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Morning Headlines
Reuters: Air defences shot down a ‘hostile drone’ near Moscow in the early hours of Monday, city mayor Sergei Sobyanin wrote on messaging app Telegram.
Reuters: Two people were killed in an overnight Russian missile attack on Ukraine's central Poltava region, Governor Dmytro Lunin said on Monday.
Reuters: Russia's FSB security service has charged a former employee of the United States consulate in the Russian Far East with collecting information on the war in Ukraine and other issues for Washington, state news agency TASS said on Monday.
ISW: The Russian MoD appears to have unsuccessfully attempted to silence Russian milbloggers’ concerns over the alleged mistreatment of a Russian brigade operating in occupied Kherson Oblast — sparking further criticism from the ultranationalist community.
Reuters: Russia has highly likely cancelled its planned joint strategic exercise, ZAPAD 23, which should have taken place in September, the British defence ministry said on Monday. Russia has likely cancelled the exercise because too few troops and equipment are available, the ministry said in its daily intelligence update.
AP News: “The Witness” — a state-sponsored drama that premiered in Russia on Aug. 17 -- is the first feature film about the 18-month-old invasion. It depicts Ukrainian troops as violent neo-Nazis who torture and kill their own people. One even wears a T-shirt with Hitler on it; another is shown doing drugs. It also has the main character’s young son wondering: “Isn’t Ukraine Russia?”
27.08.2023
NY Times: A Russian businessman who has been under financial sanctions for years has nevertheless used U.S. and European banks to raise money for orphanages in a region at the heart of the Kremlin’s program of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia, records show.
AFP: World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said Sunday he would not be changing his views "anytime soon" when it comes to welcoming Russia back into the fold. All Russian and Belarusian athletes have been banned from track and field competition "for the foreseeable future" since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. That includes the option of competing as a neutral.
Meduza: Ukrainian counterintelligence launched a drone attack on a military airfield in Russia’s Kursk region, a source in Ukraine’s special services told the publication RBC Ukraine. The source says that overnight on August 27, suicide drones “worked on four Su-30 airplanes and one MiG-29,” as well as the radar systems of an S-300 missile system and two Pantsir anti-aircraft missile systems.
CNN: Ukraine's forces are making more progress in the country's southern Zaporizhzhia region, while Russian troops have intensified attacks in areas surrounding the embattled city of Kupiansk on the eastern front line, the Ukrainian military said Sunday.
AFP: Ukraine said Sunday a second civilian cargo ship leaving the port of Odesa had reached safe waters, despite warnings from Russia that such vessels may be considered military targets.
The Kyiv Independent: Russia has concentrated over 100,000 troops in the Kupiansk-Lyman direction of the front in Kharkiv Oblast and Luhansk Oblast, Eastern Force Grouping press officer Illia Yevlash said on Aug. 27. These troops have significantly intensified their rate of shelling and aistrikes against Ukrainian positions, according to Yevlash.
Reuters: Russian investigators said on Sunday that genetic tests had confirmed that Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the Wagner mercenary group, was among the 10 people killed in a plane crash last Wednesday.
AP News: The last weeks of Prigozhin’s life were overshadowed by questions about what the Kremlin really had in store for him. Had he already dodged a bullet? Or was his comeuppance just further down the road?
Reuters: A 40-second clip of an old interview in which Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said he would rather be killed than lie to his country, and talked about a plane disintegrating in the sky, unleashed a flood of online theorizing on Sunday about his presumed death.
ISW: Ukrainian forces now appear within striking distance of the next series of prepared Russian defensive positions, which may be weaker than the previous set of Russian defenses but still pose a significant challenge.
26.08.2023
The Kyiv Independent: The Aug. 23 strike on an a Russian anti-aircraft system in Crimea used a "new, completely modern" Ukrainian missile, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said on Aug. 26.
Novaya-Europe: “The Russian national confessed to working for Israeli intelligence; he was tasked to arrive in Lebanon. He was provided maps of Hezbollah-owned facilities; his mission was to visit those locations and take photos of them,” Al Akhbar reports.
AFP: Polish authorities said Saturday they are investigating an apparent hacking attack on the national railway communications network which destabilised overnight traffic in the country's northwest. "We know that for some months there have been attempts to destabilise the Polish state. Such attempts have been undertaken by the Russian Federation in conjunction with Belarus."
Reuters: Three Ukrainian military pilots including a "mega talent" who yearned to fly F-16s were killed on Friday when two L-39 combat training aircraft collided over a region west of Kyiv on Friday, the air force said on Saturday.
AFP: Two people were killed and one wounded on Saturday after Russian forces shelled a village near the town of Kupiansk in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, hitting a cafe, officials said.
The Guardian: Eleven days ago, some of the most senior soldiers in the Nato alliance travelled to a secret location on the Polish-Ukrainian border to meet Ukraine’s chief military commander, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, for what was privately billed as “a council of war”.
Reuters: Ukrainian forces believe they have broken through the most difficult line of Russian defences in the south and will now be able to advance more quickly, a commander fighting in the south told Reuters.
Reuters: Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency said on Friday a Ukrainian drone attack had hit a Russian military base deep inside annexed Crimea, while residents reported casualties, explosions and a road closure.
Reuters: Russia reported a series of drone attacks on its territory on Saturday that killed at least one in a region bordering Ukraine and again forced the temporary closure of three major airports serving the capital Moscow.
UK Ministry of Defence: There is a realistic possibility Russia will increase the intensity of its offensive efforts on the Kupiansk-Lyman axis in the next two months, probably with the objective of advancing west to the Oskil River and creating a buffer zone around Luhansk Oblast.
25.08.2023
CNN: Russian intelligence is operating a systematic program to launder pro-Kremlin propaganda through private relationships between Russian operatives and unwitting US and Western targets, according to newly declassified US intelligence.
Reuters: Russia is regrouping in the Moscow-controlled eastern part of Ukraine in order to resume an offensive, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Ukrainian military's ground forces, said on Friday.
MEE: The Wagner Group is expected to descend into chaos in Africa following the suspected assassination of its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and other senior leaders on Wednesday, three sources directly involved with the organisation told Middle East Eye.
yle: Finland is sending additional defense equipment aid to Ukraine, with the value of the latest aid package set at approximately 94 million euros, the government said in a press release on Friday.
AFP: Russian paramilitary fighters will have to swear an oath to the Russian flag, a presidential decree signed Friday stipulates, two days after the presumed death of mercenary chief Prigozhin.
CNN: Signs are growing that Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian defenses along part of the southern front lines in Zaporizhzhia region and are expanding a wedge toward the strategic town of Tokmak, while stepping up attacks on Russian-occupied Crimea.
Reuters: Social media channels linked to Russia's Wagner Group mercenaries said on Friday a top fighter in one of the group's subunits had been detained in Finland at Ukraine's request. Rusich, a far-right subunit affiliated to Wagner, identified him as Yan Petrovsky, a founding member and leader of the unit who has been under EU and US sanctions since last year.
Meduza: Russian Volunteer Corps, a militant group fighting on Ukraine’s side, is inviting Wagner mercenaries to join its ranks and avenge Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “cynical execution.” RVC’s leader Denis Kapustin promised Wagnerites a new march on Moscow after the war.
Reuters: German prosecutors said they are investigating the attempted murder of Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko after she was one of three Russian exile journalists who experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning.
AP News: Dutch brewer Heineken has completed its withdrawal from Russia, 18 months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, selling its business in Russia for just 1 euro, the company announced Friday. Heineken said it would incur a total loss of 300 million euros for the sale to Russian manufacturing giant the Arnest Group.
Reuters: Russia said on Friday Ukraine had fired a missile towards Moscow and attacked Crimea with 42 drones, in what would be one of the biggest known coordinated Ukrainian air attacks to date on Russian-held territory. The Russian defence ministry said a modified S-200 missile had been shot down over the Kaluga region, which borders the Moscow region. The city of Kaluga is less than 200 km from Moscow.
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