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Morning Headlines
BBC: An adviser to the Kremlin says there might be a "semi-military" response against UK drone factories by "unknown sources" over the sharing of blueprints for British-made cruise missile components. His comments come as UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says he plans to travel to the US next month with European leaders to lobby Trump on Ukraine's defence needs.
Reuters: German investigators discovered a third drone and suspected explosives linked to this month's attempted attack on the Leipzig/Halle airport, broadcasters NDR and WDR and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said on Tuesday.
The Kyiv Independent: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told parliament on Aug. 24 that Yerevan will soon launch its bid to join the European Union, as the country seeks to further distance itself from Russia.
ISW: Putin is setting conditions for the widespread nationalization of Russian private assets under the broad pretext of defending critical enterprises against Ukrainian strikes, likely in part to generate additional state revenues.
The Kyiv Independent: Ukraine's military launched an attack on Russia's Krasnodar Krai overnight on Aug. 25, reportedly striking the Afipsky Oil Refinery.
More News
Meduza: A Russian drone guided entirely by an experimental artificial intelligence system killed three civilians in Zaporizhzhia, according to an article in The New York Times. Inside the drone, investigators found an Nvidia Jetson Orin minicomputer.
The Yorkshire Post: Barnsley’s Bradley Townsend was killed in a drone strike in June, two months after arriving in Russia to fight in the invasion. He is the first known Briton to die fighting for Russia in Putin’s war against Ukraine.
Britain said on Monday it had signed a partnership with Ukraine to jointly develop artificial intelligence tools for defence and security, giving British researchers access to a Ukrainian battlefield data platform used to train military AI systems.
Reuters: British Prime Minister Andy Burnham urged allies on Monday to "do everything we can" and "dig into our own stocks of air defence" to protect Ukraine against Russian attacks at his first meeting co-chairing the so-called Coalition of the Willing.
Euronews: European leaders joined Zelenskyy in Kyiv as Ukraine marked its fifth Independence Day since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. No delegates from the Trump administration were present as Witkoff and Kushner stayed away from ceremony.
The Kyiv Independent: Russia poses a growing hybrid threat to Europe, using disinformation, migration, and other tactics to destabilize the continent, Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs said on Aug. 24 during a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing in Kyiv.
The Insider: Slovakia’s Interior Ministry, which is looking to modernize its road traffic monitoring system, had planned to procure 279 speed cameras from a Cyprus-based company. However, as Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports, the cameras were manufactured in Russia, and the devices’ branding was reportedly changed for delivery to Slovakia.
The Moscow Times: Former Pussy Riot member Rita Flores has revealed that she was coerced into working as an informant for Russia’s FSB security service, saying that she gathered information on anti-war activists and was involved in a failed assassination plot against an exiled Kremlin critic.
Reuters: The Perm oil refinery, Russia's seventh-largest oil processing plant by volumes, stopped operations following a Ukrainian drone attack, which caused fire and damage to technological units on August 21.
The Kyiv Independent: A Russian drone struck an apartment building in central Chernihiv on Aug. 24, injuring at least 20 people, including three children, and sparking a fire, local authorities said.
Reuters: Putin on Monday handed the Russian state the authority to take control of critically-important infrastructure facilities if they are deemed to be poorly protected from Ukrainian drone attacks and other threats.
Ukrainska Pravda: Ukraine's defence forces carried out a second strike on the Kamensky Combine, a military plant in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky in Russia's Rostov Oblast, on the night of 23-24 August, causing a fire at the plant.
Reuters: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia was "not ready" for a ceasefire on attacks on ships in the Black Sea carrying agricultural produce, as Moscow wants to extend any deal to cover attacks on Russian refineries and pipelines.
Kyodo News: Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi expressed hope that Japan will provide Kyiv with air defense systems including interceptor missiles, as Russia intensifies its ballistic missile attacks four years and six months after launching its full-scale invasion.
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