Russia-Ukraine war live: Kyiv says international law dealt ‘heavy blow’ by Mongolia’s failure to arrest Putin during visit

Ukraine’s state railways said on Tuesday that Russia’s overnight attack targeted its infrastructure in the northeastern region of Sumy and central Dnipropetrovsk region.

On a recent morning deep in Ukrainian-occupied Russia, three soldiers from a Ukrainian special operations team jumped into their car, the back windscreen missing after being smashed out the previous day by explosives dropped from a Russian drone, and sped away in the direction of Ukraine.

Six hours later, they would be in Kyiv, together with a precious cargo of documents stashed in boxes piled on the back seat, the fruits of a four-day mission into enemy territory for the trio. The documents included Russian interior ministry papers and military orders, seized from official buildings in Sudzha, the town at the heart of Ukraine’s surprise Kursk operation, and from abandoned Russian trenches nearby.

Soldiers told Shaun Walker they had no warning of what they were undertaking before the morale-boosting incursion into Russia began. Read his full report here:

Vladimir Putin is visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country will bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the invasion of Ukraine.

Mongolia’s failure to arrest Putin dealt a “heavy blow” to the international criminal law system, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Monday as the Russian president arrived for talks likely to focus on a new gas pipeline connecting Russia and China. Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhiy Tykhyi said: “Mongolia has allowed an accused criminal to evade justice, thereby sharing responsibility for the war crimes.”

The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court since it issued a warrant for his arrest about 18 months ago. Before his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the European Union expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant.

Members of the international court are bound to detain suspects if an arrest warrant has been issued, but Mongolia is a landlocked country highly dependent on Russia for fuel and some of its electricity. The court doesn’t have a mechanism to enforce its warrants.

The International Criminal Court has accused Putin of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine. On Monday, the European Union expressed concern that the International Criminal Court warrant might not be executed and said it has shared its concern with Mongolian authorities.

In other developments:

• Russian invaders advanced on 477 sq km (184 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in August, Moscow’s biggest monthly increase since October 2022, according to data supplied by the Institute for the Study of War and analysed by Agence France-Presse. Ukraine meanwhile made its own rapid gains in early August, advancing more than 1,100 square kilometres into Russia’s Kursk region in two weeks, though its progress has slowed recently as the situation there has stabilised.

• Russia claimed to have captured a string of villages and settlements in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, inching towards the city of Pokrovsk. The Russian defence ministry said on Monday that it had captured the Donetsk village of Skuchne, without providing further details. Volodymyr Zelenskiy insisted the frontline had not moved. “In the Pokrovsk direction, no matter how difficult it is, there has been no progress for two days. This is what the commander-in-chief told me.”

• Putin on Monday acknowledged the difficulties Ukraine’s Kursk invasion – the largest attack by a foreign army on Russia since the second world war – was putting on Russian border regions. “People are experiencing and undergoing severe hardship, especially in the Kursk region,” Putin said in a speech to schoolchildren at a televised event in Siberia. “But the enemy did not achieve the main task that they set themselves: to stop our offensive in the Donbas … We have not had such a pace of offensive in the Donbas for a long time.”

• Russian forces launched a missile attack on Ukraine’s central city of Dnipro on Monday, killing one person and injuring three while damaging homes, said the Dnipropetrovsk regional governor, Serhiy Lysak. A Russian attack on Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Kharkiv on Monday hit a residential area and wounded at least 13 people, local officials said.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that Ukraine’s western allies should not only allow their weapons to be used for strikes deep inside Russia, but also supply Kyiv with more of them. After a meeting with the Dutch prime minister, Dick Schoof, in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday, Zelenskiy said Kyiv was “more positive” about the prospects of getting such permission.

• Schoof announced his government would give Ukraine €200m to help protect and repair the electricity infrastructure targeted almost daily by Russian bombs. He said the Netherlands would continue providing F-16 fighter jets and munitions to Ukraine and noted a plan floated last month by the US senator Lindsey Graham to let retired F-16 pilots from other countries join the fight in Ukraine. “But we have to look into those things, with all the countries involved with the F-16 coalition.”

• Schoof visited an underground school in Zaporizhzhia. “It must never be normal for children to have to go to school underground. It must never become normal for people’s homes to be cold because power plants have been bombed,” Schoof said. In Kyiv, Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched an overnight barrage of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles as children prepared to return to school on Monday after summer vacation. Three people were wounded and two kindergartens were damaged.

• Children and parents gathered outside a damaged school in Kyiv as firefighters put out flames and removed rubble. One mother arrived with her seven-year-old daughter, Sophia, unaware it had been hit. It was Sophia’s first day at a new school, her mother said, after a frightening night. “We hid in the bathroom, where it was relatively safe,” said the mother, who gave only her first name, Olena.

• Large numbers of Ukrainian refugee children are expected to begin attending Polish schools this autumn for the first time. For many, Monday will be their first time back at school in years since the double disruptions of the pandemic and the war. Many have been continuing their online education with schools in Ukraine from Poland. But now the Polish government says if they don’t attend in person it will withhold a monthly benefit of 800 złotys, about US$200, that is paid to families.

• Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said he met his French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu on Monday to discuss the situation on the frontline and air defences. Joint defence industries ventures were also discussed, he added.

• A senior Russian military commander, Maj Gen Valery Mumindzhanov, has been detained in a fraud case. He is the ninth top military figure to be arrested on charges of fraud, bribery or abuse of office in recent months. The Leningrad military district deputy commander was detained on suspicion of receiving a bribe of hundreds of thousands of dollars.