Opening summary
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. I’m Tom Ambrose.
Russian air defences shot down 11 Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow, “one of the largest” such strikes ever against the capital, officials said on Wednesday.
“Eleven drones were destroyed” over Moscow and its surrounding region, the defence ministry said.
“This is one of the largest ever attempts to attack Moscow with drones,” Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin added. Sobyanin said in an earlier post that no damage or casualties had been reported.
Drone attacks on Moscow are rare, with Russia saying in May it had downed a drone outside the capital, forcing restrictions to be imposed at two major airports in the city for under an hour.
Kyiv has repeatedly targeted oil and gas facilities in Russia since the conflict began in 2022, some hundreds of kilometres from its borders, in what it has called “fair” retaliation for attacks on its energy infrastructure.
Ukrainian drones attacked an oil storage facility in Russia’s southern Rostov region on Sunday, causing a large fire, the local governor said.
The blaze in the city of Proletarsk was still raging on Tuesday, with about 500 Russian firefighters working to put it out.
In other news:
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Ukraine has said large numbers of Russian servicemen – reportedly in the hundreds – gave themselves up during the Kursk offensive that began on 6 August. Agence France-Presse has visited a detention centre just across the border in Ukraine’s Sumy region.
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One 22-year-old Russian PoW – a conscript – said he and others were “simply abandoned by our command” when Ukrainian troops appeared and now he hoped “to be exchanged and go back home … to my family”. The deputy head of the detention facility, who gave his name as Volodymyr, told AFP that the PoWs were initially afraid but “came to life” after realising they were being well treated.
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Ukraine’s army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said its forces had reached 28-35km (17-22 miles) into Russia’s Kursk region, while Moscow was moving some of its troops from other directions to strengthen positions there. Russia has formed three new military groupings to bolster security in regions bordering Ukraine, the Russian defence minister, Andrei Belousov, has said.
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The internationally sanctioned, Kremlin-linked newspaper Izvestia has quoted Russian intelligence as saying US, British and Polish intelligence were involved in preparing the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk. Voldymyr Zelenskiy has insisted Ukraine’s allies were not informed as they would have ruled out the plan as “unrealistic”; while other officials and analysts have said telling the US and others would have made it impossible to keep the operation secret, based on past leaks.
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Russia hit energy infrastructure in northern Ukraine in a missile and drone attack and caused a huge fire that released chlorine into the air, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday. The fumes came from an industrial facility that was attacked in the western region of Ternopil.
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Ukrainian forces shot down three ballistic missiles and 25 of the 26 drones launched in Tuesday morning’s attack on nine regions, Ukraine’s air force commander said. It included Russia’s fifth missile attack this month on Kyiv, the capital.
Key events
Medvedev: There will no talks with Ukraine after Kursk incursion
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region means that there will be no talks between Moscow and Kyiv until Ukraine is completely defeated, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s security council, said on Wednesday.
“The empty chatter of intermediaries that no one had appointed about the wonderful peace is over. Everyone understands everything now, even though they do not say it out loud,” Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
“There will be NO MORE NEGOTIATIONS UNTIL THE COMPLETE DEFEAT OF THE ENEMY!”
Ukraine’s military said it struck an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system based in Russia’s southern Rostov region overnight.
Kyiv’s general staff said the attack took place near the settlement of Novoshakhtinsk, and that S-300s had been used to attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
“Explosions were observed at specified targeting points,” the General Staff said in a statement. “The accuracy of the strike is being assessed.”
Rostov governor Vasily Golubev said air defence forces had destroyed a Ukraine-launched missile over his region, but Russia’s defence ministry made no mention of the incident in its daily statement on destroyed air weapons.
Opening summary
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. I’m Tom Ambrose.
Russian air defences shot down 11 Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow, “one of the largest” such strikes ever against the capital, officials said on Wednesday.
“Eleven drones were destroyed” over Moscow and its surrounding region, the defence ministry said.
“This is one of the largest ever attempts to attack Moscow with drones,” Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin added. Sobyanin said in an earlier post that no damage or casualties had been reported.
Drone attacks on Moscow are rare, with Russia saying in May it had downed a drone outside the capital, forcing restrictions to be imposed at two major airports in the city for under an hour.
Kyiv has repeatedly targeted oil and gas facilities in Russia since the conflict began in 2022, some hundreds of kilometres from its borders, in what it has called “fair” retaliation for attacks on its energy infrastructure.
Ukrainian drones attacked an oil storage facility in Russia’s southern Rostov region on Sunday, causing a large fire, the local governor said.
The blaze in the city of Proletarsk was still raging on Tuesday, with about 500 Russian firefighters working to put it out.
In other news:
-
Ukraine has said large numbers of Russian servicemen – reportedly in the hundreds – gave themselves up during the Kursk offensive that began on 6 August. Agence France-Presse has visited a detention centre just across the border in Ukraine’s Sumy region.
-
One 22-year-old Russian PoW – a conscript – said he and others were “simply abandoned by our command” when Ukrainian troops appeared and now he hoped “to be exchanged and go back home … to my family”. The deputy head of the detention facility, who gave his name as Volodymyr, told AFP that the PoWs were initially afraid but “came to life” after realising they were being well treated.
-
Ukraine’s army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said its forces had reached 28-35km (17-22 miles) into Russia’s Kursk region, while Moscow was moving some of its troops from other directions to strengthen positions there. Russia has formed three new military groupings to bolster security in regions bordering Ukraine, the Russian defence minister, Andrei Belousov, has said.
-
The internationally sanctioned, Kremlin-linked newspaper Izvestia has quoted Russian intelligence as saying US, British and Polish intelligence were involved in preparing the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk. Voldymyr Zelenskiy has insisted Ukraine’s allies were not informed as they would have ruled out the plan as “unrealistic”; while other officials and analysts have said telling the US and others would have made it impossible to keep the operation secret, based on past leaks.
-
Russia hit energy infrastructure in northern Ukraine in a missile and drone attack and caused a huge fire that released chlorine into the air, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday. The fumes came from an industrial facility that was attacked in the western region of Ternopil.
-
Ukrainian forces shot down three ballistic missiles and 25 of the 26 drones launched in Tuesday morning’s attack on nine regions, Ukraine’s air force commander said. It included Russia’s fifth missile attack this month on Kyiv, the capital.