The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EDT.
9:18 p.m.: The Wall Street Journal reports that Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones started appearing above the battlefields of Ukraine. Ukrainian commanders say the drones took out four self-propelled howitzers, and two armored infantry vehicles. The drones have been mostly deployed in the Kharkiv region, where Russian forces no longer have an artillery advantage, thanks to the recent Ukrainian counter-offensive. The Journal report quoted a Ukrainian field commander as saying he hoped the U.S. and allies could provide Ukraine with more advanced antidrone technologies, or would step in to disrupt Iranian drone shipments to Russia.
8:11 p.m.: A leading Ukrainian ballet dancer who died this week fighting on the front line of his country’s war against Russian invaders was honored with a memorial service in the National Opera of Ukraine on Saturday, Reuters reported.
The National Opera described Oleksandr Shapoval as a “courageous romantic” and brave warrior who died under Russian mortar shelling in the eastern Ukraine on Sept. 12
Mourners included soldiers from Shapoval’s unit, honor guards and members of the artistic community of Kyiv.
“To lose a friend is always very hard. To me he was a friend, brother-in-arms. He was a very decent person. My soul is empty. To me he will forever be alive,” said Roman Turshyiev, who fought alongside Shapoval in the same unit.
Shapoval, 47, retired from a long dancing career at the National Opera last year and began teaching in Kyiv before joining a territorial guard to defend the capital after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.
He later volunteered to join the army and fought in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, scene of some of the war’s most intense fighting.
7:02 p.m.: Poland’s top leaders celebrated the opening Saturday of a new — albeit unfinished — canal that they say will mean ships no longer must secure Russia’s permission to sail from the Baltic Sea to the ports of the Vistula Lagoon, The Associated Press reported.
The event was timed to mark 83 years since the Soviet invasion of Poland during World War II and to demonstrate symbolically the end of Moscow’s say on the economy and development of a region that borders Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. The government says the waterway gives Poland full sovereignty in the northeastern region, which needs investment and economic development.
6:06 p.m.: President Tayyip Erdogan said he was targeting membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) for NATO-member Turkey, broadcaster NTV and other media said on Saturday.
He was speaking to reporters after attending the SCO summit in Uzbekistan before heading to the United States for the United Nations General Assembly.
Turkey is a dialogue partner of the SCO, whose members are China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Amid bilateral discussions at the summit, Erdogan had talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Erdogan said Turkey and Russia had reached a deal resolving a dispute over a nuclear power plant being built at Akkuyu in southern Turkey.
5 p.m.: The Czech Republic, which currently holds the EU presidency, on Saturday called for the establishment of an international tribunal for war crimes after new mass graves were found in Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported.
The appeal follows the discovery of around 450 graves outside the formerly Russian-occupied city of Izium with some of the exhumed bodies showing signs of torture.
“In the 21st century, such attacks against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent,” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said on Twitter.
Investigators said some bodies in the graves found near the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium had hands tied behind their backs. They also found the bodies of children.
4:35 p.m.: An honor guard fired a three-gun salute toward cloudy skies as friends and comrades-in-arms gathered in Kyiv to bid farewell to a Russian woman who was killed while fighting on Ukraine’s side in the war with her native country, The Associated Press reported.
Olga Simonova, 34, was remembered for her courage and kindness at a funeral in the Ukrainian capital on Friday.
Simonova’s coffin was draped in the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag, with a cuddly toy lion on top. Her nom de guerre was “Simba,” like the main character in the Disney cartoon “The Lion King.”
3:25 p.m.: The representative of the Pope in Ukraine, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, and the company with whom he was traveling in Ukraine came under fire Saturday while transporting humanitarian aid near the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrinform reported.
Neither Cardinal Krajewski nor any of his party were hurt.
The cardinal, along with Catholic and Protestant bishops, accompanied by a Ukrainian military serviceman, were on a mission to distribute humanitarian aid.
On one of the planned stages of the trip, the group came under fire, and the cardinal had to run for shelter.
“For the first time in my life, I didn’t know where to run, because running is not enough, you need to know where to run,” the cardinal told Vatican media.
Krajewski is on a fourth visit to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion in late February.
2:30 p.m.: Ukrainian authorities exhumed more of the dead Saturday from a mass burial site by a cemetery in the town of Izium, where officials say hundreds are buried in territory recaptured from Russian forces.
There was no immediate public comment from Russia, which denies deliberately attacking civilians. The head of the pro-Russian administration which abandoned the area last week on Friday accused Ukrainians of staging atrocities.
Police experts and investigators documented the findings on camera and inspected the bodies. Some bodies found so far have been of Ukrainian soldiers; others are civilians.
2 p.m.: Greenpeace environmental activists blocked the unloading of a shipment of Russian gas at a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in northern Finland, RFE/RL reported.
“The shipment contained liquefied natural gas coming from Russia,” Olga Vaisanen, a spokeswoman for Finnish state-owned company Gasum — which imported the blocked gas — told the French news service Agence France-Presse Saturday.
The activists demanded that the Nordic nation cease importing Russian gas following the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February.
“It’s completely unacceptable that Russian gas is still allowed to flow in Finland, more than six months after [Russian President Vladimir] Putin launched his invasion,” Greenpeace activist Olli Tiainen said in a statement.
“The Finnish government and Prime Minister Sanna Marin must ban all fossil fuel imports from Russia immediately,” Greenpeace posted on Twitter.
1:35 p.m.: Serhiy Haidai, the head of the Luhansk civil-military administration, today warned the region’s residents not to expect heating this winter, Ukrainska Pravda reported.
“Russian forces destroyed practically all of the infrastructure there,” Haidai said in a Telegram message. Even if the region were to be liberated, local authorities will ask residents not to return home long because it would be impossible for workers to restore boilers in time for cold weather.
12:50 p.m.: Russia’s defense ministry said Saturday that its forces had launched strikes on Ukrainian positions in several parts of Ukraine. It also accused Kyiv of carrying out shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Russian forces conducted their strikes in the Kherson, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, according to the ministry, adding that Ukrainian forces had carried out an unsuccessful offensive near Pravdyne in Kherson.
11:45 a.m.: Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is once again receiving electricity directly from the national grid after engineers repaired one of the four main external power lines that have all been damaged during the conflict, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported today.
But IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi cautioned that the situation at the plant remains precarious as long as Russia is shelling in the wider area.
10:30 a.m.: President Joe Biden has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.
In an interview with CBS News to air September 18, Biden said, “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. You will change the face of war unlike anything since World War II.”
Interviewer Scott Pelley asked what the U.S. response would be in such a case.
“You think I would tell you if I knew exactly what it would be?” Biden said. “Of course, I’m not gonna tell you. It’ll be consequential.”
And he added, “They’ll become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been. And depending on the extent of what they do will determine what response would occur.”
9:55 a.m.: Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal thanked the United States on Saturday for its support after Ukraine received a further $1.5 billion in international financial assistance.
“The state budget of Ukraine received a grant of $1.5 billion. This is the last tranche of $4.5 billion aid from the United States from @WorldBank Trust Fund,” Shmyhal tweeted.
He said the funds would be used to reimburse budget expenditures for pension payments and social assistance programs.
9:30 a.m.: Andriy Yermak, President Voldymyr Zelenskyy’s chief-of-staff, posted photos on Twitter, showing graves allegedly containing the bodies of a six-year-old girl and her parents reportedly murdered by Russian forces, in Izium, Kharkiv region.
“The Russians are killing entire Ukrainian families,” Yermak wrote. “Izyum, Olesya, 6 years old. Killed by Russian terrorists. Her parents are buried nearby.”
The Ukrainian military general staff on Friday published a photo of a recently discovered grave site in Izium, with Zelenskyy saying that many of the already exhumed bodies showed signs of torture, including broken limbs and ropes around their necks. He said more than 440 graves have been found at the site but that the number of victims was not yet known.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Reintegration suggested that the number of victims in Izium could be higher than in Bucha, another formerly occupied town where Russian forces were reported to have committed atrocities. Ukrainian authorities have said 458 bodies were found there after a 33-day Russian occupation.
9 a.m.: Spain has sent five cargo planes with artillery ammunition to Ukraine, The Kyiv Independent reports. Ukraine’s general staff says Spain has delivered 75 pallets of ammunition for large-caliber artillery systems to Ukraine over the “last several days,” and is also delivering military cold weather gear to Ukraine.
“[This] is an example of Spain’s decisive and constant support of the Ukrainian people,” said Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles.
8:15 a.m.: Russian forces are building fortifications in Luhansk, transferring troops and equipment to the area of Svatove, and have turned off cable internet for the population, Serhiy Haidai, head of the Luhansk region civil-military administration, Ukrainska Pravda reports.
“After the mobile internet, cable internet is also being turned off in the territory of Luhansk Oblast (region). The population of the so-called “LPR” (self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic”) is isolated from the outside world,” Haidai said in a message on Telegram.
7:50 a.m.: Donetsk region Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko reported Saturday that a Russian attack had damaged a thermal power plant in Sloviansk, and that firefighters were on the scene, The Kyiv Independent reported. The shelling also impacted the water supply in the neighboring town of Mykolaivka, according to Kyrylenko.
5:17 a.m.: In its latest Ukraine assessment, the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said the discovery of mass graves and torture chambers in liberated Izyum confirm previous ISW assessments that the Bucha atrocities were emblematic of Russian activities in occupied areas rather than an anomaly.
Ukrainian forces, the assessment said, captured all of Kupyansk City on Sept. 16, continuing offensive operations east of the Oskil River. They also reportedly shelled targets in Valuyki, Belgorod Oblast, Russia, overnight Sept. 15-16.
4:19 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry said Ukraine continues offensive operations in the north-east of the country while Russian forces have established a defensive line between the Oskil River and the town of Svatove.
3:15 a.m.: Russia has barred another 41 Australian nationals from entering the country, the foreign ministry said on Friday, according to Reuters.
Among the individuals added are journalists from Australia’s Sky News, ABC, 7NEWS and Nine News, as well as arms industry executives.
2:16 a.m.: The defense ministers of Germany and Greece have agreed on a deal to deliver 40 BMP-1 tanks to Ukraine, the German Defense Ministry said Friday, according to Reuters.
1:13 a.m.: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said he had not yet decided whether to personally attend a summit of the Group of 20 nations in Indonesia in November, Reuters reported.
However, Putin, speaking to reporters in Uzbekistan after a regional summit, said Russia would be represented at the meeting.
12:02 a.m.: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday there were no plans to adjust Russia’s military operations in Ukraine despite a counter-offensive, saying Moscow was in no rush to finish the campaign, Agence France-Presse reported.
“The plan is not subject to adjustment,” Putin told reporters during a regional summit in Uzbekistan.
“Our offensive operations in Donbas itself do not stop. They are going at a slow pace … the Russian army is occupying newer and newer territories,” Putin said.
“We are not in a hurry … there are no changes.”
Putin said Russia was “not fighting with a full army” but only contract soldiers and said the main goal of the campaign remained “the liberation of the entire territory of Donbas.”
He accused Ukrainian forces of attempts to carry out “terrorist acts” and damage Russian civilian infrastructure.
“We are really quite restrained in our response to this, for the time being,” Putin said. “If the situation continues to develop in this way, the response will be more serious.”
Source: Voice of America
