Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to curry favor at this week’s BRICS summit in Johannesburg, claiming Russia could fill Ukraine’s role as a grain supplier and calling sanctions on his country for the war in Ukraine “illegitimate.” Moscow came under international criticism in July for pulling out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allowed the safe transport of Ukrainian grain and is credited with staving off a global food crisis. Putin made the comments by video. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for him, meaning South Africa would have had an obligation to arrest the Russian leader if he visited.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan defended Ukraine’s battlefield performance, saying U.S. officials “do not assess that the conflict is a stalemate” and pledging continued aid to Kyiv despite disappointment about Ukraine’s progress retaking territory.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Putin’s speech focused extensively on the war in Ukraine and East-West conflict, despite South African leaders having previously said that they did not want those subjects to dominate the summit, the Associated Press reported. The summit for the economic group — which comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — continues through Thursday.
Sullivan said Ukraine was retaking territory “on a methodical, systematic basis.” Several months into the counteroffensive, Kyiv’s forces have fallen short of Western hopes that they might quickly recapture large areas of Russian-occupied territory in the country’s south and east.
The Moscow region was targeted with drones for the sixth consecutive night. Two drones were shot down, while another struck a building under construction in the Russian capital without causing casualties, the Russian Defense Ministry wrote on social media. It blamed the attack on Ukraine, which has not taken responsibility. The British Defense Ministry said Tuesday that there is evidence some drone strikes against Russian military targets “are being launched from inside Russian territory.”
Three people were killed in Russian shelling in the eastern Ukrainian village of Torske on Tuesday, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram. Two people were also injured in attacks on the region, according to the Donetsk regional prosecutor’s office.
A drone appears to have destroyed a Russian long-range bomber at an air base near St. Petersburg, Ukrainian media reported. Photos on Telegram, verified by The Washington Post, show smoke rising from the site and a TU-22M3 supersonic bomber in flames. The Russian Defense Ministry said a Ukrainian drone damaged the plane. Kyiv has not confirmed a role in the attack.
Ukrainian forces on Tuesday claimed to have entered the strategic southeastern village of Robotyne after two months of fighting. The claim could not be independently verified. Such an advance could bring Ukrainian forces a step closer to the vital southeastern city of Melitopol, though the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to make it that far, The Post recently reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece in recent days, according to his nightly address. He thanked the Greek prime minister for offering to participate in the rebuilding of the historic port city of Odessa, a move Zelensky called “substantive” and “very symbolic.”
The Netherlands will supply Ukraine with a thousand portable chargers for remote demining, Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said while visiting Kyiv, according to a post on the Ukrainian Defense Ministry website. The Netherlands is also supplying Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, and pilot training is planned to start at a center in Romania, she said.
Nazis massacred his Ukrainian village in World War II. He fears Russia now. Fedir Bovkun and his wife Maria both narrowly escaped death when German soldiers massacred hundreds of people during World War II along the Ukrainian border with Belarus. They were 6 and 2 years old at the time, and today, they are rare survivors, their lives bookended by two brutal wars on Ukrainian soil, Fredrick Kunkle and Sergii Mukaieliants report.
“We already know the feeling of such an ordeal,” said Fedir Bovkun, 86. “We’ve been through war, come through it with barely the clothes on our back. We don’t want any of it. We’re afraid — because it’s war.”
