Russia-Ukraine war live: Ukraine advancing beyond Robotyne, official says; Zelenskiy denounces corrupt medical exemptions

Two Ukrainian “saboteurs” were killed and five captured during an incursion into the region of Bryansk, a Russian official said on Thursday.

AFP reports:

Russian regions bordering Ukraine have reported repeated shelling and attacks from Kyiv’s forces, including occasional cross-border incursions.

Bryansk governor Alexander Bogomaz said that a group of Ukrainian special forces tried to carry out a series of “terrorist acts on military and energy infrastructure facilities” on Wednesday.

“In the course of operational and combat measures in the Navlinsky district, two militants were liquidated, five were detained, three of whom were wounded,” he said in a post on social media.

The Navlinsky district is 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

Bogomaz said that the group used US-made automatic rifles and Nato-standard ammunition and grenades to carry out the attack, sharing an image of what appeared to be seized weapons.

He said in a later post that three drones were shot down over the region Thursday, and that there were no casualties.

Russia’s Federal Security Service confirmed it had “suppressed” Wednesday’s border incursion in a statement, and said it was looking at “criminal proceedings”.

The Guardian has not yet been able to verify these claims.

The UK government has named ex-energy secretary Grant Shapps as the new defence secretary, replacing Ben Wallace who said he wanted to step down after four years in the role.

Shapps has previously served as home secretary (for six days in former prime minister Liz Truss’s short-lived cabinet), business secretary, transport secretary and chairman of the Tory party, among a number of junior ministerial roles since 2010.

He has never held a role in the Ministry of Defence before.

Following his appointment as the new defence secretary, Shapps tweeted: “As I get to work at @DefenceHQ I am looking forward to working with the brave men and women of our armed forces who defend our nation’s security. And continuing the UK’s support for Ukraine in their fight against Putin’s barbaric invasion.”

Wallace, who had been touted as a potential successor to Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, had taken a leading role in shaping Britain’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

Under him, Britain provided £2.3bn of military aid to Kyiv in 2022 and became the first country to start supplying Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles in May this year to help end Europe’s biggest land war since the second world war.

He caused controversy in July after suggesting Ukraine ought to show more gratitude for the help it had received from the west, in response to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s complaints that his country had not been issued a firm timetable or set of conditions for joining Nato.

Wallace said that “whether we like it or not, people want to see a bit of gratitude”, when asked about Zelenskiy’s frustration at not being presented with a formal invitation to join Nato.

In Ukraine there was uncertainty as to whether Wallace’s intervention reflected No 10 policy – something Rishi Sunak later made clear was not the case. One former deputy from Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada, asked the Observer if the “lack of gratitude” comment was a manifestation of England’s baffling class system? “We don’t understand,” they admitted. Ukrainian Twitter, meanwhile, lit up with joking memes.

A newly released video of Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin purports to show him in Africa only days before his death.

Reuters reports:

For those who are discussing whether I’m alive or not, how I’m doing – right now it’s the weekend, second half of August 2023, I’m in Africa,” Prigozhin says in the short video published by the Grey Zone Telegram channel which is linked to his Wagner group.

“So for people who like to discuss wiping me out, or my private life, how much I earn or whatever else – everything’s OK,” he adds with a wave of his hand.

Reuters was not able to verify the location or the date of the video, which was filmed in a moving vehicle. Prigozhin’s camouflage clothing and hat, as well as the watch on his right hand, matched his appearance in a video released on 21 August, which he also claimed was filmed in Africa.

His “weekend” reference implied the latest clip must have been made on 19 or 20 August, only three or four days before he and other top Wagner figures and bodyguards were killed in a plane crash north of Moscow on 23 August.

In June, Prigozhin staged an aborted mutiny against Russian military commanders in which his Wagner troops briefly took control of the southern city of Rostov and advanced towards Moscow.

He was buried at the Porokhovskoye cemetery in his home town of St Petersburg on Tuesday.

Ben Wallace has confirmed his resignation as defence secretary after four years in the post.

In a letter to the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, Wallace said:

The Ministry of Defence is back on the path to being once again world class with world class people.

The United Kingdom is respected around the world for our armed forces and that respect has only grown more since the war in Ukraine.

I know you agree with me that we must not return to the days where defence was viewed as a discretionary spend by government and savings were achieved by hollowing out.

Sunak praised Wallace, telling him he leaves office with the prime minister’s “thanks and respect”.

Wallace played a key role in the UK’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and was a close ally of Boris Johnson.

In May, Britain became the first western country to provide Ukraine with the long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles that Kyiv wanted to boost its chances in its counteroffensive.

Ukraine makes progress towards Novoprokopivka, military spokesperson says

Emma Graham-Harrison

A military spokesperson says Ukrainian armed forces are making progress in the direction of Novoprokopivka – the village beyond Robotyne, in the direction of Melitopol.

The capture of Robotyne was announced earlier this week. Even though just a few miles from where Ukrainian troops were at the start of the counter-offensive, it marked a significant achievement in breaking through an initial line of Russian defences prepared over the winter.

This is very preliminary, but suggests they are consolidating those gains and moving further south.

The ultimate goal is to break through to the Azov sea, severing Russian logistics and communications lines with troops in Kherson and Crimea.

Russia’s air defences are struggling to detect and destroy Ukrainian drones launched on its territory, judging by how many have reached their targets, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

In its latest intelligence assessment, the MoD said the Ukrainian drone strikes on Wednesday were “the largest attack on Russia since the start of the conflict”, while it experienced 25 drone attacks in August alone.

“Russia is likely rethinking its air defence posture in the area between Ukraine and Moscow to better deal with these attacks,” the MoD said.

A Russian restaurateur and a pro-Kremlin rapper who together bought Starbucks’ business in Russia last year have taken over the assets of Domino’s Pizza in the country.

Anton Pinskiy and Timati said on Wednesday they would run the restaurants under the barely changed brand Domino Pizza, replacing the “I” with the Cyrillic equivalent “И” and retaining the franchise’s partners, 120 restaurants and more than 2,000 employees in Russia.

The announcement came nine days after DP Eurasia, the operator of the Domino’s Pizza brand in Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia, said it would file for bankruptcy for its Russian business after giving up attempts to sell it.

Western companies that pulled out of Russia when it sent its army into Ukraine last year have in many cases had to write off the value of their business there or sell their operations at huge discounts.

In July, the government seized control of the Russian subsidiaries of French yoghurt maker Danone and Danish brewer Carlsberg. Dutch brewer Heineken said last week it had sold its Russian operations for a symbolic one euro.

The shakeout has led to several high-profile rebrandings, with Lego stores becoming World of Cubes, Krispy Kreme morphing into Krunchy Dream and McDonald’s restaurants being relaunched as Vkusno & Tochka, or “Tasty and that’s it”. Pinskiy and Timati rebranded Starbucks as Stars Coffee.

Timati, whose real name is Timur Yunusov, already owns a big burger chain called Black Star. He has a long track record of support for the Kremlin, appearing with another performer, Sasha Chest, in a 2015 song with the lyric “My best friend is President Putin”.

Russian air defences shot down a drone that was approaching Moscow on Thursday morning, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Russian media reported that more than 40 flights were delayed on Thursday morning at the capital’s Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports, citing a flight tracking website.

Airports in Moscow have in the past weeks suspended flights repeatedly due to what Russian authorities said were Ukrainian drone attacks on the city.

Earlier, Russia said it had downed two Ukrainian drones in its southern Bryansk region a day after drones struck targets in at least six regions deep within Russia.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian drones struck targets deep within Russia, in one of the largest-scale attacks on Russia in months.

As well as Bryansk, drones hit an airport in the western Pskov region and were shot down over Moscow, Oryol, Ryazan and Kaluga.

The chief official in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, said a cruise missile was also fired at the peninsula on Wednesday.

“Anti-aircraft forces in eastern Crimea have downed a cruise missile,” Sergei Aksyonov said on Telegram.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has decried corrupt medical exemptions that have enabled people to avoid military service, saying the system was subject to bribes and mass departures abroad.

Zelenskiy said the National Security and Defence Council had considered data showing the extent of false exemptions, bribe-taking and flight abroad since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. The investigation of dubious medical exemptions was still being conducted, he said.

“There are examples of regions where the number of exemptions from military service due to medical commission decisions has increased tenfold since February last year,” Zelenskiy said on Wednesday in his nightly video address.

“It is absolutely clear what sort of decisions these are. Corrupt decisions.”

He said the investigation had exposed corrupt practices in different regions and by officials in different positions, involving bribes ranging from $3,000 to $15,000.

Zelenskiy said a separate analysis was needed to determine the numbers of people who had fled abroad, largely on the basis of medical commission decisions.

“We are talking about at least thousands of individuals,” he said.

Zelenskiy this month dismissed all the heads of Ukraine’s regional army recruitment centres.

He said more than 100 criminal cases had been opened in a wide-ranging investigation launched after a graft scandal at a recruitment office in southern Odesa region last month.

Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Mark Gerts bringing you the latest news.

Our top story this morning: Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has decried corrupt medical exemptions that have enabled people to avoid military service, saying the system was subject to bribes and mass departures abroad.

Meanwhile, Russian air defences shot down a drone that was approaching Moscow on Thursday morning, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said and Russia has claimed to have thwarted new Ukrainian attacks in its southern Bryansk region a day after drones struck targets in at least six areas deep within Russia.

More on these shortly. In other news:

• At least two people were reported killed in Kyiv in what authorities described as the heaviest series of Russian airstrikes on the Ukrainian capital for months. Air defences shot down all 28 Russian missiles and 15 out of 16 drones, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said on Wednesday.

• Six Ukrainian pilots were reportedly killed when two military helicopters crashed in the eastern Donetsk region. According to the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper, the two Mi-8 helicopters crashed in Kramatorsk on Tuesday. The aircraft were completely destroyed and the bodies of six dead servicemen were found.

• Russian investigators are considering the possibility that the plane carrying the Wagner mercenary head Yevgeny Prigozhin was shot down on purpose, the Kremlin said on Wednesday in the first explicit acknowledgment of what most already believed to have been an assassination. “It is obvious that different versions are being considered, including … a deliberate atrocity,” the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

• Russia is in secret, active talks with North Korea to acquire a range of munitions and supplies, the White House has said. “Arms negotiations between Russia and the DPRK are actively advancing,” the White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said, adding that a key focus of the talks was artillery ammunition.

• Tech companies including TikTok and Twitter failed to effectively tackle Russian disinformation online during the first year of the war in Ukraine, according to a study published on Wednesday by the EU. The independent study for the EU comes after tougher rules under its Digital Services Act kicked in this month for the world’s biggest online platforms.

• The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and his Turkish counterpart will discuss a proposal by Moscow for an alternative to the Black Sea grain deal when they meet this week, Lavrov’s ministry has said. Under the plan, Russia would send a million tonnes of grain to Turkey at a discounted price, with financial support from Qatar, to be processed in Turkey and sent to countries most in need, the foreign ministry said.