Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 197

Here is the situation as it stands on Thursday, September 8.

Fighting

• The Ukrainian army claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Russian airbases on the occupied peninsula of Crimea, including one that caused devastation at the Saky military facility last month.
• Ukrainian forces attacked the occupied eastern town of Balakliia and appeared to have reclaimed the town of Verbivka in the Kharkiv region.
• Ukrainian forces were making “slow but meaningful progress” on the battlefield and were doing better in the south than Russia, a senior Pentagon official said.
• The United Nations said there were credible accusations that Russian forces have sent Ukrainian children to Russia for adoption as part of a larger-scale forced relocation and deportation programme.

Diplomacy

• Russian President Vladimir Putin called Western sanctions imposed on his country following the invasion of Ukraine a “threat to the entire world”, adding that efforts to isolate Russia were “impossible” amid a pivot towards Asia.
• At a speech in Vladivostok, Putin also called the Ukrainian government an “illegitimate regime”, saying it was founded after a “coup” in 2014.
• Russian officials announced that Putin would meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, next week in Uzbekistan.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decried what he described as Western “provocations” against Russia.

Economy

• Putin claimed that “almost all” the Ukrainian grain shipped under a UN-backed deal to ease a global food crisis was reaching rich European nations at the expense of the developing world, an accusation denied by Ukraine.
• The Russian president also said he would discuss “limiting the destinations for grain and other food exports” with Erdogan, who helped broker the deal.
• Senior UN and Russian officials met to discuss Russian complaints that Western sanctions were impeding its grain and fertiliser exports despite the UN-brokered deal.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said next year’s budget would be a war budget, devoting more than a trillion hryvnias ($27.40bn) to defence and security spending.

Energy

• The European Union’s proposed price cap on Russian gas raises the risk of rationing in some of the world’s richest countries this winter.
• Shelling damaged a backup power line at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which has already lost all four of its regular power lines, the UN nuclear watchdog said.