Ukraine Update…907 Days of the Russian Conflict…

Ukraine and Russia keep making gains in each other’s countries…

• Ukraine has said large numbers of Russian servicemen – reportedly in the hundreds – gave themselves up during the Kursk offensive that began on 6 August. Agence France-Presse has visited a detention centre just across the border in Ukraine’s Sumy region. The agency said Ukrainian guards were standing nearby but the prisoners did not appear to be talking under duress.

• One 22-year-old Russian PoW – a conscript – said he and others were “simply abandoned by our command” when Ukrainian troops appeared and now he hoped “to be exchanged and go back home … to my family”. The deputy head of the detention facility, who gave his name as Volodymyr, told AFP that the PoWs were initially afraid but “came to life” after realising they were being well treated. “On the battlefield they are hated soldiers and when they are captured they become ordinary people.” Ukraine has said it is already in talks with Russia over an exchange for the Kursk PoWs.

• Ukraine’s army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said its forces had reached 28-35km (17-22 miles) into Russia’s Kursk region, while Moscow was moving some of its troops from other directions to strengthen positions there. Russia has formed three new military groupings to bolster security in regions bordering Ukraine, the Russian defence minister, Andrei Belousov, has said. The groupings are named Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk after their associated regions. Vladimir Putin’s government is facing criticism at home for breaking its promise that it would not send conscripts into battle against Ukraine.

• The internationally sanctioned, Kremlin-linked newspaper Izvestia has quoted Russian intelligence as saying US, British and Polish intelligence were involved in preparing the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk. Voldymyr Zelenskiy has insisted Ukraine’s allies were not informed as they would have ruled out the plan as “unrealistic”; while other officials and analysts have said telling the US and others would have made it impossible to keep the operation secret, based on past leaks.

• Russia hit energy infrastructure in northern Ukraine in a missile and drone attack and caused a huge fire that released chlorine into the air, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday. The fumes came from an industrial facility that was attacked in the western region of Ternopil. People were urged to stay indoors. A strike in the north-eastern Sumy region bordering Russia caused blackouts for 72 settlements and more than 18,500 consumers.

• Ukrainian forces shot down three ballistic missiles and 25 of the 26 drones launched in Tuesday morning’s attack on nine regions, Ukraine’s air force commander said. It included Russia’s fifth missile attack this month on Kyiv, the capital.

• A 14-year-old boy died from his injuries in hospital after a Russian munition struck a kiosk a few metres from a children’s playground in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, said the regional governor, Ivan Fedorov.

• Russian authorities meanwhile struggled to put out a massive fire in the southern Rostov region for a third consecutive day at an oil depot hit by Ukrainian drones.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, said the situation in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast was “difficult”, write Dan Sabbagh and Luke Harding. There were 14 combat clashes in Toretsk – a city Moscow is close to capturing – and 34 in the Pokrovsk sector, according to Ukraine’s general staff. Many residents in Pokrovsk were leaving, after authorities warned fighting was likely to engulf the city in under two weeks.

• The Kremlin announced it had seized Niu-York, a town that has been fought over since 2014. Another battle was happening in Hrodikva, a village close to the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a Russian target and hub for Ukraine’s military. The Russian defence minister, Andrei Belousov, said on national TV that Russia was sending additional troops to the Pokrovsk region.

• Ukraine’s parliament has passed a “historic” bill paving the way for a ban of the Russia-linked minority Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). The legislation prohibits the Russian Orthodox Church on Ukrainian territory and envisages a ban, to be approved by a court decision, on religious organisations “affiliated” with it.

• The Czech Republic has announced it will use part of the interest generated from Russian central bank assets frozen in the EU to buy large-calibre ammunition for Ukraine. Western countries locked up about $300bn worth of sovereign Russian assets after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. EU countries are taking the interest earned on the assets and putting it into an EU fund to aid Ukraine’s fight. The Kremlin has called the plan “theft” and threatened legal action…..

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