sham elections” and said they were “illegitimate”.
Officials said air defences shot down 16 of the 20 drones fired by Russia overnight – the southern military command said 14 drones had been brought down over Odesa region and two more over the southern region of Mykolaiv.
Russia “must stop” its blockade of Ukrainian seaports after pulling out of a UN and Turkey-mediated deal to ensure grain shipments, the president of the European Council Charles Michel said on Friday.
Ukraine’s former defence minister has warned his western counterparts that negotiations with Moscow will not bring peace, and that Vladimir Putin remains determined to destroy Ukraine entirely and to “assimilate” its citizens into the Russian Federation.
As we reported earlier, the voting for Russian-installed legislatures in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions is under way, and concludes on Sunday.
In the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, where many of the counteroffensive efforts are focused, Moscow-installed authorities declared a holiday on Friday for the voting.
Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, a Russian-held city in the Zaporizhzhia region, told The Associated Press that local residents are effectively being forced to vote.
“When there’s an armed person standing in front of you, it’s hard to say no,” he said.
There are four different parties on the ballot, the mayor said, but billboards advertise only one: United Russia.
“It looks like the Russian authorities know the result (of the election) already,” Fedorov added.
Updated
Russia’s FSB security services said on Friday it had detained a man for plotting a rail bombing in Crimea, as a drone was downed over the Moscow-occupied peninsula.
AFP reports:
Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, has been targeted by Ukrainian drone strikes and sabotage attacks as Kyiv tries to retake the peninsula.
The FSB said the suspect – a Russian citizen in his mid-40s – had been “collecting information on the deployment of Russian defence ministry facilities and units” and was preparing a railway bombing.
“In a hiding place he had organised (we) found and seized an improvised explosive device made using foreign-made plastic explosives,” it said.
It said the man had been acting on the “instructions of Ukrainian military intelligence” and had been remanded in custody.
British military to monitor Black Sea to deter Russia from striking cargo ships
The UK government has announced British military and security services will monitor the Black Sea in a bid to deter Russia from striking cargo ships that are transporting grain from Ukraine to developing countries.
To mark the arrival of Rishi Sunak in New Delhi for the G20 summit, Downing Street also announced London will host a global food security summit in November.
No 10 said the food conference would be in response to Vladimir Putin in July opting not to renew the Black Sea grain deal with Ukraine, which allowed cargo ships to transport grain out of the war-torn country’s Black Sea ports without fear of attack.
Sunak, the UK’s prime minister, said the loss of the grain pact was “causing an enormous amount of suffering to millions of people”.
He continued:
That initiative provided something like 30m tonnes of food to over 45 countries who really needed it. And now it is not there.You’ve seen since he pulled out that dramatic increase in food prices.
And in the last month alone, the Russians have destroyed more grain than would feed, I think, a million people for a year. Those are the consequences of what Russia is doing.
Updated
Ukraine’s foreign ministry on Friday condemned “sham elections” being staged by Russia in occupied Ukrainian territories, saying they were “worthless” and would have no legal standing.
The ministry called on Ukraine’s international partners to denounce the votes and not to recognise the results, Reuters reports.
The voting for Russian-installed legislatures in four regions only partly controlled by Russia began on Friday and is expected to conclude on Sunday (see earlier post at 06.49).
Russian airstrike kills three in Ukraine's Kherson region - minister
A Russian airstrike killed three civilians and injured four other people in a village in Kherson on Friday, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.
Klymenko said on Telegram that the airstrike was on the village of Odradokamianka, located in southern Ukraine.
These claims are yet to be independently verified.
The attack comes as the voting for Russian-installed legislatures in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions begins on Friday.
Russian air defences have downed a hostile aerial drone over northern Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of the peninsula’s administration, said on Friday.
We will give you more information on this as soon as we get some.
Russian missile strike on police building in Kryvyi Rih kills policeman – minister
Reuters has more updates on the attack in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih we reported on earlier (see post at 08.04).
Interior minister Ihor Klymenko said that a Russian missile hit a police building in the Kryvyi Rih on Friday, killing a policeman and injuring many more people.
The police administrative building was destroyed and rescue workers pulled several people out of the rubble after the attack on president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s home town, Klymenko said on Telegram.
He put the number of injured people at 25. In a later update, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said about 40 had been injured.
“A policeman was killed as a result of a Russian attack,” Klymenko wrote in an Telegram post.
Three administrative buildings were damaged, and seven residential buildings, including a high-rise building, suffered damage, Lysak said. These claims are yet to be independently verified.
Updated
Cuba arrests 17 over suspected 'trafficking' for Russia's war in Ukraine
Seventeen people have been arrested in Cuba over suspected links to an alleged Russian trafficking network recruiting men for the war effort in Ukraine, the interior ministry said.
AFP reports:
The Cuban government said Monday it was working to dismantle a “trafficking network that operates from Russia to incorporate Cuban citizens living there, and even some from Cuba, into the military forces involved in military operations in Ukraine.”
Cesar Rodriguez, who is heading the investigation, said on national television on Thursday that “17 people have been arrested so far,” without giving their nationalities.
He said one person was suspected of being an “organiser of these activities” while two others were suspected recruiters.
The attorney general’s office said judicial authorities were considering charges of “human trafficking, mercenarism (and) hostile acts in a foreign state,” which could carry sentences of up to 30 years in jail, life imprisonment or even the death penalty.
Updated
China’s vice premier, Zhang Guoqing, will visit Vladivostok, Russia, between 10 and 12 September, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Friday.
China and Russia, while not formal allies, have maintained close ties throughout Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which China has refused to condemn.
The US and other western powers have urged Beijing not to supply Russia with arms that could be used in the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian air force shoots down 16 drones launched by Russia overnight - officials
Ukraine’s air force shot down 16 drones launched by Russia overnight in the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions, regional and military officials said on Friday.
Oleh Kiper, the Odesa regional governor, wrote on Telegram:
During the night the Russian terrorists attacked the Odesa region for the fifth time this week.
The military command for the south said 14 drones had been shot down over the Odesa region and two more over the Mykolaiv region, Reuters reports.
It said the drones were launched from Russia and from Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014.
Kiper said a non-residential building had been damaged by debris from a drone, but reported no casualties in the Odesa region.
Regional officials said Russia had also attacked the south-eastern region of Zaporizhzhia and the north-eastern region of Sumy with missiles, injuring several people.
These claims are yet to be independently verified.
Updated
Russian attack kills one person and injures nine others in Ukraine's Kryvyi Rih - governor
A Russian missile attack killed one person and injured nine others in Kryvyi Rih, the home city of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the regional governor said.
Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram that the missile hit an administrative building in the central Ukrainian city on Friday morning.
These claims are yet to be independently verified.
Updated
Russian blockade of Ukraine ports 'must stop', European council president warns
Russia “must stop” its blockade of Ukrainian seaports after pulling out of a UN and Turkey-mediated deal to ensure grain shipments, the president of the European Council Charles Michel said on Friday.
Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, ahead of a G20 summit, he was quoted by AFP as saying:
It’s frankly scandalous that Russia, after having terminated the Black Sea grain initiative, is blocking and attacking Ukrainian ports. This must stop.
Russia pulled out of the grain agreement in July after claiming that it had failed to fulfil the goal of relieving hunger in Africa.
Tensions have built in the region since, with Russia mounting attacks on Ukrainian export hubs and Kyiv’s forces targeting Moscow’s naval ports and warships.
The Kremlin has since asked Turkey to help Russia export its grain to African countries without any involvement from Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Moscow is just weeks away from supplying free grain to six African countries.
“The Kremlin’s offer of 1m tonnes of grain to Africa is absolutely cynical,” Michel said.
“Ships with grains need to have safe access to the Black Sea,” he said, noting that the UN initiative had initially delivered 32m tonnes to the market, “especially to developing countries”.
The UK’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has vowed to “call out” Russia at the G20 for the “suffering” it is inflicting on Ukrainians and millions of the world’s poorest people, PA media reports.
Speaking on the plane to India, the prime minister criticised Russian president Vladimir Putin for refusing to attend the G20 summit in India – the second year in a row the Russian leader has missed the world leaders’ gathering.
Putin has sent foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to New Delhi in his absence.
Sunak said the Russian leader was steering clear of confrontation with the west after his invasion of Ukraine because he “doesn’t want to be held accountable”.
The British leader said he intends to highlight the impact that Moscow’s decision to collapse the Black Sea grain initiative is having on developing nations, which rely on cheap grain from Ukraine for food.
His pledge to use the gathering in New Delhi to continue to rally against the Kremlin’s attack on Kyiv comes despite host country India continuing to keep open ties with Putin’s regime.
Sunak, asked by reporters whether he had a message for Lavrov at the G20, said:
When it comes to Lavrov, the message is, the fact that Putin is not there demonstrates his isolation in the global community. He wasn’t there last year, he is not there this year to answer for what he is doing. He doesn’t want to be held accountable.
‘Goal is destruction of Ukraine’: ex-defence minister warns west of Putin’s aim
Ukraine’s former defence minister has warned his western counterparts that negotiations with Moscow will not bring peace, and that Vladimir Putin remains determined to destroy Ukraine entirely and to “assimilate” its citizens into the Russian Federation.
In an article for the Guardian, Oleksii Reznikov says any “deal” with the Kremlin would not end the conflict. “Russia demands the recognition of the occupied territories of Ukraine as its territory in exchange for the end of the war,” he writes.
“However, this is obviously for the sake of one thing only – to buy some time, regroup and ‘finally solve the Ukrainian issue’ using new resources. Russia does not recognise the existence of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.
“Its goal is the destruction of Ukrainian statehood and assimilation of Ukrainians.”
Reznikov – who was removed from his job on Sunday by president Volodymyr Zelenskiy – likened calls for Ukraine to make territorial concessions to international demands in 1938 that Czechoslovakia give up Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. The transfer happened, at the behest of the UK and France.
You can read the full story by my colleague, Luke Harding, here:
Hello everyone, this is Yohannes Lowe. I’ll be running the blog until 3pm (UK time). Please do feel free to get in touch on Twitter if you have any story tips.
Elon Musk ordered Starlink to be turned off during Ukraine offensive
Elon Musk ordered his Starlink satellite communications network to be turned off near the Crimean coast last year to hobble a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian warships, according to a new biography.
CNN quoted an excerpt from the biography Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, which described how armed submarine drones were approaching their targets when they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”.
The biography, due out on Tuesday, alleges Musk ordered Starlink engineers to turn off service in the area of the attack because of his concern that Vladimir Putin would respond with nuclear weapons to a Ukrainian attack on Russian-occupied Crimea. He is reported to have said that Ukraine was “going too far” in threatening to inflict a “strategic defeat” on the Kremlin.
Musk’s threats to withdraw Starlink communications at various stages of the conflict have been previously reported, but this is the first time it has been alleged he cut off Ukrainian forces in the middle of a specific operation.
The date of the would-be attack was not specified. Musk reportedly referred to it as a “mini Pearl Harbor”, although Ukrainian forces were operating within their internationally recognised territorial waters.
Russian embassy says Washington meddling in its affairs
The Russian embassy in the US said on Friday that Washington was meddling in Russia’s internal affairs by calling elections in the occupied areas of Ukraine that Moscow now considers Russian “illegitimate”, the RIA news agency reported.
Russia is holding regional elections this week, including in the four Ukrainian regions it partly controls.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday: “Russia’s sham elections in occupied areas of Ukraine are illegitimate”.
Blinken decries ‘Russia’s sham elections’ in occupied areas
The Associated Press: Russian authorities are holding local elections this weekend in occupied parts of Ukraine in an effort to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control.
The voting for Russian-installed legislatures in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions begins Friday and concludes Sunday. It has already been denounced by Kyiv and the West.
“It constitutes a flagrant violation of international law, which Russia continues to disregard,” the Council of Europe, the continent’s foremost human rights body, said this week.
Kyiv echoed that sentiment, with the parliament saying in a statement that the balloting in areas where Russia “conducts active hostilities” poses a threat to Ukrainian lives. Lawmakers urged other countries not to recognize the results of the vote.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that, “Russia’s sham elections in occupied areas of Ukraine are illegitimate”.
The balloting is scheduled for the same weekend as local elections in Russia. In the occupied regions, early voting kicked off last week as election officials went door to door or set up makeshift polling stations in public places to attract passersby.
Opening summary
Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Helen Sullivan with the latest.
Our top story this morning: Russian authorities are holding local elections this weekend in occupied parts of Ukraine in an effort to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control. The voting for Russian-installed legislatures in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions begins Friday and concludes Sunday.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that, “Russia’s sham elections in occupied areas of Ukraine are illegitimate”.
More on this shortly. Meanwhile:
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy singled out for praise on Thursday three military units for “very, very effective” action against Russian troops on the front in eastern and southern Ukraine. Zelenskiy provided few details in his nightly address, but said one national guard unit was fighting in the east and two in the south – the focal points of Kyiv’s three-month-old counter offensive. “Results are precisely what Ukraine needs now from everyone,” Zelenskiy said.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, praised Ukraine’s strength in the face of the Russian invasion during a visit to the Chernihiv region, which was occupied by Moscow at the beginning of the war.
Blinken and Romanian foreign minister Luminita Odobescu also held a call to discuss Romania’s investigation into drone debris found in Romania close to its border with Ukraine, the US state department said. Romania’s defence ministry said on Thursday that the country did not face any direct threat to its territory or territorial waters from Russian strikes on Ukraine on Wednesday night.
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday there was no sign Russia had launched a deliberate attack on alliance member Romania, after the possible drone debris was found near its border with Ukraine. Stoltenberg said Romania on Wednesday informed its Nato allies of the discovery and that it “demonstrates the risk of incidents and accidents”.
Some of the victims of a deadly Russian missile attack at a busy market in eastern Ukraine yesterday were buried. At least 17 people were killed and 32 wounded in the attack in Kostiantynivka, in Ukraine’s Donestsk region.
Russia has maintained its bombing campaign against Ukrainian food exports with the fourth drone attack in five days on grain silos and other infrastructure around the port of Izmail along the Danube river. The governor of the Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, said Thursday’s attack lasted three hours.
Ireland said that about 500 Ukrainians were arriving in the country a week, joining tens of thousands of their compatrior who fled to the island over the last 18 months. But growing pressure on services will mean more will have to be temporarily housed in tents.
French president Emmanuel Macron said the Russian flag has no place at next year’s Paris Olympics because of the war crimes committed by Vladimir Putin’s regime in Ukraine.
The head of the US senate foreign relations committee has demanded that the US’s top three oilfield services companies “cease all investments” in Russia’s fossil fuel infrastructure.
British American Tobacco said it would sell its last cigarette in Russia within a month, ending its presence in the world’s fourth-largest tobacco market a year and a half after it first promised to do so in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
For the first time in nearly four years new staff have been allowed at the Russian embassy in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the delegation has said, after anti-pandemic measures blocked most travel and led many embassies to close.
Zelenskiy and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday discussed ways in which Israel can support Kyiv in its conflict with Russia, the Ukrainian leader’s office said. Zelenskiy has previously urged Israel to provide more open support for Kyiv and criticised its attempts to maintain an even-handed approach in the 18-month-old war.
