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Morning Headlines
Reuters: At least three people were wounded in two-waves of Russian drone and missile attacks overnight on the port city of Odesa, an official and the military in the Ukrainian region on the Black Sea said early on Monday.
Reuters: Russia is in the process of equipping its new nuclear submarines with hypersonic Zircon missiles, the head of Russia's largest shipbuilder told the RIA state news agency in an interview published on Monday.
AFP: An ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny went on trial in Siberia on Monday on charges of creating an "extremist organisation", a court spokeswoman told AFP, as authorities press ahead with a crackdown on dissent amid Russia's assault on Ukraine.
Reuters: Floods in Russia's Far East had forced the evacuation of more than 2,500 people by Monday, the ministry of emergency situations said, after Russia joined the list of countries battered by rainstorms in the wake of Typhoon Khanun.
ISW: The Russian information space is seizing on Ukrainian gains in Urozhaine (in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area) to highlight poor Russian morale and command challenges in the area.
Reuters: Global investors are losing confidence in securities linked to shares of companies in the world's geopolitical hot spots, investors and analysts said, after Moscow moved to de-list Russian depositary receipts from foreign exchanges in retaliation for Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
13.08.2023
CNN: Ukraine called Russia's boarding of a cargo vessel in the Black Sea on Sunday "a deliberate attack" and "an act of piracy," marking the latest flare-up over the sea's shipping lanes since a key grain deal collapsed last month.
Reuters: Russian shelling killed seven people, including a 22-day-old infant, and wounded at least 22 in Ukraine's southern region of Kherson on Sunday, prompting local officials to declare Monday a day of mourning and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to promise justice.
FT: Inflated shipping costs are enabling Russian companies to earn far more from crude oil sales to India than previously recognised, according to a Financial Times analysis which suggests that the charges may have raised more than $1bn in a single quarter.
Reuters: A governor of a western Russian region blamed a Ukrainian drone for damage to an apartment building in the city of Belgorod on Sunday, after Russia's defence ministry said air defences shot down at least four Ukrainian drones in the west of the country.
Reuters: Ukrainian border guards placed a new sign on Snake Island this weekend, recalling the early hours of Russia's invasion when a comrade on the strategic Black Sea outcrop used a choice phrase to refuse to surrender to a warship.
Rolling Stone: Russia’s decision to withdraw from a key humanitarian accord puts tens of millions of people at risk of acute food crisis around the world.
The Guardian: Ukraine is now the most heavily mined country on Earth and its army is suffering from a critical shortage of men and equipment able to clear the frontlines, the country’s defence minister has said, as soldiers spoke of heavy casualties in the engineering brigades.
Novaya-Europe: A shootout between Kadyrovites and soldiers of the Russian military commandant’s office took place Saturday evening in the Russian-occupied village of Urzuf near Mariupol, Ukrainian authorities reported.
Reuters: Germany's Rheinmetall will deliver a Luna New Generation drone system to Ukraine by the year end, Bild am Sonntag reported on Sunday, citing company sources.
12.08.2023
Reuters: Turkmenistan warned Russia on Saturday against trying to extend its influence over the Central Asia-China natural gas supply chain after Moscow said more countries could join its "gas union" with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
RFE/RL: A polytechnic school in Russia’s Tatarstan, a region some 900 kilometers east of Moscow, is using manufacturing facilities that are part of a nearby special economic zone to assemble Iranian attack drones and are increasingly turning to underage students as laborers, many of whom often work in exploitative conditions.
CNN: Beaches officially opened for swimming in Ukraine’s largest port city of Odesa for the first time since the Russian invasion began in February 2022, local officials announced Saturday. Bathing during air raid alerts, however, remains banned in the Black Sea city.
AP News: Poland’s defense minister said Saturday that the country has increased the number of troops protecting its border with Belarus as a deterrent amid “destabilizing” actions by its pro-Russian neighbor.
Reuters: Ukraine, which is seeking to form safe shipping routes in the Black Sea, has started registering ships willing to use the corridor it announced earlier this week, a local news agency said on Saturday.
AP News: A small number of Russian Orthodox priests are publicly opposing their leader's support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and they're suffering the consequences.
Reuters: Ukrainian forces targeted the Crimean Bridge and a number of other unspecified targets on the Crimean peninsula on Saturday in a flurry of rocket and drone attacks, but there were no casualties or damage, Russia's Defence Ministry said.
The Defense Post: The EU has delivered Ukraine 223,800 shells under the first part of a plan to provide a million artillery rounds to aid Kyiv’s fight against Russia, a spokesman said on Friday.
Reuters: An elderly woman and a police officer were killed early Saturday by Russian shelling on a settlement in Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine and Zaporizhzhia in the south, Ukrainian officials said.
ISW: Ukrainian forces made tactically significant advances in western Zaporizhia Oblast amid continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front on August 11. Ukraine’s counteroffensive operations appear to be forcing the Russian military to laterally redeploy Russian forces defending in western Zaporizhia Oblast, indicating that the Ukrainian effort there may be significantly degrading Russian defenses.
11.08.2023
The Kyiv Independent: The U.S. managed to convince Egypt not to send rockets to Russia but has so far failed to persuade Cairo to arm Ukraine instead, the Wall Street Journal reported on Aug. 11, citing U.S. and Egyptian officials.
Reuters: The White House on Friday said it was open to training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets in the United States if capacity for such training is reached in Europe.
RFE/RL has found documentary evidence that Russia is attacking Ukraine with cruise missiles that Kyiv handed over to Moscow in the 1990s.
The Moscow Times: Google has started blocking its popular workplace apps for Russian companies under U.S. sanctions, the Kommersant business daily reported Friday, citing anonymous sources at two major IT companies.
The US has sanctioned the Russia’s Alfa Group oligarchs – Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, German Khan, and Alexei Kuzmichev.
Reuters: Russia attacked the western Ukrainian region of Ivano-Frankivsk with hypersonic missiles on Friday, hitting areas near a military airfield and killing an eight-year-old boy, Ukrainian officials said.
AFP: A German officer arrested for allegedly spying for Russia had access to highly sensitive information in his work at the procurement unit of the military, local media reported Friday.
Kyiv Post: Kyiv has warned those living in Moscow to expect more attacks, adding the Russian capital’s air defenses appear incapable of protecting its citizens as the drone war between the two countries continues to escalate.
Reuters: President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Friday that the heads of all Ukraine's regional military recruitment centers were being dismissed from their jobs amid concerns about corruption.
Reuters: The German government is in talks with arms maker MBDA about the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, a security source told Reuters on Friday, echoing a report by Spiegel magazine.
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