Russian Ukraine war: Kyiv digs in against Putin’s forces on ‘difficult’ eastern front line

New defence secretary Grant Shapps has said he is “pleased” that Wagner has been officially declared as a terrorist group by the UK.

He said: “It’s quite clear that they are absolutely ruthless.”

Commenting on the demise of Yevgeny Prigozhin, he added: “It looks like a heck of a coincidence that two months after what happened in Moscow, his plane fell out of the sky.”

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The missile aimed at the mayor’s office took an estimated 64 seconds to fly 55 miles and detonate in shrapnel and flames after being fired by Russian forces.

Thankfully for Oleksandr Goncharenko, the mayor of Kramatorsk – near the frontline in east Ukraine – it missed the target by 200 metres, hitting a garden square.

The municipal headquarters was swiftly moved to another building for safety. But that building was bombed as well, resulting in a move to yet another location, dodging the missiles coming from the city of Horlivka, which has been captured by Vladimir Putin’s forces.

There is plenty of pride in the cities around the frontline in managing to keep Putin’s forces at bay, writes Kim Sengupta from Druzhkivka. But it has come at the cost of crushing loss:

Russia carried out air strikes on Kyiv and the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa early on Wednesday, killing a civilian and causing a fire and damage at a Danube River port, Ukraine‘s military said.

During a nearly three-hour drone attack on Odesa, several agricultural and port facilities were damaged, and several fires were reported in the Izmail district, an important grain exporting hub on the Danube, said regional governor Oleh Kiper.

“An employee of an agricultural enterprise, who was seriously injured, died in the hospital,” Kiper said.

Kiper did not name the port. Agriculture consultancy APK-Inform said there had been a fire at the small Kilia river port.

Ukraine‘s air force said air defence systems destroyed 23 out of the 33 air weapons Russia launched overnight. They included 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones, seven cruise missiles and one Iskander ballistic missile, it said.

The situation along the eastern frontline remains difficult and the main task for Ukraine’s troops is to ensure reliable defence and prevent the loss of strongholds, Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said on Wednesday.

“The enemy does not abandon his plans to reach the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” the ground forces cited Syrskyi as saying on the Telegram messaging app.

“Our main task is to ensure reliable defence, to prevent the loss of our strongholds and positions in the Kupiansk and Lymansk directions, as well as to successfully move forward and reach the designated lines in the Bakhmut direction.”

Armenia said on Wednesday it would host a joint military exercise with the United States next week, a development likely to irritate Russia.

The Armenian Defence Ministry said the purpose of the Sept. 11-20 “Eagle Partner 2023” exercise was to prepare its forces to take part in international peacekeeping missions. It did not say how many U.S. and Armenian personnel would be involved.

Russia has a military base in Armenia and sees itself as the pre-eminent power in the South Caucasus region, which until 1991 was part of the Soviet Union.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a weekend interview with an Italian newspaper that Russia had failed to protect Armenia against what he called continuing aggression from Azerbaijan. He suggested that Russia‘s war in Ukraine meant it was unable to meet all Armenia’s security needs.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday he disagreed with Pashinyan’s remarks.

“Russia is an absolutely integral part of this region,” he said. “Russia plays a consistent, very important role in stabilising the situation in this region … and we will continue to play this role.”

The North Korean leader is said to be planning a possible visit to see the Russian president later this month to discuss weapons for Moscow’s war machine. Given the isolation both men face it is clear they need each other, writes Chris Stevenson:

The UK announced Wednesday it will declare Russia‘s Wagner mercenary group a banned terrorist organisation, saying it remains a threat to global security even after the death of leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The government said an order will be introduced in Parliament to proscribe the group under the Terrorism Act.

The designation, once approved by lawmakers, will bar membership in or support for Wagner, which has played a major fighting role during Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine. It also has operated in Syria and several African nations.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said Wagner “has been involved in looting, torture and barbarous murders. Its operations in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa are a threat to global security.”

“They are terrorists, plain and simple – and this proscription order makes that clear in UK law,” she said.

A Russian-appointed official has claimed that Moscow’s forces “tactically abandoned” the strategic Ukrainian village of Robotyne, more than a week after Kyiv announced its recapture.

The Russian army had withdrawn for tactical reasons, said Yevgeny Balitsky, the top Moscow-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region.

“The Russian army abandoned – tactically abandoned – this settlement because staying on a bare surface when there is no way to completely dig in… doesn’t generally make sense. Therefore the Russian army moved off into the hills,” news outlet RBC quoted him as saying.

Russia has not previously acknowledged the loss of Robotyne, the recapture of which was announced by Ukraine last week.

Defence sources believe the British Challenger 2 tank destroyed in Ukraine was initially immobilised by a mine.

The tank hit a mine which sparked a fire in the rear fuel tank, a Western defence source told the BBC.

Russia has heavily mined the territory it has captured in Ukraine, as well as deploying anti-tank “dragon’s teeth” concrete obstacles, since Ukraine’s Western allies started supplying it with top-tier tanks including the Challenger 2 and Germany’s Leopard.

Four members of the Ukrainian military were evacuated from the tank to safety. But the empty immobilised tank was then targeted by a Russian Lancet loitering drone which completely destroyed it, the defence source said.

While the exact location and time of the tank’s destruction is not known, it is the first verified sighting of a Challenger 2 on the battlefield since they were first supplied by Britain.

Once cleared, the order will make it illegal to be a member of the group or to support it.

The group, formerly led by now-dead Yevgeny Prigozhin, is known to carry out Russia’s dirty work in Syria and Africa, and has also handed Vladimir Putin Russia’s biggest victory of capturing Bakhmut against Ukraine in the continuing invasion.

Assets belonging to Wagner, primarily consisting of contractors and prison convicts, will be declared as terrorist property and will be seized after the draft order is cleared. It will also render certain proscription offences punishable by up to 14 years in jail.