Russia launches deadly air strikes as it advances in east Ukraine
Russia has claimed its forces have advanced in eastern Ukraine as Kyiv reported deadly air attacks and urged the West to allow it to carry out more retaliatory strikes inside Russia’s borders.
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Russia has claimed its forces have advanced in eastern Ukraine as Kyiv reported deadly air attacks and urged the West to allow it to carry out more retaliatory strikes inside Russia’s borders.
Moscow has upped its aerial attacks in recent weeks at the same time it tries to fight off a major Ukrainian cross-border offensive into its Western Kursk region that has reshaped the course of the two-and-a-half-year war.
Two people were killed on Sunday in a Russian air strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy, the capital of the region from where Ukraine poured troops and tanks across the border into Russia in its shock counter-attack.
“As a result of the air strike, two people died. Four more people were injured, including two children,” Sumy military authorities in the region said in a statement.
A Russian rocket strike on a village close to the front line in the Donetsk region also killed two people, the regional prosecutor’s office said Sunday.
“Two local women aged 43 and 53 died as a result of cluster munitions” hitting their gardens, it said in a statement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday urged Kyiv’s partners to give him more scope to use Western-supplied weapons against targets inside Russia.
“In just one week, Russia has used over 800 guided aerial bombs, nearly 300 Shahed drones, and more than 60 missiles of various types against our people,” he said in a Facebook post.
“Terror can only be reliably stopped in one way: by striking Russian military airfields, their bases, and the logistics of Russian terror.”
Officials in the central city of Poltava said the death toll from a strike on a military education facility last week had risen to 58, after three who were wounded in the attack succumbed to their injuries.
Kyiv has for months been calling for the West to supply longer-range missiles and lift restrictions that limit their use to the direct combat zone.
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RUSSIA’S ‘STATE OF EMERGENCY’ AFTER UKRAINE DRONE STRIKE
A Russian ammunition depot has been struck in a region bordering Ukraine where a large fire broke out after a drone attack.
The Russian governor of the Voronezh region said debris from a downed Ukraine drone triggered a fire and series of explosions, ordering the evacuation of nearby settlements.
Russian anti-air defence systems “detected and neutralised a drone” early on Saturday morning over the western part of the region, under 150 kilometres from Ukraine, Alexander Gusev wrote on Telegram.
“No-one was injured” but when the drone fell, it sparked a large fire “that spread to explosive devices and caused them to detonate”, Gusev continued, without providing details of what facility was hit.
“A decision was taken to evacuate residents of a village” because of the blaze, he said.
Gusev added: “A state of emergency has been declared in the Ostrogozhsky District, where a fire broke out near explosive objects at night and a detonation began.”
Russian Telegram channels said the fire broke out in a local munitions depot.
Ukraine’s SBU security services later claimed it had hit a Russian ammunition depot.
“Last night, the Russians lost a large ammunition and equipment depot,” a source in the SBU told AFP.
The source said Kyiv was targeting “military airfields, ammunition depots and infrastructure facilities” in order to “create a demilitarised zone in the regions of Russia adjacent to Ukraine.” It called them all “legitimate targets” For the past month, Russia has faced a large-scale cross-border Ukrainian offensive in the neighbouring Kursk region and announces almost daily that it has destroyed Ukrainian drones targeting its territory.
Kyiv says the drone strikes are in response to Russian bombardments that target its military and industrial facilities and have killed thousands of civilians since Moscow invaded in February 2022.
PUTIN READY TO TALK PEACE
Vladimir Putin says Russia is ready to talk peace on Ukraine – but on the basis of an aborted deal reached in Istanbul in 2022, the details of which were never made public by either side. Speaking at the 2024 Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Mr Putin said his main aim in Ukraine after 30 months of fighting was to capture the eastern Donbas area – and claimed that Ukraine’s Kursk counter-offensive had made that easier.
Mr Putin has repeatedly said that Moscow can only negotiate with Ukraine if Kyiv surrenders four of its regions – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
“Are we ready to negotiate with them? We have never refused to do so,” Mr Putin said on Thursday.
“But not on the basis of some ephemeral demands, but on the basis of those documents that were agreed and actually initialled in Istanbul,” he added.
The Kremlin has claimed Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of a deal in the spring of 2022, shortly after Moscow launched its offensive in Ukraine.
While Ukraine’s surprise push into Russia’s Kursk region last month caught Russian forces off-guard, Mr Putin stressed that the move had failed to slow Moscow’s advance in occupied Ukraine.
“The aim of the enemy (in Kursk) was to force us to worry, hustle, divert troops and to stop our offensive in key areas, especially in the Donbas, the liberation of which is our main primary objective,” he said at a forum in Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east.
Russia claims as its own the eastern Donetsk region and three other Ukrainian regions.
Mr Putin said that by sending “quite well-prepared units” into Kursk, Ukraine had made Moscow’s advance in Donbas quicker.
“The enemy weakened itself in key areas, our army has accelerated its offensive operations,” he argued.
He also claimed that Moscow’s army has begun to push out Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region, where Kyiv’s troops have held on to towns and villages for almost a month.
“Our armed forces have stabilised the situation and started gradually squeezing (the enemy) out from our territory,” he said. It was not possible to verify those claims.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisted on Thursday local time that Ukraine was “maintaining the defined lines” in the Kursk region.
AT LEAST 51 DEAD IN RUSSIAN BLITZ ON UKRAINE
Dozens of Ukrainians were killed in the aftermath of one of the deadliest Russian missile attacks of the nation’s two-and-a-half-year war.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to hold “Russian scum” accountable for the attack on a military education facility and nearby hospital on Monday, which killed at least 51 and wounded another 271.
“We know that there are people under the rubble of the destroyed building. Everything is being done to save as many lives as possible,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
Berlin, London and Washington all condemned the strike.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the attack was “another horrific reminder of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s brutality”, adding that the United States would send more military aid to Kyiv in the coming weeks.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy called it a “sickening act of aggression”, while German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Putin’s brutality “knows no limits”.
The strike on the Military Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology in the central city of Poltava triggered anger on Ukrainian social media with harrowing footage showing the extent of the devastation.
#Poltava 179. İletişim Birlikleri Eğitim Merkezine güçlü bir saldırı düzenlendi. Füze saldırısı hem eğitim hem de idari binayı ve yemek salonunu vurarak #Ukrayna Silahlı Kuvvetlerinin altyapısına ve personeline önemli zararlar verdi. pic.twitter.com/ta9R1tktW3
— товарищ (@tavarisru) September 3, 2024
Students across the northern hemisphere are returning to classrooms this week following the summer break with the attack occurring on the first day of the Ukrainian school year.
There were unconfirmed reports the missile attack targeted an outdoor military ceremony with many blaming reckless behaviour from officials who allowed the event to take place despite the threat of Russian attacks.
Mr Zelenskyy said he had ordered a “full and prompt investigation into all the circumstances of what happened”.
Two Russian ballistic missiles hit the hospital and an educational institution, partially destroying one of the buildings, Mr Zelenskyy said.
Mr Zelenskyy made a direct plea to his allies for more military aid.
“We say again and again to everyone in the world who has the power to stop this terror: air defense systems and missiles are needed in Ukraine, not somewhere in a warehouse,” Mr Zelenskyy said in a statement.
“Long-range strikes that can protect against Russian terror are needed now, not later. Every day of delay is, unfortunately, the death of people.”
“The time interval between the alarm and the arrival of the deadly missiles was so short that it caught people in the middle of evacuating to the bomb shelter,” the defence ministry said.
The strike took place in the morning in Poltava, a city with a pre-war population of around 300,000 people, located 300km east of Kyiv.
The Poltava military communications institute, founded in the 1960s when Ukraine was part of the USSR, specialises in training telecommunications specialists.
“One of the institute’s buildings was partially destroyed, and many people were trapped under the rubble,” the defence ministry said.
An AFP journalist on the scene saw several ambulances heading towards the affected site shortly after the attack on the military institute.
Rescuers were still at work after having managed to save 25 people, including 11 trapped under the rubble, the defence ministry said.
Official channels and local media shared messages urging locals to donate blood to help treat the wounded.
At the same time criticism of Ukrainian officials swirled online. “Poltava … How can such a large number of people gather at such a facility?” said blogger Sergey Naumovich.
There had been some reports from Russian military bloggers that the strike targeted an outdoor ceremony.
Poltava Governor Philip Pronin said his administration could not provide more details of the circumstances of the strike “for security reasons”.
“The enemy is using any means to bring Ukraine more pain and disorientate Ukrainians. Please trust only reliable sources,” he said.
Ukrainian MP Maria Bezugla, who regularly criticises the country’s military leadership, accused high-ranking officials of endangering soldiers by allowing such events.
“These tragedies keep repeating themselves. When will it stop?” she posted on Telegram.
Zelensky said he ordered a “full and prompt investigation” into the strike and vowed to keep Russia accountable.
The attack follows another recent scandal for Ukraine’s army command after a US-made F-16 fighter jet crashed in combat last week, killing the pilot.
– with AFP
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