Ukraine-Russia war: Russian forces ‘taken by surprise’ as Ukrainian counter-offensive advances 50km, says UK – live
Russian forces taken by surprise, says UK
As we just mentioned, the UK’s Ministry of Defence is reporting that Ukraine’s counter-offensive has taken Russian forces by surprise.
Ukrainian troops, it adds, have advanced 50km (31 miles) along a narrow front line and have retaken or surrounded several towns.
It says:
Ukrainian units are now threatening the town of Kupiansk; its capture would be a significant blow to Russia because it sits on supply routes to the Donbas front line.
With Ukrainian operations also continuing in Kherson, the Russian defensive front is under pressure on both its northern and southern flanks.
Key events
President Zelenskiy has paid tribute to both Ukrainian and foreign journalists who have been killed covering the war in Ukraine.
Speaking in his nightly address, he said that on Friday he met with members of the media who were honoured as part of Independence Day celebrations on 24 August.
“These are reporters, operators, producers, editors, and presenters,” he said.
“They all made a significant contribution to our victory in the media confrontation with Russia, to break through Russian propaganda and spread simply the truth about the war, about our independence.”
He added: “A moment of silence was observed for representatives of the media whose lives were taken by this war.
“As of today, they are 38 people – not only citizens of our country, but also foreigners who came to Ukraine for the truth and died from Russian weapons.”
The Ukrainian military claims to have destroyed at least $157.5m (£136m) worth of Russian aircraft and weaponry in the space of just three days.
In a post on Facebook, the Air Force Command of the Ukrainian armed forces said that, between 5 and 7 September, “Ukrainian defenders smashed the enemy’s aerial targets to the tune of $157.5m”.
“And we are talking only about the means of air attack: cruise missiles, airplanes and helicopters,” the post read.
It went on to accuse the Russian government of spending money on “tanks, planes, missiles, helicopters, as well as luxurious palaces of the Putin gang and hundreds of billions of stolen money in the accounts of oligarchs” instead of the “economic development of the country”.
A woman has been killed and at least 20 civilians injured in Russian shelling in the Kharkiv district, according to the regional governor.
Writing on Telegram, Oleg Sinegubov said Russia has carried out “massive attacks” in Kharkiv city and nearby towns as “revenge” for the success of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the region.
He said that, at about 1am on Saturday, a home in the Novaya Vodolaz area was shelled and a 62-year-old woman was killed.
Sinegubov added that other “private houses and commercial buildings were damaged, and there were numerous fires”.
He said 14 people, three of them children, were injured in shelling in Kharkiv city on Friday afternoon.
Another five people were hospitalised in the city of Izyum and that at least one other person was injured elsewhere in the Kharkiv region, he said.
A further 350 Russian soldiers killed, says Ukraine
A further 350 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine, according to the latest estimates from the Ukrainian military.
In its latest daily figures, Ukraine’s ministry of defence said total Russian fatalities now stood at 52,250, up from 51,900 on Friday.
It also said Russia had lost a total of 4,584 armoured combat vehicles, 239 military jets, 212 helicopters and 311 multiple launch rocket systems.
The figures follow the success of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region. A tweet by the ministry included the quote: “One cannot plan for the unexpected.”
The UN says it has documented “torture and ill-treatment” of prisoners of war held by Russian forces in Ukraine.
It also said it had corroborated at least 5,767 civilian deaths and 8,292 civilians injured, though added that actual numbers are “likely considerably higher”.
The findings were laid out on Friday in a briefing from Odesa by Matilda Bogner, the head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
“We have documented that prisoners of war in the power of the Russian Federation and held by the Russian Federation’s armed forces or by affiliated armed groups have suffered torture and ill-treatment,” she said.
Bogner said that in some places detainees had been deprived of adequate food, water, healthcare, and sanitation, and referred to one penal colony in Olenivka, a Russian-held town in southern Ukraine, where prisoners of war had reportedly been “suffering from infectious diseases, including hepatitis A and tuberculosis”.
She added that her team had been granted “unimpeded access” to places of internment controlled by the Ukrainian government, whereas Russia “has not provided access to prisoners of war held on its territory or in territory under its occupation”.
The German foreign minister has arrived in Kyiv for an unannounced visit.
Annalena Baerbock said the trip, her second since the start of the invasion, was intended to demonstrate Berlin’s support for Ukraine in its battle against Russia.
“I have travelled to Kyiv today to show that they can continue to rely on us,” she said in a statement. “That we will continue to stand by Ukraine for as long as necessary with deliveries of weapons, and with humanitarian and financial support.”
It comes only a week after Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal’s visited Berlin, where he repeated a call for Germany to supply Ukraine with more weaponry.
Over recent weeks, Germany has sent howitzers, rocket launchers, and anti-aircraft missiles to Kyiv.
Heavier weapons like anti-aircraft systems, rocket launchers mounted on pick-ups, and anti-drone equipment are also due in a further military aid package worth over €500m (£438m).
Earlier this week, Berlin said it would also team up with the Netherlands to train Ukrainian soldiers on demining.
Baerbock said it was “clear that Putin is counting on us getting tired of sympathising with the suffering in Ukraine”.
“He thinks that he can divide our societies with lies and blackmail us with energy deliveries,” she said.
“This calculation must not and will not work. Because all of Europe knows that Ukraine is defending our peace.”
Ukrainian forces have seized an expanding area of previously Russian-held territory in the east in a “very sharp and rapid” advance, a Russian-installed regional official said on Friday, in a breakthrough that may mark a turning point in the war.
After keeping silent for a day, Russia effectively acknowledged a section of its frontline had crumbled south-east of Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv, Reuters reports.
Vitaly Ganchev, head of the Russian-backed administration in the Kharkiv region, said on state television:
The enemy is being delayed as much as possible, but several settlements have already come under the control of Ukrainian armed formation.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said later that Kyiv’s forces had liberated more than 30 settlements in the Kharkiv region so far and that fighting continued in the eastern Donbas region and the south.
Ganchev had claimed his administration was trying to “evacuate” civilians from cities including Izium, Russia’s main stronghold and logistics base in the province.
Zelenskiy adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a video posted on YouTube that Russian defenders in Izium were almost isolated. He said hundreds of Russians had died so far and several hundred more had been taken prisoner, citing what he described as reports from the frontline.
Russian forces taken by surprise, says UK
As we just mentioned, the UK’s Ministry of Defence is reporting that Ukraine’s counter-offensive has taken Russian forces by surprise.
Ukrainian troops, it adds, have advanced 50km (31 miles) along a narrow front line and have retaken or surrounded several towns.
It says:
Ukrainian units are now threatening the town of Kupiansk; its capture would be a significant blow to Russia because it sits on supply routes to the Donbas front line.
With Ukrainian operations also continuing in Kherson, the Russian defensive front is under pressure on both its northern and southern flanks.
Summary
Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s continuing live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here’s a rundown of the latest developments as it passes 10am in Kyiv on the 199th day of Russia’s invasion.
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The UK says Russian forces were likely to have been ‘taken by surprise’ by Ukraine’s counter-offensive, which has now advanced 50km into territory previously held by Russia. In it’s daily intelligence briefing, the UK Ministry of Defence says Ukrainian units have captured or surrounded several towns
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Russia says it is dispatching reinforcements to the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces have announced robust gains as part of a broader counter-offensive. Russian state media broadcast footage on Friday of columns of Russian tanks, support vehicles and artillery travelling along paved roads and dirt tracks. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said his forces had liberated more than 30 settlements in the Kharkiv region and that fighting continued in the eastern Donbas and the south.
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The European Commission has urged EU states to reassess the terms on which they grant visas to Russian travellers and to root out applicants that pose a security threat. “We should not be naive, Putin’s aim is to destroy the EU and he would like to attack us where we are weakest,” the EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, said on Friday.
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The Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff said it had pushed back against Russian attacks near 10 settlements, the Kyiv Independent reported. The staff said on Friday that Russian forces had launched more than 12 missiles and more than 12 airstrikes on Ukrainian territory over the preceding 24 hours.
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Shelling has destroyed power infrastructure at Enerhodar, the Ukrainian city where staff operating the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant live. The shelling possed a growing threat to the plant, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday.
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The UN nuclear watchdog said conditions at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant were increasingly precarious and that a safety zone around it needed to be immediately established to prevent a nuclear accident. The International Atomic Energy Agency director, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said on Friday that there was minimal chance of re-establishing reliable offsite power lines to the plant and that its Ukrainian operator was considering shutting down the only remaining operating reactor.
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EU finance ministers supported a €5bn ($5bn) loan for Ukraine to help maintain the country’s schools, hospitals and other needed operations amid Russia’s invasion. The loan, agreed on Friday, will be backed by guarantees of EU member states and is part of an overall €9bn package announced in May.
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The EU executive have pledged to devise unprecedented measures in the coming days to address an energy price shock as a result of Russia’s war on Ukraine, including a controversial gas price cap that could further anger the Kremlin. European energy ministers tasked the European Commission with working through this weekend to draw up legal texts that will include emergency funding for consumers struggling to afford soaring bills.
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A Russian-appointed official in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region announced on Friday that civilians were being evacuated from three of the region’s Russian-controlled territories that have come under threat from the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
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