Four killed in Russian attacks across Ukraine, officials say
Three people were killed in an overnight Russian missile strike on Ukraine, and a fourth was killed in shelling on Monday morning, Ukrainian officials have said.
The interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said the three people killed overnight were workers at an industrial facility that was hit in the central Poltava region (the death toll has been revised from earlier), Reuters reports.
Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of the Kherson region, meanwhile, said a 63-year-old woman had been killed in shelling of the village of Sadove at about 10.40am on Monday. These claims are yet to be independently verified.
Key events
Sweden charges man with collecting information for Russian intelligence service
A Russian-born Swedish citizen has been charged with collecting information for the Russian military intelligence service GRU for almost a decade, the Associated Press reports.
Sweden’s prosecution authority said Sergey Skvortsov, 60, was accused of “gross illegal intelligence activities against Sweden and against a foreign power”.
Skvortsov was arrested in November with his wife in a predawn operation in Nacka, outside Stockholm.
Skvortsov has been in custody since his arrest and denies any wrongdoing, according to his defence lawyer, Ulrika Borg. His wife was released without charge after an investigation by Sweden’s security agency.
Prosecutors said Skvortsov used his import-export business to illicitly obtain technology and hand it over to the GRU.
Swedish broadcaster SVT said Skvortsov had lived in Sweden for 25 years and obtained Swedish citizenship in 2012. The trial is to start 4 September.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, will hold talks in Moscow “in the nearest future”, the TASS news agency reported on Monday, citing the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova.
Turkey is trying to persuade Russia to return to a deal that allows for the export of grain via Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
The Kremlin has said Vladimir Putin is likely to hold talks in person soon with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but no date or venue has yet been announced.
In its latest intelligence update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it’s likely that Russia cancelled a major military exercise amid sensitivity to domestic criticism.
The MoD’s official account wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter:
Russia has highly likely cancelled Exercise Zapad (‘West’) 23, its planned ‘joint strategic exercise’ (JSE) and major annual event intended to be the culmination of the military’s training year. The exercise should have taken place in September 2023.
From 2010 Russia ran a four-year cycle, rotating JSEs around the country. However, since 2021, Russia has based the JSE in western Russia at least every second year as it prioritises confronting what it perceives as the threat from Nato. This follows Zapad 21, the largest Russian exercise since Soviet times.
The Russian military’s under-performance in Ukraine has highlighted how JSEs have had limited training value and have largely been for show. Russia has likely cancelled Zapad 23 because too few troops and equipment are available.
There is a realistic possibility that the Russian leadership is also sensitive to domestic criticism liable from running another slickly presented JSE during wartime.
Ukraine’s ministry of defence has provided more information on the reported missile attack on Ukraine’s Poltava region (see earlier post at 07.00):
It tweeted:
On the night of 28 August, Russian terrorists attacked Ukraine with 4 Kalibr cruise missiles and two Kh-59 guided aviation missiles. The air defence systems destroyed four out of six targets.
Unfortunately, there was a direct hit on an oil refinery in the town of Hoholeve in the Poltava region, which was operating during the night shift. Currently, there are reports of two casualties and five injured.
These claims are yet to be independently verified.
Russian air defences downed two Ukrainian drones over Russian-annexed Crimea on Monday, Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed head of the region, wrote on Telegram.
He said one drone was downed in the northern part of the Black Sea peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and the other one in the west, Reuters reports.
Russia accuses ex-US consulate employee of passing information about Ukraine war to US diplomats
Moscow said on Monday it had detained a Russian citizen and former US consulate employee in Vladivostok for allegedly passing information about the war in Ukraine to US diplomats.
Agence France-Presse reports:
The Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement it had “suppressed the illegal activities of Robert Robertovich Shonov”, accusing him of being an informant for the US embassy in Moscow.
The announcement is the latest in a series of diplomatic spats building pressure on strained ties between Moscow and Washington, particularly over the conflict in Ukraine.
The FSB said Shonov had begun handing information to US diplomats in September last year about the conflict and mobilisation, an unpopular move in Russia that saw an exodus of military-aged men.
It added that Shonov had been tasked with gauging protest sentiment in Russia’s regions ahead of presidential elections scheduled for next year.
The FSB said Shonov is suspected of “gathering information about the special military operation, mobilisation processes in Russian regions, problems and the assessment of their influence on protest activities of the population in the runup to the 2024 presidential election”.
Shonov’s arrest was first reported in May, but Russian authorities provided no details at the time. The US state department has condemned his arrest.
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, has described the battlefield situation in the east of the country as “very hot” in the past week.
She said Russian troops were gathering new forces there and regrouping, and Moscow was aiming to deploy its best troops, Reuters reports.
Ukrainian forces had continued to advance south of Bakhmut, she said, referring to the nearly devastated eastern city that was captured by Moscow’s troops in May after months of fierce fighting.
She added that in the past week Ukrainian forces had retaken 1sq km around Bakhmut, and Russian troops had not made any advances. These claims are yet to be independently verified.
You can read more about the significance of Bakhmut in the war here:
The Russian authorities have announced a drive to boost production of films glorifying Moscow’s war in Ukraine, AP reports.
Vladimir Putin has ordered the culture ministry to ensure theatres screen documentaries about the “special military operation”, as the Kremlin calls its invasion of Ukraine.
The ministry has also reportedly prioritised certain themes when allocating state funding for films.
These include “heroism and selflessness of Russian warriors” in Ukraine and “battling modern manifestations of the Nazi and fascist ideology” – a false accusation Putin makes about Kyiv’s leaders.
We have more details on the reported missile attack on Ukraine’s Poltava region (see earlier post at 07.00).
Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said the missiles struck a vegetable oil factory in the Myrhorod district, killing two people and injuring five others.
“The people were working the night shift,” Yermak wrote on Telegram.
He posted photos showing tankers engulfed in flames and the destroyed metal structures of the plant, Reuters reports.
These claims have not yet been independently verified.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has tweeted:
All of Putin’s domestic legitimacy is built on the belief among Russian elites that he has ‘not lost the war yet’.
The Kremlin understands the inevitable: the more Russia loses the occupied territories, the faster support for the regime will decline.
The murder of Prigozhin and the preparation of a new mobilisation to saturate the front is a time-saving measure. But the clock is already counting down.
It won’t be easy, but it is naive to think that Ukraine will have to regain territory by winning every kilometre with blood.
As Ukrainian forces advance in the south and reach the administrative border with Crimea, events will take on a different shape. In the end, it will all end quickly and in an instant, just as it began.
Hello everyone, this is Yohannes Lowe. I’ll be running the blog until 4pm (UK time). Please do feel free to get in touch on Twitter if you have any story tips.