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Ukraine has made progress in its recently launched counter-offensive with its forces taking two settlements in the south, a third in the east, as well as additional territory in the east of the country, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy claimed during a Sunday evening address. “The Ukrainian flags are returning to the places where they should be by right,” he added. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, posted an image of soldiers raising the Ukrainian flag over a village he said was in Ukraine’s south. “Vysokopillya. Kherson region. Ukraine. Today,” Tymoshenko wrote.
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Russian authorities said the situation around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine was calm on Sunday, after UN inspectors said on Saturday it had again lost external power. The last remaining main external power line was cut off although a reserve line continued supplying electricity to the grid, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement. Only one of its six reactors remained in operation, it said. Speaking to Komsomolskaya Pravda radio, Russian official Vladimir Rogov said there had been no shelling or incursions. IAEA experts are expected to continue working at the plant until at least Monday, Russian official Vladimir Rogov said.
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Analysts are expecting gas prices to surge to record highs this week after Russia shut down a key pipeline to Europe. Many commentators warned that European prices will further rise when markets open on Monday after Moscow scrapped a Saturday deadline for flows to resume through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany, saying it had discovered a fault during maintenance.
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Zelenskiy warned Europe to expect a difficult winter after Moscow shut down a main pipeline that supplies Russian gas to the continent. “Russia is preparing a decisive energy blow on all Europeans for this winter,” he said.
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Thousands gathered in Prague to protest at soaring energy bills and demand an end to sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine. About 70,000 far-right and extreme-left elements coalesced at a “Czech Republic First” rally to call for a new agreement with Moscow over gas supplies and a halt to the sending of arms to Ukraine on Sunday.
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A Russian journalist is facing a 24-year jail term for treason. Ivan Safronov, a former military correspondent for Kommersant and Vedomosti, is facing a “record” sentence on treason charges that have been prosecuted with secret evidence behind closed doors. A Russian judge is expected to deliver a verdict on Monday in one of the most significant prosecutions against a Russian journalist in decades.
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The Russian state should be tried for historical crimes committed by the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa said before the premiere of his new documentary, The Kiev Trial, at Venice. Speaking at a press conference, Loznitza said there needed to be contrition for the wrongs of the past. “History repeats itself when we don’t learn from history, when we didn’t study it and don’t want to know what happened with us,” he said.
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Sweden has said it is on “high alert” for outside intervention in its upcoming election amid increased tensions with Russia. The Scandinavian country’s recently re-established psychological defence agency said it had seen heightened activity from foreign sources after its application to join Nato and it was prepared for the possibility of “something exceptional” in the lead-up to polling day on 11 September.
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Ukraine’s prime minister has thanked Germany for its solidarity in the face of the Russian invasion while calling for more weapons, in a sign of easing tensions between Berlin and Kyiv. Denys Shmyhal, who was welcomed by the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, with military honours in Berlin on Sunday, is the most senior Ukrainian official to visit the German capital in months.
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Scholz said on Sunday his government had been planning for a total halt in gas deliveries in December, promising measures to lower prices and tie social benefits to inflation. “Russia is no longer a reliable energy partner,” Scholz told a news conference in Berlin. In response, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev accused Germany of being an enemy of Russia. “In other words, it has declared a hybrid war on Russia,” he said.
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Energy problems plagued Ukraine and Europe as much of the Russian-occupied region that’s home to a largely crippled nuclear power plant was reported temporarily in blackout Sunday.
Only one of six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia facility was connected to the electricity grid, and Russia’s main pipeline carrying natural gas to Germany remained shut down.
The fighting in Ukraine and related disputes over pipelines lie behind the electricity and natural gas shortfalls that have worsened as Russia’s war in Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24, grinds on for a seventh month.
Both issues will take center stage this week. U.N. nuclear agency inspectors are scheduled to brief the Security Council on Tuesday about their inspection and safeguard visit to the Zaporizhzhia power plant. European Union energy ministers were slated to hold an emergency meeting Friday in Brussels to discuss the bloc’s electricity market, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said “is no longer operating.”
Much of the Zaporizhzhia region, including the key city of Melitopol, lost power Sunday.
But electricity was gradually being restored, said Vladimir Rogov, the head of the Russia-installed local administration in Enerhodar, the city where the nuclear power plant is located. To the southwest, power was also out in several parts of the port city of Kherson, according to Russia’s Tass news agency. Rogov blamed the outages in both locations on damage to high-voltage power lines.
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An uptick in fighting in southern Ukraine has changed the calculus for both sides in the eastern Donetsk region. Germany unveiled its largest measures yet to help citizens deal with soaring energy costs.
After failing to capture Ukraine’s capital early in the war, Russian forces switched focus to try to seize control of the eastern Donbas region, which is made up of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. They had captured nearly all of Luhansk by early July of this year, but their efforts since to take control of neighboring Donetsk have stalled.
That is in part because of a weekslong pause by Moscow in its offensive to rotate and refresh troops, but also because Ukraine has been preparing defensive positions in Donetsk since 2014 — when rebels loyal to Russia seized government buildings there and in Luhansk, beginning a long trench war with Ukrainian forces — that are difficult to dislodge. Ukrainian attacks on Russian ammunition depots and other supply points behind the front lines, using longer-range artillery supplied by Western countries, have also slowed Russia’s advances in Donetsk.
Now, an uptick in fighting in Kherson has changed the calculus for both sides in Donetsk.
“As Ukraine tries to make advances in Kherson and the Russian military fights and tries to defend that territory, the rest of the Russian forces attempt to make incremental advances on Donbas,” Michael Kofman, director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for a New American Security, said on the War on the Rocks podcast.
There are signs that Moscow might reinforce its troops in the east to renew its stalled campaign. Ukrainian military intelligence has said in recent days that the Russian army’s newest grouping — the 3rd Army Corps — will likely be deployed to Donbas.
It would be the first major new formation of troops to be dispatched by the Kremlin since it launched a campaign in July to bring in new recruits — though military analysts have questioned the grouping’s combat readiness.
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“There must be a Ukrainian-made operational-tactical missile complex. Because today this is the basis of security: missile units and remote influence on the enemy.”
Hrim (Thunder) is one such promising project, having been under development in Ukraine since 2013. The main purpose of the weapons project is to create a strong, non-nuclear deterrent capable of striking the enemy’s land, air and sea targets.
The maximum range of the system is 280 kilometers, with the possibility of an extended model with a range of 450-500 kilometers.
Four types of homing heads have been developed for the missiles of this system: electronic-optical, infrared, radar, and a combined setup. The missile can have both a ballistic trajectory and an aeroballistic one – which would allow it to change its targeting and evade enemy air defense systems. The mass of the Hrim system together with its launch container is 3.5 tons.
A prototype of the missile system was demonstrated in January 2018. This sample is installed on a fully Ukrainian-developed launcher chassis with a 10×10 wheel formula, while a final, fifth axle is for steering. In addition, the chassis has independent torsion suspension, as in armored personnel carriers.
To date, two prototypes of the Hrim missile system have been produced, namely one model intended for Saudi Arabia, and another one for use by Ukrainian Armed Forces.
In August 2022, social media users and several news agencies expressed the opinion that the attack on the Russian-occupied Saki military airfield in the village of Novofedorivka in Crimea might have been carried out with the use of the Hrim missile system. However, there is no confirmation of this.
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Kyiv's nightlife is slowly returning six months after Russia began its invasion.
Kyiv's once vibrant electronic dance music scene is reemerging six months after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.
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