Russia-Ukraine war updates: Putin, Erdogan discuss Black Sea grain deal

The United States White House says North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expects to hold a “leader-level diplomatic engagement” with President Vladimir Putin in Russia.

“As we have warned publicly, arms negotiations between Russia and the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] are actively advancing,” National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said.

“We have information that Kim Jong Un expects these discussions to continue, to include leader-level diplomatic engagement in Russia,” Watson added.

Ukraine’s defence ministry says Ukrainian forces have made further territorial gains in the country’s eastern Donetsk region around the city of Bakhmut, while Putin says Kyiv’s counteroffensive “has failed”.

Last week, Ukrainian forces liberated another 3sq km (1.2 sq miles) in the surrounding area of Bakhmut, Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on Telegram on Monday.

The total area recaptured around the city since the beginning of Ukraine’s counteroffensive is now 47sq km (18sq miles), she said.

In response to Ukraine’s reported counteroffensive gains, Putin said on Monday: “There is nothing deadlocked, it has failed.”

The governor of Russia’s western Bryansk region says border guards and security forces have “thwarted” an attempt by a Ukrainian sabotage group that tried to cross into Russia.

Russia has this year repeatedly reported Ukrainian sabotage attempts on its borders, even sending helicopters to put down a dramatic cross-border incursion in the Belgorod region in May.

“Employees of the FSB [Federal Security Service] border force of Russia and units of the Russian defence ministry thwarted an attempt to penetrate the territory of the Russian Federation by a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group,” Bryansk governor Alexander Bogomaz said on Telegram.

The Bryansk region lies in western Russia, bordering Moscow-allied Belarus and Ukraine. Like several other Russian border regions, it has been hit by regular Ukrainian attacks and shelling during Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine.

Ukraine has named a Russian helicopter pilot it says defected over his opposition to Moscow’s invasion after flying across the border in a “long-term special operation” led by Kyiv.

Ukraine’s defence ministry identified the pilot as 28-year-old Maxim Kuzminov who served in the “319th separate helicopter regiment” based in Russia’s Far East region of Primorye.

In a statement, the ministry described how it led the operation in “maximum secrecy”, by first recruiting the pilot after identifying that he was against the Kremlin’s invasion.

It said it helped the pilot fly into Ukraine and that two of the helicopter’s crew – unaware of Kuzminov’s plans to go to Ukraine and defect – were killed on arrival after refusing to surrender.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un plans to travel to Russia in September to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the possibility of supplying weapons for the war in Ukraine, The New York Times reports, quoting US and allied sources.

Kim would travel from Pyongyang, probably by armoured train, to Vladivostok, on the Pacific Coast of Russia, where he would meet with Putin, the newspaper said.

It was a meeting aimed at resetting ties between Turkey and Russia.

Following his re-election in May, the Turkish leader has taken steps criticised by Moscow as hostile, like backing Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership.

The main issue, however, was the revival of the grain deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations which Russia withdrew from in July.

Besides that, did Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan use his close relationship with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to move towards a possible settlement of the war in Ukraine?

Russia is discussing holding joint exercises with North Korea, the Interfax news agency reports.

“Why not, these are our neighbours. There’s an old Russian saying: You don’t choose your neighbours and it’s better to live with your neighbours in peace and harmony,” Interfax quoted Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu as saying.

When asked about the possibility of joint exercises between the two countries, he said they were “of course” being discussed, it said.

South Korean news agency Yonhap earlier quoted South Korea’s intelligence agency as saying Shoigu had proposed to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that their countries hold a naval exercise along with China.

Kyiv officials say they have checked all of the city’s secondary schools and that earlier reported bomb threats to the capital’s education facilities were “false”.

At the start of this academic year, 240,000 children in Kyiv have chosen to study in school instead of remotely, according to the city hall.

“Following a bomb threat, all secondary schools in Kyiv were thoroughly checked. The information was not confirmed. The call was false,” the city’s military administration said on social media.

Earlier Monday, it said that police had “received a report of a bomb threat in all schools and colleges in Kyiv”.

Putin has once again claimed that Ukraine’s counteroffensive to retake land seized by Russia has been “a failure”.

“It is not that it is stalling. It is a failure,” Putin told a news conference in Sochi. “At least today this is what it looks like. Let’s see what happens next.”

Putin has repeatedly claimed that Ukraine was not making any headway against Russian defensive positions in Moscow-occupied territories.

However, Russian military bloggers have reported front-line problems for Moscow’s troops.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have held talks on Ukrainian grain exports at the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Here’s what happened at the meeting.

Ukraine’s foreign minister has said that Kyiv has visual evidence of Russian drones falling on Romanian territory.

“It’s pointless to deny that something fell there,” Dmytro Kuleba said.

Earlier, Romania’s foreign ministry denied these drones were detonated in the country.

Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, says Russian soldiers have successfully thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack on a thermal power plant in the southern region of Bryansk.

He said that no one was injured and there was no damage to the facilities. He also said that another drone crashed in a field.

Reporting from Istanbul, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar says there were high hopes in Turkey that Erdogan would be able to convince Putin to return to the Black Sea grain deal, but this did not end up happening.

“So President Erdogan has said that Turkey is now going with a new proposal to the UN. We don’t know the details of this new proposal. Based on my talks with some officials earlier, they say Ankara is trying to convince some of the Western countries to let Russia, in a limited way, to the international payment system,” Serdar said, adding that insurance companies would now also provide insurance to Russian ships that are going to carry Russian grain and fertiliser.

“It will be a major step if it happens. [It means] Russia is going to breach the international sanctions that were imposed particularly by the West,” he added.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has said that while he is open to returning to the Black Sea grain deal once all agreements relevant to Moscow are fulfilled, supplying grain to Africa via Turkey and Qatar is not an alternative.

In August, the German daily newspaper Bild had reported that the governments of Russia, Turkey, and Qatar were preparing a new agreement on grain exports, following Moscow’s termination of the grain deal.

Putin has said during a news conference with Erdogan that Russia’s gas pipelines to Turkey have come under constant attack.

The two leaders discussed a solution to improve gas supply, besides discussing ways to revive the Black Sea grain export deal.

Erdogan has said he believes a solution can be found soon to revive the Black Sea grain export deal, including filling the remaining gaps.

After meeting Putin, the Turkish president also told reporters that “Ukraine needs to especially soften its approaches in order for it to be possible for joint steps to be taken with Russia”.

He also added that more grain needed to be destined for Africa rather than European countries.

Putin has restated after meeting Erdogan that Moscow would be ready to return to the Black Sea grain deal once all agreements relevant to the accord are fulfilled.

The Russian president repeated previous criticism of the West over the deal, which Moscow quit in July.

Putin also said that the Black Sea corridors should not be used for military purposes.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said he expects President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to talk to Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the latter’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi.

“I am convinced that, based on the results of Erdogan’s conversation with Putin, there will be contact between President Erdogan and President Zelenskyy,” Kuleba said in Kyiv.

“There is trust in relations between President Zelenskyy and President Erdogan.”

Romanian territory has not been hit by Russian drones or debris in an overnight air strike on a Ukrainian port across the Danube River, Romanian Foreign Minister Luminita Odobescu said.

“Of course, there is a risk because what happened there is very close to our borders,” she told reporters on the sidelines of a visit to Berlin.

“We have seen that Russia cynically continues to attack the civilian infrastructure, not allowing Ukraine to export their cereals. Of course, there is a risk of accidents or incidents, but for the time being, it was not the case.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has said that Kyiv has evidence that Russian drones hit Romania.

Talks in Sochi between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan have finished after three hours, according to a report by Russian state news agency TASS.

Earlier, Kremlin spokesperson Dimitry Peskov said that no documents are expected to be signed at the end of the talks.

Officials from the United States, United Kingdom and European Union are planning to jointly press the United Arab Emirates to halt shipments of goods to Russia that could help Moscow in its war against Ukraine, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The report said that officials from Washington and the EU were visiting the UAE from Monday as part of a collective push to keep computer chips, electronic components and other so-called dual-use products out of Russian hands.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in a video posted on Telegram by a Russian state media journalist that the first part of talks between Putin and Erdogan has been constructive.

The Russian state news agency RIA reported that Peskov said no documents are expected to be signed at the end of the talks.

Zelenskyy has proposed Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s main privatisation agency, to serve as defence minister following Reznikov’s dismissal.

Here is what you need to know about Umerov.

Zelenskyy says Ukraine’s strategic political goal is opening talks to join the European Union.

“The European Commission has made seven recommendations to Ukraine. We’ve already completed a number of them. For the rest, the Ukrainian parliament must demonstrate tangible results. Timely results,” he said in a statement on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Our strategic political goal is opening EU accession talks. The European Commission has made seven recommendations to Ukraine. We've already completed a number of them.

For the rest, the Ukrainian parliament must demonstrate tangible results. Timely results. The ones we agreed… pic.twitter.com/aEBxOiSzNC

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 3, 2023

A child has been injured during Russian attacks on Kherson, according to the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin.

“Doctors are doing everything possible to save the child’s life and health,” Prokudin said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

He added that Russian attacks on the southern city on Sunday also killed one civilian and injured five.

Reporting from Sochi, Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari says the meeting between Putin and Erdogan is critical for world food supplies after Moscow withdrew from the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

“The Turkish president highlighted a number of issues which the leaders will be discussing. Top of the agenda will be the Black Sea initiative, which Russia left in July,” she said, adding that nuclear energy and gas supplies will also be discussed.

Jabbari said the head of the central banks of Turkey and Russia will also be discussing the Black Sea grain export deal on the sidelines of the summit to sort out payment methods.

Putin and Erdogan “have been friends for a long time, and this meeting is a critical point for both to reach an agreement, especially on the grain deal, which affects world food supplies,” she added.

A Russian soldier has been convicted of torturing a Ukrainian civilian and sentenced to 12 years in prison, according to a report by a regional prosecutor’s office in Ukraine.

The Chernihiv District Court found the soldier guilty of illegally detaining the man with another soldier in March 2022 during the temporary occupation of the village of Lukashivka in the northern region of Chernihiv.

“They used physical violence against him in order to learn information about the location of the positions of the Armed Forces. Not having received the necessary data, the occupiers took the man to the territory of the homestead, knocked him to the ground and began to beat him,” the prosecutors said.

“Then the accused hit the victim on the head with the butt of a machine gun, and the second Russian serviceman shot him in the leg with an automatic firearm,” they added.

At the start of talks with Erdogan, Putin says the two leaders have raised relations between the two countries to a “very good, high level”.

Putin welcomed Erdogan and said they would discuss Ukraine and the Black Sea grain deal. He also said he hoped they would wrap up talks soon on creating a hub in Turkey for exports of Russian natural gas.

Erdogan has sat down for talks with Putin and says he will make a “very important” grain announcement after their discussions.

Putin told the Turkish president that he will discuss the situation in Ukraine and Russia is open to talks on the Black Sea grain export deal, which Moscow abandoned in July.

Ukrainian police have indicted a Russian military officer accused of raping a girl and a women in the southern region of Kherson.

“Investigators of the Main Investigative Department of the National Police of Ukraine identified a Russian serviceman who, in May 2022, during the occupation of the Kherson region, raped two local women, one of whom was a minor. The occupier threatened them with firearms and killing family members,” police said in a statement.

According to the police, the accused is a 26-year-old lieutenant from the Leningrad region who, during the Russian occupation of the Kherson region, was also a commandant in several villages.

The Ukrainian Grain Association has increased its forecast for the country’s 2023 grain and oilseed harvest by 3.7 million metric tonnes to 80.5 million tonnes.

“The increase in this year’s harvest forecast is due to favourable weather conditions and better-than-expected crop yields,” the grain traders union said in a statement.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says an independent inquiry has found “no evidence” for claims that his country supplied weapons to Russia.

The US ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, had claimed the Russian ship Lady R was loaded with arms and ammunition at a naval base near Cape Town last December.

“When all matters are considered, none of the allegations made about the supply of weapons to Russia have been proven to be true,” Ramaphosa said on Sunday.

“None of the persons who made these allegations could provide any evidence to support the claims that had been levelled against our country.”

Read more.

Reznikov has submitted his resignation as Ukraine’s defence minister to parliament.

“I ask the parliament to accept my resignation. I want to sincerely thank you for the trust, support, and the opportunity to serve my country at such a crucial moment,” Reznikov said in a statement.

“One of the main priorities at the moment is to rebuild a long-term partnership with key allies to provide Ukraine with real security guarantees and defense capabilities,” he added.

The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence says malware called “Infamous Chisel” has likely been used by Russia with the aim of stealing sensitive military information from Ukraine.

“The malware, referred to as ‘Infamous Chisel’, has been used by the Russian cyber threat group known as Sandworm. NCSC [National Cyber Security Centre] has previously attributed Sandworm to the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate’s (GRU) Main Centre for Special Technologies (GTsST),” the ministry said in a tweet.

“Infamous Chisel enables persistent access to, and the collation and exfiltration of data from, compromised Android devices. This includes targeting applications used by the Ukrainian military,” the ministry added.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 04 September 2023.

Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/AR3XZxJOya

🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/lFsm0CCueL

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) September 4, 2023

Russia’s overnight attack on Ukrainian port infrastructure on the Danube River did not generate direct military threats to the territory of neighbouring Romania, the NATO member state’s National Defence Ministry says in a statement.

Earlier, Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said drones had detonated on Romanian territory.

The Romanian statement “categorically denied” the reports while condemning the Russian attack.

Romania’s Ministry of National Defence has denied reports that Russian drones fell and detonated on Romanian territory during an overnight attack on Ukrainian port infrastructure on the Danube.

A spokesperson said the ministry would release a statement later in the day.

Earlier, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the drones had detonated in Romania, which borders Ukraine

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Samir Puri, lecturer of war studies at King’s College, says Oleksii Reznikov, who is set to be replaced as Ukraine’s defence minister later this week, was “not necessarily organising the operational approach” needed to handle Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

“Ukraine is in a real pinch point with regards to its counteroffensive. I think with Reznikov and the Defence Ministry – he’s not a general, he’s not necessarily organising the operational approach of the counteroffensive. But Ukraine’s Achille’s heel is that its casualties mount and it runs out of men and soldiers, and that is where the allegations of corruption and scandals around military drafting and recruitment centres come in. And I think that’s where Zelenskyy is looking and seeing that if he doesn’t get this aspect sorted, get the Defence Ministry’s confidence, he might get this sorted,” Puri said.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson says Russian drones fell and detonated on Romanian territory on Monday during an overnight attack on Ukrainian port infrastructure on the Danube River.

Romania is a member of the NATO military alliance. In a statement on Facebook, the official, Oleg Nikolenko, urged Western partners to speed up supplies of air defence systems to Ukraine.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov has submitted his resignation letter to the chairman of parliament.

“It was an honour to serve the Ukrainian people and work for the (Ukrainian army) for the last 22 months, the toughest period of Ukraine’s modern history,” Reznikov said in a post on X.

President Zelenskyy nominated Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar who has been head of the State Property Fund since last year, to replace Reznikov.

Ukraine says its forces made limited gains against Russian forces along the southern front – the focus of its counteroffensive – and clawed back territory near Bakhmut in the east.

“The defence forces of Ukraine are continuing offensive operations in the Melitopol sector. Our forces had success near Novodanylivka and Novoprokopivka,” Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Malyar said on state television, adding that Kyiv’s forces had also captured 3sq km (about 1sq mile) near the war-battered town of Bakhmut.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will try to persuade Putin to return to a Ukraine grain export deal that had helped ease a global food crisis when the two leaders meet in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi.

“The current status [of the grain deal] will be discussed at the summit on Monday. We are cautious, but we hope to achieve success,” Erdogan’s chief foreign policy and security adviser Akif Cagatay Kilic said in an interview on Turkey’s A Haber television channel.

Russia quit the deal in July, a year after it was brokered by Turkey and the United Nations. It allowed Ukraine to safely export farm products from its Black Sea ports during the war. But Russia complained that its own food and fertiliser exports faced obstacles and that not enough Ukrainian grain was going to countries in need.

Erdogan had played a significant role in persuading Putin to stick with the grain deal before Russia unilaterally pulled out of it.

Russia and Ukraine are key agricultural producers and major players in the wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil markets.

A Russian Swede arrested last year in a dramatic dawn raid on his quiet suburban home goes on trial in Stockholm on Monday for allegedly passing Western technology to Russia’s military.

The 60-year-old dual national, Sergei Skvortsov, has lived in Sweden, where he has import-export companies, since the 1990s.

He is to appear in a Stockholm district court, charged with carrying out “unlawful intelligence activities” against the United States and Sweden for a decade until his arrest in November 2022.

The prosecution believes Skvortsov and his companies provided a platform for “the Russian military intelligence service GRU and part of the Russian state system” to illegally procure Western technology, mainly electronic devices which were off-limits, to Moscow due to international sanctions.

Skvortsov faces up to four years in prison if found guilty.

In detention since his arrest, he has denied the allegations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he will ask parliament this week to dismiss Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov and to replace him with Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s main privatisation fund.

The announcement, made in Zelenskyy’s nightly video address on Sunday, sets the stage for the biggest shake-up of Ukraine’s defence establishment during the war.

Reznikov, who was named defence minister in November 2021, has helped secure billions of dollars of Western military aid to assist the war effort but has been dogged by corruption allegations surrounding his ministry that he described as smears.

Read more here.

Russia says it destroyed four Ukrainian military boats carrying troops in the Black Sea.

“Naval aviation aircraft of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed 4 ‘Willard Sea Force’ US-made high-speed military boats with landing groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Telegram.

The ministry said the boats were “traveling in the direction of Cape Tarkhankut on the Crimean coast”, without providing further details.

Earlier on Monday, the ministry said it had repelled a separate Ukrainian attack over the Black Sea.

“Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were destroyed in the air over the Black Sea near the Crimean Peninsula,” it wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian forces have downed 17 Russian drones over the southern Odesa region, officials said, adding that strikes caused damage in a district on the Danube River that borders NATO member Romania.

“Seventeen drones were shot down by our air defense forces,” region’s Governor Oleg Kiper wrote on Telegram, adding there were no civilian casualties.

“In several settlements of Izmail district, warehouses and production buildings, agricultural machinery and equipment of industrial enterprises were damaged.”

Ukraine’s military said Russia had used Iranian-made Shahed drones in the “massive” overnight attack.