Russia-Ukraine updates: Russia says intercepted two US drones near Crimea

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan will hold talks in Moscow “in the nearest future”, the state TASS news agency has reported, citing Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

Turkey is trying to persuade Russia to return to a deal that allows for the export of grain via Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

The Kremlin has said President Vladimir Putin is likely to hold talks in person soon with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the Black Sea grain accord and other issues, but no date or venue has yet been announced.

Russia has scrambled two fighter jets to ward off two US drones flying over the Black Sea near Russia-annexed Crimea, the Russian Ministry of Defence said.

It said the drones were conducting intelligence but left the area once the fighter jets were deployed.

Ukraine is adamantly against any grain import restrictions being imposed by neighbouring countries after European Union restrictions end on September 15, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said during a visit to the Czech capital Prague.

Ukraine says its troops have liberated the southeastern settlement of Robotyne and are trying to push further south in their counteroffensive against Russian forces.

Ukraine’s military says it has broken through the most difficult line of Russian defences in the south and will now start advancing more quickly, a commander who led troops into Robotyne told Reuters last week.

“Robotyne has been liberated,” Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar was quoted as saying by the military.

The settlement is 10km (6 miles) south of the front-line town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhia region. It is on an important road leading to Tokmak, a Russian-occupied road and rail hub.

Putin will skip the Group of 20 (G20) summit in India next month and will send his foreign minister instead, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office has said.

Modi’s office said he spoke with Putin by telephone, “expressing an understanding” for his decision not to attend the summit.

“PM [Prime Minister Modi] thanked President Putin for Russia’s consistent support to all initiatives under India’s G20 Presidency,” the Indian government said.

India has not condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and has increased its purchases of Russian oil during the 18-month war.

The head of the world’s nuclear watchdog says Ukraine’s offensive in the Zaporizhia region has increased the risk to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Russia’s TASS news agency reports.

“As you know, there is a counteroffensive going on now, which has been concentrated in the Zaporizhia region in recent days. I’m talking about the region, not the station itself. This, of course, increases the likelihood of an attack on the station or damage to it,” the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said at a Swedish Institute of International Affairs event.

Grossi said any accident at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant would affect neighbouring countries and Europe as a whole.

Putin and Modi have discussed ties, including trade, energy and space cooperation, during a phone call, the Kremlin says.

The two leaders also discussed the planned expansion of the BRICS group of emerging economies – comprising India, Russia, China, Brazil and South Africa – as well as the G20 summit, which New Delhi will host next month.

“Topical issues of Russian-Indian relations, which are progressively developing in the spirit of a particularly privileged strategic partnership, were considered [in the call],” the Kremlin said in a statement.

“The positive dynamics of trade and economic cooperation was affirmed,” it added.

European Council President Charles Michel says the EU should get ready to admit new members from Eastern Europe and the Balkans by 2030.

While addressing the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia, Michel said: “To be credible, I believe we must talk about timing and homework.”

“As we prepare the EU’s next strategic agenda, we must set ourselves a clear goal. I believe we must be ready, on both sides, by 2030, to enlarge.

“This is ambitious but necessary. It shows that we are serious.”

With fighting still raging in Ukraine and Moldova’s pro-Western government trying to reform, senior officials have previously been reluctant to offer a precise timetable for those countries joining the bloc.

Turkey’s Erdogan will visit Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi soon and there may be developments regarding the Black Sea grain export deal, a spokesperson for Erdogan’s ruling AK Party says.

Moscow quit the UN- and Turkey-brokered agreement in July after complaining that limitations to its grain exports had not been lifted.

Ankara has been trying to persuade Russia to return to the agreement, under which Ukraine’s three seaports had shipped tens of millions of tonnes of grain after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

The AK Party spokesperson, Omer Celik, did not specify whether Erdogan would meet with Putin but on Friday, the Kremlin said there is an understanding the two will meet in person soon.

Click here for a roundup of the key events of day 551 of the war.

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Finland plans to spend 2.3 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence next year, its Ministry of Defence says.

NATO’s newest member plans to spend a bit more than the minimum NATO members have agreed to allocate for their militaries: 2 percent of their GDPs.

Finland said it plans to spend 6 billion euros ($6.48bn) on defence in 2024, which is about 116 million euros ($125m) less than the estimate for 2023.

Finland’s defence spending has increased significantly in recent years, even before it became a NATO member, due to it replacing its fleet of F/A-18 combat jets with F-35 fighter jets.

In April, Finland joined the alliance in a historic security policy U-turn in response to neighbouring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Finland is also spending on military aid to Ukraine. The total value of its military equipment donations reached 1.3 billion euros ($1.4bn) last week.

A second cargo ship to leave Ukraine since Russia withdrew from the Black Sea grain export deal has reached Istanbul, marine traffic monitors say.

Since Russia pulled out of the deal last month, it has attacked Ukrainian port infrastructure and warned that it may consider any ships in the Black Sea as military targets.

Ukraine is now trying to establish a new route its ships can use without Russia’s involvement in time for the autumn harvest. Its “humanitarian corridor” hugs the Black Sea coast of Romania and Bulgaria.

Meanwhile, Turkey has been trying to revive the original agreement, hoping to use it for broader peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow.

Lithuania’s interior ministry will propose closing two of the country’s four remaining border crossings with Belarus, the Baltic News Service (BNS) reported, quoting Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite.

On August 16, the Lithuanian government announced the closure of two other crossing points, cutting the number from six to four, blaming “geopolitical circumstances” weeks after Russian Wagner mercenaries took refuge in Belarus.

Neighbouring Poland has closed all but one border crossing point with Belarus.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met his Czech counterpart to discuss developing defence cooperation.

On X, the social media platform formally known as Twitter, Kuleba wrote: “I also invited the Czech government and companies to Ukraine’s first Defence Industries Forum this fall.”

I met with Czech National Security Adviser Tomáš Pojar for in-depth talks on further developing our defense cooperation. I also invited the Czech government and companies to Ukraine’s first Defense Industries Forum this fall. pic.twitter.com/gHKFPj0W8z

— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) August 28, 2023

Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski says Warsaw and the Baltic states will close their borders with Belarus entirely if a “critical incident” involving Wagner mercenaries takes place.

EU members Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, which share a border with Belarus, have been increasingly concerned about security since hundreds of Russian Wagner mercenaries arrived in Belarus at the invitation of President Alexander Lukashenko.

“We demand from the authorities in Minsk that the Wagner Group immediately leave the territory of Belarus and that illegal migrants immediately leave the border area and are sent back to their home countries,” Kaminski told a news conference.

“If there is a critical incident, regardless of whether it is at the Polish or Lithuanian border, we will retaliate immediately. All border crossings that have been opened so far will be closed,” he said.

The Kremlin has dismissed the prospect of renewing the Black Sea grain deal as a second Ukrainian ship passes through a temporary corridor.

“The prospects for the renewal of the grain deal depend on the actual implementation, not just in words, of the promises, the pledges given to the Russian side, which means implementing the part of the deal pertaining to Russia,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Earlier this month, Kyiv announced a “humanitarian corridor” in the Black Sea to release cargo ships that have been trapped in its ports since Russia invaded.

But Peskov said, “That [temporary corridor] is a totally different matter, [to the grain deal] and our defence ministry is monitoring it as necessary”.

On Sunday, a vessel carrying steel products to Africa was the second ship to leave through the new corridor.

At least three people were killed in an overnight Russian missile strike on Ukraine, and a fourth was killed in shelling on Monday morning, Ukrainian officials said.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said the three people killed were workers at an industrial facility in the Poltava region. Five others were also wounded during the attack, and another person was unaccounted for.

The governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said a 63-year-old woman had been killed in shelling of the village of Sadove on Monday morning.

The Russian news agency TASS reported that Russian air defence systems shot down two drones over Crimea.

“Today, at around 10:30, another attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by two aircraft-type UAVs on objects in the Russian Federation was thwarted. Two unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed by air defence forces on duty over the territory of the Republic of Crimea,” TASS quoted the defence ministry as saying.

The head of the region, Sergey Aksyonov, added on Telegram that two enemy reconnaissance drones were shot down in the north and west of Crimea.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan will hold talks in Moscow “in the nearest future”, the state TASS news agency reported, quoting Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.

Turkey is trying to persuade Russia to return to the Black Sea grain deal, which it quit in July after complaining that limitations to its grain exports had not been lifted.

The Kremlin has also said President Vladimir Putin is likely to talk in person soon with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the deal and other issues, but no date or venue has yet been announced.

According to the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, a 60-year-old man has been charged for suspected collusion with Russia.

The unnamed man was charged with one case of gross illegal intelligence activities against Sweden, one case of gross illegal intelligence activities against a foreign power and one point of unlawful intelligence activities.

The suspected crime, allegedly going on since 2013, is connected to Russian military technology procurement and, according to the prosecutor, includes a significant amount of sensitive material about Sweden and the United States.

In November last year, the Security Police, the National Task Force and the Armed Forces attacked a large villa in an affluent area in Nacka, east of Stockholm, where the 60-year-old man and his wife were.

The dual-national Sweden and Russian citizens were initially suspected of the crime, but the woman was released early in the investigation.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says it would be possible to negotiate a solution for Crimea rather than using force.

“When we are at the administrative borders of Crimea, I think it is possible politically to force the demilitarisation of Russia on the territory of the peninsula,” he said in an interview on Sunday that was picked up by several Ukrainian media outlets on Monday morning.

Zelenskyy said a political solution for Crimea would be preferable as it would involve fewer deaths.

But he emphasised that he did not want to shift the war to Russian territory, adding that the goal is to liberate Ukraine’s regions and that advancing into Russia would risk crucial Western support.

The chief executive of Ukraine’s Naftogaz says Kyiv has built up about 14 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas in its storage facilities and does not plan to import gas for the 2023-24 winter season.

“This year, we are relying on our own production, and it will be enough to get through this heating season,” Oleksiy Chernyshov said in televised comments.

Naftogaz said earlier this year that it had launched 11 gas wells this year to try to cover Ukraine’s needs with domestic production.

Ukraine uses little gas to produce electricity but relies on the fuel for heating.

While Kyiv does not import gas directly from Russia, Ukrainian pipelines still carry some Russian gas to Europe.

Energy officials have said previously that gas consumption has dropped by almost 40 percent because of the war and the extensive damage to industrial facilities.

Russia’s FSB security service has charged a former US consulate employee with collecting information on the war in Ukraine for Washington, state news agency TASS said.

The suspect, Robert Shonov, allegedly passed on information to US embassy staffers in Moscow on how Russia’s conscription campaign was impacting political discontent ahead of the 2024 Russian elections, TASS quoted the FSB as saying.

The FSB said it planned to question embassy employees who were in contact with Shonov.

In May, the embassy said “the allegations against Mr. Shonov are wholly without merit”, and his “only role at the time of his arrest was to compile media summaries of press items from publicly available Russian media sources”.

Russia has likely cancelled this year’s military ZAPAD exercise scheduled for September due to a shortage of troops and equipment, the UK Ministry of Defence has said in its daily public intelligence update.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 28 August 2023

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— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) August 28, 2023