Russia-Ukraine war: Ukraine successes have ‘significant implications’ for Russia, says UK – live updates | Russia

Reuters reports that Xi Jinping will leave China for the first time in more than two years for a trip this week to Central Asia where he will meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The trip, Xi’s first abroad since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, will see him undertake a state visit to Kazakhstan on Wednesday. China’s president will then meet Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s summit in Samarkand in Uzbekistan.

Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters last week that the Russian president was expected to meet Xi at the summit. China has today confirmed the details.

Kirill Stremousov, one of the Russian-imposed leaders in occupied Kherson, has been very active on Telegram this morning, posting several videos that appear to be an attempt to boost morale, having questioned the loss of territory by pro-Russian forces earlier. [See 8.12am]

In his latest post, he has appeared on the Antonivskyi Bridge, the crossing that links the city of Kherson to the bulk of the oblast to the south. He has posted that it has been struck again by Ukrainian forces, whom he dubs “Ukronazis”, and he heaped praise on the Soviet Union. He writes:

Ukronazis continue shelling the civilian infrastructure of Kherson and the Kherson region. The shelling of the Antonivskyi Bridge continues. The bridge stands as a symbol of the reinforced concrete unity of a large and friendly country – the USSR. The city of Kherson has never been and will never be given to the Nazis.

The Russian news agency Tass is reporting claims by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) that it has prevented “a series of sabotage and terrorist acts against officials” in the occupied Kherson region of Ukraine and in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Without presenting any evidence, the FSB stated:

During the course of operations, the FSB of the Russian Federation prevented an attempt by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to commit a series of sabotage and terrorist acts against officials of the military-civilian administration of the Kherson region of Ukraine and members of the government of the Republic of Crimea.

The FSB goes on to claim that it has detained an SBU officer in charge of the plans.

The acting United Nations high commissioner for human rights said on Monday morning that Russia was intimidating opponents of the war in Ukraine.

“In the Russian Federation, the intimidation, restrictive measures and sanctions against people voicing opposition to the war in Ukraine undermine the exercise of constitutionally guaranteed fundamental freedoms, including the rights to free assembly, expression and association,” Reuters reports Nada al-Nashif said in a speech at the opening of the human rights council in Geneva.

She also said Moscow was violating the right to access information by pressuring journalists, blocking the internet and through other forms of censorship.

Here are some of the latest images that have been sent to us over the newswires from Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev, the hawkish long-term ally of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and currently deputy chairman of the security council of Russia, has been threatening Ukraine again on Telegram. He has posted:

Zelenskiy said that he would not engage in dialogue with those who put forward ultimatums. The current “ultimatums” are a child’s warm-up for the demands of the future. And he knows them: the total capitulation of the Kyiv regime on Russia’s terms.

Kirill Stremousov, who is one of the leaders of the Russian-imposed authorities in occupied Kherson in southern Ukraine, has posted to Telegram this morning a message that references the reported territorial losses for Russian forces to the north, while striking a defiant tone about the future of Kherson. The post reads:

Stremousov is at his workplace in Kherson. Kherson is and will be a Russian city. No one is going to surrender the city, let alone retreat.

Along the entire perimeter of the Kherson region, the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation has built lines of defence and nothing threatens the city of Kherson and the Kherson region.

Regarding the situation in the Kharkiv region, many of us are at a loss about the current situation. Time will put everything in its place and we will definitely get answers to our questions.

In the city of Kherson, everything is calm and there is no panic. We will go on the air more often and give most up-to-date information.

Here is an image that has been supplied to the newswires showing smoke rising earlier this morning in the aftermath of a Russian attack on the electricity supply in Kharkiv.

Ukraine’s security service has posted pictures of what it claims is captured ammunition to social media this morning, with the message: “The Russian invaders are fleeing from Ukrainian soldiers so that they leave behind entire arsenals of ammunition. And we will definitely use them for their intended purpose – against the enemy.”

One of the Telegram channels of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic has given civilian casualty figures for the last 24 hours, stating that 11 settlements in the territory it claims to control were fired upon by Ukrainian forces. It claims that four people were killed, three injured, and that seven houses and three civilian infrastructure facilities were damaged.

The claims have not been independently verified. Russia, Syria and North Korea are the only UN member states to recognise the Donetsk People’s Republic as a legitimate authority.

The Ukrainian military claims it has forced Russian forces from more than 20 towns and villages in the past 24 hours, according to a Facebook post by the Ukraine general staff.

The general staff also claimed that Russian forces were fleeing deep into the occupied areas of the Donbas or back into Russia itself.

The liberation of settlements from the Russian invaders in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions continues. As previously reported, during the retreat, Russian troops quickly abandon their positions and flee deep into the temporarily occupied territories or into the territory of the Russian Federation. This trend persists. So, over the past day, the occupiers have taken away property and vehicles looted from local residents from Velikiy Burluk and Dvorichna settlements of Kharkiv oblast.

In general, during the past day, the defence forces managed to dislodge the enemy from more than 20 settlements. Taking them under full control and stabilisation measures are being carried out.

The post said that the Russians were concentrating their fire on controlling the Donetsk oblast, “holding the temporarily captured territories and disrupting the offensive of our troops in certain directions”. All areas of Ukraine were under threat from Russian fire, it said.

In the Kherson area, Ukraine says that the Russians have suffered heavy losses. “The rest of the servicemen have an extremely low morale and psychological state, they massively refuse to return to the combat zone,” the post claimed.

For its part, Russia’s military said on Monday on Telegram that it had “inflicted defeat on” Ukrainian units in Pristin, Boldyrevka, Sinikha, Beloe, Komarovka, Gorokhovatka, Kupyansk, Senkovo ​​and Podvysokoye of the Kharkiv region. More than 250 Ukrainian troops had been killed, the Russian defence ministry said.

The Russians also said that heavy losses had been inflicted on Ukraine in the Nikolaev (Mykolaiv) area. In all, the ministry said, more than 4,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed.

Ukraine has accused Russia of launching cruise missile attacks on Kharkiv in “revenge” for the battlefield defeats the invading force has suffered in recent days.

The mayor of Kharkiv city, Ihor Terekhov, said one strike had cut electricty and water supplies to the city. There were also reports of blackouts in Dnipro, Poltava and other eastern cities, potentially affecting millions of civilians, but Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of president Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s office, said later that power had been restored in some regions.

Here is a video showing some of the destruction.

You can read the full story here:

Ukraine successes have ‘significant implications’ for Russian operation, says UK

‘Do you still think that you can scare us?’ Zelenskiy asks Russia

Western governments are mobilising their arms manufacturers to ramp up production and replenish stockpiles heavily diminished by supplying Ukraine’s six-month-old battle against Russia’s invasion, according to Agence-France Presse.

The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, is organising a meeting of senior national armaments directors from allied countries to make long-term plans for supplying Ukraine and rebuilding their own arms reserves.

“They will discuss how our defence industrial bases can best equip Ukraine’s future forces with the capabilities that they need,” he said at a meeting at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany of the Ukraine Contact Group, 50 countries supporting the war effort.

Pentagon’s arms acquisition chief, Bill LaPlante, said the meeting would take place in Brussels on 28 September. The goal was to determine “how we can continue to work together to ramp up production of key capabilities and resolve supply chain issues and increase interoperability and interchangeability of our systems”, LaPlante told reporters at the Pentagon.

Nato has provided millions of dollars worth of military supplies to Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict, including Himars mobile missile systems.

The US has pledged $15.2bn-worth of weaponry, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, artillery and ammunition compatible with Nato weaponry.

European Union countries agreed in July to spend another €500m (£425m) to supply arms to Ukraine, taking the bloc’s security support to €2.5bn since February.

Britain has has committed to spending more than a £1bn on arming Ukraine.

Hello, I’m Martin Farrer and I will be bringing you updates on the war in Ukraine for the next hour or so.

The main development is the aftermath of Ukraine’s swift counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region which has seen it reclaim at least 3,000 square kms of territory east of the city.

Russia, which has not commented on the losses, responded by launching 11 cruise missiles against the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.

• Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has accused Russia of “terrorist” attacks on infrastructure targets in Kharkiv, the country’s second city. The attacks came hours after Ukrainian forces reclaimed thousands of square miles of territory east of the city as Russian forces abandoned their positions in the face of a counteroffensive. Zelenskiy said in a message on Telegram on Sunday night that “Ukraine and the civilized world clearly see these terrorist acts” and that Russia was trying to deprive his people of “gas, light, water and food”. He added that Ukraine would prevail and appeared to address the Russian leadership saying: “Do you still think that you can scare us?”

• Russian forces launched a total of 11 missiles against eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Air Force announced in a tweet on Sunday night, causing a total blackout in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, and partial blackouts in the Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, said Kharkiv’s CHPP-5 electricity station – one of the largest in Ukraine – had been hit. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president’s office, said later that power had been restored in some regions.

• The US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, also denounced Russia’s strikes on the power and water facilities. “Russia’s apparent response to Ukraine liberating cities and villages in the east: sending missiles to attempt to destroy critical civilian infrastructure,” Brink tweeted.

• The general commanding Russia’s western army group has been sacked in the wake of the retreat in the Kharkiv region, according to Ukrainian military intelligence. It reported on its Telegram channel that Gen Roman Berdnikov has been replaced after only 17 days in his post, the GUR said.

• Moscow’s leadership has remained silent on the defeats in Ukraine, with neither President Vladimir Putin or his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, making any comment as of midday on Sunday. However, its defence ministry said on Telegram that its forces in the Kharkiv region had “inflicted defeat on” Ukrainian units in Pristin, Boldyrevka, Sinikha, Beloe, Komarovka, Gorokhovatka, Kupyansk, Senkovo ​​and Podvysokoye of the Kharkov region.

• A Russian nationalist militant and former FSB officer who helped launch a 2014 war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region compared the collapse of one of the conflict’s principal frontlines to a catastrophic defeat in the Russo-Japanese war which triggered Russia’s 1905 Revolution. Igor Girkin said it was like the 1905 Battle of Mukden.

• Ukraine on Sunday shut down the last operating reactor at Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant to guard against a catastrophe as fighting rages nearby. Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of shelling around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia plant, risking a release of radiation. The International Atomic Energy Agency said a backup power line to the plant had been restored, providing the external electricity it needed to carry out the shutdown while defending against the risk of a meltdown.

• French President Emmanuel Macron told Putin in a phone call on Sunday the plant’s occupation by Russian troops is the reason why its security is compromised, the French presidency said. Putin blamed Ukrainian forces, according to a Kremlin statement.