Russia-Ukraine war updates: EU delivers more than 220,000 shells to Ukraine

Ukraine is working hard to develop alternative export routes for grain, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy amid Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea ports.

“We are doing everything possible to ensure that Ukraine continues to be a guarantor of food security,” Zelenskyy said in his evening video address on Friday. He also said Ukraine’s people needed access to world markets.

The president reported in Kyiv that he had discussed the issue with the heads of the army, intelligence service and navy as well as government representatives.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Igor Strelkov, a former Russian intelligence officer whose speeches were filled with historic references, rose to fame as one of the poster boys of the “Russian Spring”.

The term mirrored the “Arab Spring” uprisings of the early 2010s and was coined by Russia to describe Crimea’s annexation and Moscow-backed revolts in southeastern Ukraine in 2014.

To the Kremlin’s backers, pencil-moustached Strelkov, now 52, was the perfect antidote for phantom pains about Russia’s long-gone imperial might, a reincarnated czarist-era officer whose “patriotism” justified anything he did.

“I pulled the war’s trigger,” he told the nationalist Zavtra newspaper while describing how he led four dozen armed “volunteers” who crossed into Ukraine’s Donetsk region in April 2014.

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The White House on Friday says it was open to training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets in the US if capacity for such training is reached in Europe.

Speaking to reporters in Washington ,White House spokesperson John Kirby said the US was eager to move forward with the training.

Ukraine does not want to use the requested cruise missiles from Germany and the United States on Russian territory, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a post on the social network X.

He called the long-range missiles “crucial” and said Ukraine asked the two countries to send the missiles “as soon as possible”.

Kuleba assured Berlin and Washington that the missiles “will be used solely inside [Ukraine’s] borders”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, chiming in on the debate about sending Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, said there is no news to report.

“There is no new state of affairs to report on this issue,” Scholz told the German newspaper the Thuringer Allgemeine in a story published on Friday.

“Our focus remains on sending weapons for air defence, heavy artillery and also tanks,” he said. “That is the course we will continue on, in close consultation with our international partners.”

The EU has delivered Ukraine 223,800 shells under the first part of a plan to provide a million artillery rounds to aid Kyiv’s fight against Russia, a spokesman said.

“Member states have delivered around 223,800 artillery ammunition – long-range self-propelled, precision-guided ammunitions as well as mortar ammunitions — and 2,300 missiles of all types,” EU spokesman Peter Stano said.

Overall, the total value of the ordnance provided was 1.1 billion euros ($1.2bn), the EU said. EU funds reimbursed only part of that, suggesting the measure fell short of the target.

Earlier this year, the 27-nation European Union pledged to step up supplies of much-needed artillery shells to Ukraine as Kyiv’s forces faced shortfalls.

Ukraine has begun holding consultations with the UK to obtain security guarantees and Kyiv aims to have the first such agreements in place by the end of 2023, a senior Ukrainian official says.

Kyiv is pushing for security guarantees from countries that include the United States pending what it hopes will be its eventual membership in the NATO military alliance.

“Our goal is to have the first such agreements in place by the end of the year,” Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff said in televised comments. “Our consultations with Britain have begun.”

Russia’s economy grew year-on-year by 4.9 percent in the second quarter, clocking its first expansion in a year, the country’s statistics agency, Rosstat, reports.

Gross domestic product (GDP) shrank in the previous four quarters, finishing with a 1.9-percent drop in the first quarter of 2023. Friday’s improved figures for April to June compared with a contraction of 4.5 percent in the same period of last year.

That sharp contraction came as the economy was hit with a raft of sanctions from Western countries in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has sentenced activist Alexander Bakhtin to six years in jail for criticism of Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine, a rights group and his allies say.

Bakhtin, a 51-year-old environmental activist and musician, was accused of spreading false information about the conflict in Ukraine.

“Alexander was sentenced to six years in a penal colony,” Andrey Shchetinin, a friend who attended the court session, told the AFP news agency.

The US Department of the Treasury has imposed new sanctions on four Russians linked to financial and investment conglomerate Alfa Group and a Russian business association.

The Treasury said in a statement that it was targeting four men who have served on the supervisory board of the Alfa Group – Petr Olegivich Aven, Mikhail Maratovich Fridman, German Borisovich Khan and Alexey Viktorovich Kuzmichev – one of Russia’s largest financial and investment conglomerates under sanctions against the country’s financial services sector.

It also imposed sanctions on the Russian Association of Employers the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, it said.

“Wealthy Russian elites should disabuse themselves of the notion that they can operate business as usual while the Kremlin wages war against the Ukrainian people,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in the statement.

Russia says it has destroyed a Ukrainian drone on the western outskirts of Moscow.

“An attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack using an unmanned aerial vehicle on a facility in Moscow was thwarted,” the Ministry of Defence said, adding that there was no damage or casualties.

Moscow was largely spared in the early part of the conflict, but the Russian capital has seen a surge in attacks in recent months.

Amid the presence of mercenary fighters from Russia’s mercenary group Wagner in Belarus, Lithuania increased its forces and protective measures on its 680-kilometre (422-mile) border.

“We have deployed more intelligence officers, our institutions are functioning, and there are certainly many more forces from the national defence system and law enforcement agencies. They also conduct joint exercises and take other actions,” Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said in a podcast from the business paper Verslozinios.

Simonyte did not provide further detail. “I don’t think it’s necessary to somehow present it in detail, and to throw around numbers or other things, like perhaps our colleagues from the Polish government sometimes do.”

Bucharest, Romania – Last Wednesday, a Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s grain port infrastructure shook Romania, a NATO member.

The force of the attack on the Izmail port, across the Danube River from the Eastern European nation, was so intense that the windows of some village homes in southeastern Romania shattered.

Even though she lives far from where the impact was felt, 28-year-old Alexandra, a paralegal, is concerned. “We share a border with Ukraine and the conflict could expand at any moment,” she told Al Jazeera.

Russia has launched several attacks on Danube ports since pulling out of the wartime Black Sea grain deal.

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At least 385 Ukrainian children deported to Russia have been returned home, an Austria-based international charity has confirmed.

“SOS Children’s Villages supports the parents, by making financial resources available or by helping them plan the route,” charity spokeswoman Anna Radl told the AFP news agency.

“A total of 385 deported children have been returned to Ukraine so far, 84 of them by SOS Children’s Villages and its partner organisations,” the NGO said in a news release published on Thursday.

According to Kyiv, more than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since the February 2022 invasion, with many allegedly placed in institutions and foster homes. Moscow has denied the allegations.

Zelesnkyy announced on Telegram that he had spoken with the president of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema.

He said that during the phone call, he invited Hichilema to participate in implementing the Ukrainian Peace Formula.

The Ukrainian president added that the two leaders discussed the Black Sea Grain initiative and an upcoming Ukraine-Africa Summit.

More information is now coming in regarding Zelenskyy’s decision to dismiss officials responsible for military conscription in each region of the country:

“We are dismissing all regional military commissars,” Zelenskyy said in a post on social media, following a meeting with his senior military leadership. “This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery at a time of war is high treason,” he added.

“During the inspection of the territorial recruitment centres, law enforcement agencies exposed cases of corruption,” the presidency said in a separate statement. It said Ukraine’s general mobilisation was a key area in which inspectors had uncovered instances of foul play.

These “pose a threat to Ukraine’s national security and undermine confidence in state institutions,” the statement said. It added that Ukraine’s security council recommended that the head of the army select replacements who have battlefield experience and were vetted by Ukraine’s intelligence services.

A German officer arrested for allegedly spying for Russia had access to highly sensitive information in his work at the procurement unit of the military, local media reported on Friday.

According to Der Spiegel Online and Zeit newspaper, the man, named by prosecutors as Thomas H, was working in a department that counted among its tasks the procurement of highly modern systems for electronic warfare. These include technology for the surveillance and disruption of opponents’ radio systems and the shutting down of enemy radio or air shield systems. The department also handles modern weapons used by elite commandos.

Citing unnamed security sources, Spiegel said the suspect had “extensive access” to the military’s electronic capabilities.

Prosecutors, who announced the suspect’s arrest on Wednesday, said the man approached the Russian embassy in Berlin and its consulate in Bonn to offer his help in May 2023.

Ukraine is considering cancelling its visa-free programme with Israel and will request the country be excluded from the so-called Ramstein meetings due to its “unfriendly actions towards Ukraine and pro-Russian position on the international arena”, Kyiv Post has reported, citing sources in Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (RNBO).

The Ramstein meetings involve an alliance of 54 countries, including all 30 NATO members and 24 additional countries that coordinate continuing donations of military aid to Ukraine.

The Kyiv Post’s RNBO source said that Ukraine believes there is a “real danger” that information discussed with Israel at the Ramstein meetings “will probably fall into the possession of the aggressor state”.

“The Israeli authorities never provided any real help,” the source is quoted as saying. “Instead, the information received during the meetings is used by Israel in its own interests.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced that the heads of all of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment centres are to be dismissed from their jobs amid concerns about corruption.

“This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery during war is treason,” he said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

He added that the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Valery Zaluzhny, would be responsible for implementing the decision.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Ukraine would send humanitarian aid to Slovenia after the small Alpine nation suffered its worst-ever floods a week ago.