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Morning Headlines
Reuters: Russian prosecutors said on Monday they had designated The Clooney Foundation for Justice, a U.S. non-profit group, as an "undesirable" organisation for carrying out work at "a Hollywood scale" to discredit Moscow. The Foundation was founded by actor George Clooney and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.
Reuters: A Russian court rejected an appeal of a U.S. soldier who was sentenced in June to nearly four years in a penal colony after being found guilty of stealing $113 from his girlfriend and making threats to kill her, the court said on Monday.
Reuters: Russia has complained to Germany over its investigation into the 2022 explosions of the Nord Stream pipelines, RIA news agency reported on Monday, after a key suspect escaped arrest in Poland.
ISW: The Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast continues to force Russia to redeploy forces from elsewhere in the theater, and likely subsequent phases of fighting within Russia will require more Russian manpower and materiel commitments to the area.
Reuters: Ukraine's air defence units repelled Russia's overnight air attack, including on Kyiv, destroying all 11 drones that Moscow launched, targeting Ukraine's territory, Ukraine's air force said on Monday.
18.08.2024
AP News: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday the daring military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region aims to create a buffer zone to prevent further attacks by Moscow across the border.
POLITICO: Sen. Mark Kelly said Sunday that Ukraine’s decision to counter the ongoing Russian invasion by attacking Russia itself could change how that war plays out.
The Kyiv Independent: Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy company, uses a Dutch subsidiary to move "hundreds of millions in profits," Dutch media outlet NOS reported, citing a report from Rosatom’s subsidiary, Uranium One Cooperative.
AFP: Putin arrived in Azerbaijan's capital Baku on Sunday for a two-day state visit, Russian news agencies said.
The Kyiv Independent: The German Finance Ministry refuted on reports that Berlin will not provide additional aid to Ukraine, Suspilne news agency reported on Aug. 18.
Reuters: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday that Ukraine had stationed more than 120,000 troops at its border with Belarus and Minsk had deployed nearly a third of its armed forces along the entire border, the Belta state news agency reported.
POLITICO: Ukrainian forces destroyed a second bridge across the Seim River in Russia's Kursk region, officials said, just days after a separate crossing was targeted in the same region as Kyiv continues its major cross-border offensive.
The Insider: Russian official blasts superiors in leaked call amid Ukraine's Kursk offensive. An epic rant from a Kursk Oblast municipal official details the chaos after Ukraine's incursion on Aug. 6.
Reuters: Russia on Sunday carried out its third ballistic missile attack on Kyiv this month but preliminary data indicated most of the projectiles were shot down on approach, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital said.
ISW: The Ukrainian operation in Kursk Oblast has already generated theater-wide operational and strategic pressures on Russian forces, and subsequent phases of fighting within Russia will likely generate even greater pressures on Putin and the Russian military.
17.08.2024
The Moscow Times: Russia opened a criminal probe on Saturday into two Italian journalists who reported on Ukraine's offensive in the Kursk region, accusing them of crossing the border illegally.
AP News: Chechnya President Ramzan Kadyrov invited Tesla CEO Elon Musk to Russia on Saturday after being filmed behind the wheel of one of the company’s Cybertrucks mounted with a machine gun.
AFP: Germany, the second largest contributor of aid to Ukraine, plans to halve its military aid to Kyiv in 2025, a parliamentary source told AFP Saturday.
Reuters: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday his troops had strengthened positions in Russia's Kursk region nearly two weeks into their incursion, and called for bold decisions by Kyiv's allies to allow long-range strikes.
AP News: Russia kept up its assault on Ukraine Saturday even as Ukrainian forces pushed into Russia’s Kursk border region.
The Kyiv Independent: Ukraine's incursion into Russia is disrupting plans for indirect talks in Qatar on mutually halting strikes on energy infrastructure, the Washington Post wrote on Aug. 17, citing undisclosed official sources.
ISW: Ukrainian forces continued to marginally advance southeast of Sudzha on August 16 amid continued Ukrainian operations in Kursk Oblast.
The Kyiv Independent: The U.K. government asked the U.S. over a month ago for permission for Ukraine to use British Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia but is yet to receive a positive response, The Times reported on Aug. 16, citing undisclosed government sources.
16.08.2024
Reuters: Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Friday that it had summoned Italy's ambassador in Moscow over what it said was "illegal border crossing" by a team of correspondents from Italian state broadcaster RAI, who reported from Ukrainian-held parts of Russia's Kursk region this week.
The Kyiv Independent: Ukraine can determine how and when to use Spanish-supplied equipment, Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said during her visit to the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps in Spain, EFE news agency reported on Aug. 16.
AFP: Russia's Belgorod region bordering Ukraine from Monday will remove residents from five villages and close access, the governor said, as the area comes under heavy attack from Ukraine.
Reuters: Ukraine has set up storage facilities in its northern region of Sumy to hold and send humanitarian aid to Russian civilians in the Kyiv-held part of Russia's western region of Kursk, the interior minister said on Friday.
The Kyiv Independent: Hungary's decision to ease entry rules for Russian citizens "may constitute a serious security risk," leaders of Nordic and Baltic countries said in a joint letter to European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson on Aug. 16.
Reuters: China and Saudi Arabia were the top destinations for Russian seaborne fuel oil and vacuum gasoil exports in July, traders said and LSEG data showed on Friday.
POLITICO: Canada places no geographic restrictions on the use of military equipment it has donated and continues to donate to Ukraine, Andrée-Anne Poulin, Canadian defense department spokesperson, told POLITICO in an email on Friday.
AP News: Military authorities in the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk on Friday urged civilians to speed up their evacuation because the Russian army is quickly closing in on what has for months been one of Moscow’s key targets.
FT: The world’s biggest oilfield services company is expanding in Russia following the exit of its main western rivals since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. SLB, the Houston-based company formerly known as Schlumberger, has signed new contracts and recruited hundreds of staff despite the war in Ukraine (archive).
The Kyiv Independent: Ukraine's military on Aug. 16 published for the first time footage of the early hours of the cross-border incursion into Russia's Kursk Oblast on Aug. 6.
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