Ukraine war - live: Zelensky praises troops on visit to newly liberated city
Russia ‘almost certainly’ buying weapons from Iran and North Korea, says MoD
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Your support makes all the difference.Volodymyr Zelensky has thanked his troops on a visit to a newly captured city in the northeast province of Kharkiv.
On Wednesday, the Ukrainian president travelled to Izium to attend a flag-raising ceremony.
The now devastated city was used by the Russians as a key supply hub, before it was liberated late last week by the Ukrainian army as part of the significant advance it has made in northeast Ukraine.
In total, Kyiv is believed to have retaken about 8,000 square kilometres in the region in under a week.
The president said the presence of Ukraine’s forces had breathed life back into places like Izium.
“I see how people meet them, in what a sensitive moment. It means that with our army, the life comes back,” he said.
In other developments, the Kremlin is “almost certainly” sourcing weapons from Iran and North Korea as it struggles with supply shortages, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Defence experts believe the Russian army has been forced to buy from the pariah states in part because of the impact of Western sanctions.
Russian forces ‘ordered to retreat’ from Kharkiv as some leave weapons behind in ‘apparent panic’
‘What is Berlin afraid of?’ Ukraine attacks Germany over lack of military aid
Kremlin says Russians back Vladimir Putin but warns of a ‘very thin line’ on criticism- ‘Prestigious’ Russian anti-Nato unit withdraws from Kharkiv
‘They were in a sad state’: Ukraine forces find Russians in retreat
Welcome to The Independent’s live Ukraine war coverage for 14 September.
Accounts of Russian torture emerge from area liberated by Ukraine
The residents in the newly-liberated areas of Ukraine recounted the incidences of torture by Russian forces during the detention.
Artem, a resident in the city of Balkliya in the Kharki region held by Russian forces for more than 40 days, shared a detailed account of torture and electrocution.
He told BBC that he could hear screams of pain and torure from other cells as well, adding that the occupiers turned of the building noisy ventilation system, so the cried could be heard.
“They made me hold two wires,” he said. “There was an electric generator. The faster it went, the higher the voltage. They said, ‘if you let it go, you are finished’. Then they started asking questions. They said I was lying, and they started spinning it even more and the voltage increased.”
Artem shared, he was detained because they found a picture of his brother in uniform.
Another man said he was held because they found him with Ukrainian flag.
Ukraine claims liberating area roughly the size of Greek island of Crete
Ukraine has set its sights on freeing all territory occupied by invading Russian forces after driving them back in a speedy counter-offensive in the northeast.
Around 8,000 sqkm have been liberated by Ukrainian forces so far this month, all in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, said president Volodymyr Zelensky in a Tuesday evening address.
“Stabilisation measures” had been completed in about half of that territory, he said, “and across a liberated area of about the same size, stabilisation measures are still ongoing.”
Reuters was not able to immediately verify the full scope of battlefield successes claimed by Ukraine. The total area cited by Zelenskiy is roughly the size of the Greek island of Crete.
‘Ukraine has made progress but still a long haul,’ says Biden
US President Joe Biden feels that though Ukraine has made “significant progress” in the war, it is hard to tell if it has reached a turning point.“It’s clear the Ukrainians have made significant progress. But I think it’s going to be a long haul.”
The White House, which has provided billions of dollars of weapons and support, said earlier the US is likely to announce a new military aid package for Ukraine in “coming days”.
Russian forces have left defensive positions, particularly in and around Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, a US spokesperson said.
Since Moscow abandoned its main bastion in the northeast on Saturday, marking its worst defeat since the early days of the war, Ukrainian troops have recaptured dozens of towns in a stunning shift in battleground momentum.
Russian forces still control about a fifth of Ukraine in the south and east, but Kyiv is now on the offensive in both areas.
‘About 150,000 people liberated in Balakliia’
Speaking in the central square of Balakliia, a crucial military supply hub taken by Ukrainian forces late last week, Ukraine‘s deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar said 150,000 people had been liberated from Russian rule in the area.
Ukrainian flags had been raised and a large crowd gathered to receive bundles of humanitarian aid. A shopping centre had been destroyed but many buildings remained intact, with shops closed and boarded up.
“The aim is to liberate the Kharkiv region and beyond - all the territories occupied by the Russian Federation,” said the minister on the road to Balakliia, which lies 74 km (46 miles) southeast of Kharkiv.
The road to Balakliia through liberated areas was littered with charred vehicles and destroyed military hardware.
Groups of Ukrainian soldiers smoked, grinned and chatted beside the road. One soldier was stretched out on the top of a tank like it was his living room sofa.
In the nearby village of Verbivka, emotional but cheery residents, many of them of retirement age, recounted the fearful existences they led under almost seven months of Russian occupation.
“It was scary: we tried to walk around less, so they’d see us less,” said Tetiana Sinovaz.
Nadia Khvostok, 76, described the traumatic occupation and the arrival of Ukrainian troops, saying residents greeted them “with tears in our eyes”.
There were abandoned Russian vehicles, including a military truck with a smashed windscreen.
In liberated Ukraine town, locals sob with relief, relate harrowing accounts
The guns had gone quiet after three days of fighting in the battle-scarred northeast Ukrainian town of Balakliia, but Mariya Tymofiyeva said it was only when she saw Ukrainian soldiers that it hit her that over six months of Russian occupation had ended.
“I was walking away... when I saw an armoured personnel carrier coming onto the square with a Ukrainian flag: my heart just tightened up and I began to sob,” the 43-year-old resident said, her voice trembling with emotion.
On Tuesday, she was among a crowd of residents receiving food parcels from a van at the same square where the Ukrainian flag was dramatically hoisted last week in one of the first images of Ukraine’s extraordinary northeastern counteroffensive.
The town - which had a population of 27,000 before the war - is one of a chain of key urban outposts that Ukraine has recaptured over the last week after a sudden collapse of one of Russia’s principal front lines.
On Tuesday, the streets around Balakliia’s main square were eerily quiet. The Ukrainian flag flew above a statue of national poet Taras Shevchenko in front of the regional government building.
A short walk away, regional police officers led reporters to the burial place of two people. The bodies had been exhumed and were laid out on the grass in open body bags.
The two men, they said, were civilians who had been shot dead at a checkpoint in the town on 6 September when the town was still under Russian control. Locals had buried them there because they had nowhere else to do so.
At the site of the exhumed grave, Valentyna, the distressed mother of one of the dead men, 49-year-old Petro, cursed the war and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“No one can return my son to me,” she said.
'They were in a sad state’: Ukraine forces find Russians in retreat
Some of the Russian forces driven out of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region have fled back across the border, although the elite tank regiment tasked to carry out the first strike against Nato and defend Moscow has stopped its retreat at Donetsk.
The Kremlin’s main stronghold in the northwest has fallen, the route to Donbas reclaimed by Ukraine.
The Russian troops left in the eastern and southern front in Ukraine are battered, “degraded” in military parlance, and morale is low.
The sweeping gains made by Ukrainian forces have led to more than 6,000 square kilometres (2,300 square miles) of territory being recovered in 12 days – four times the size of Greater London or bigger than Denmark, according to various comparisons.
The time and tide of the conflict is changing and the beginning of the end may now be here, reports Kim Sengupta from Kyiv.
Ukraine forces capture ‘sad’ retreating Russian troops
The time and tide of the conflict is changing, temporarily at least, reports Kim Sengupta from Kyiv
Amid Russia’s war, pope says faith cannot justify such evil
Pope Francis told the Russian Orthodox hierarchy and other faith leaders Tuesday that religion must never be used to justify the “evil” of war and that God must never “be held hostage to the human thirst for power.”
Against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Francis opened an interfaith conference in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan by challenging delegations to unite in condemning war.
He cited a Kazakh poet in warning that “he who permits evil and does not oppose it cannot be regarded as a true believer. At best he is a half-hearted believer.”
In the audience of the 80 imams, patriarchs, rabbis and muftis was Metropolitan Anthony, in charge of foreign relations for the Russian Orthodox Church, which has firmly backed Russia’s invasion. His boss, Patriarch Kirill, was supposed to have participated in the congress but canceled last month.
Read more in this report:
Amid Russia's war, pope says faith cannot justify such evil
Pope Francis has told the Russian Orthodox hierarchy and other faith leaders that religion must never be used to justify the “evil” of war and that God must never “be held hostage to the human thirst for power.”
China keeps West guessing about economic pressure on Russia
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is keeping the West guessing about whether Beijing will cooperate with tougher sanctions on Russia as he meets President Vladimir Putin a year after declaring they had a “no limits” friendship ahead of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
China has avoided violating sanctions but its purchases of Russian oil and gas rose almost 60% in August over a year ago to $11.2 billion. That helps to top up Moscow’s cash flow after the United States, Europe and Japan cut purchases and expelled Russia from the global banking system.
Xi and Putin are due to meet this week in Uzbekistan at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an eight-nation Central Asian security group.
Washington and allies in the Group of Seven major economies want to squeeze Moscow by enforcing an upper limit on how much buyers are allowed to pay for its oil. That would require cooperation from China, India and other energy-hungry Asian economies that have avoided taking sides and still buy from Russia.
Report:
China keeps West guessing about economic pressure on Russia
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is keeping the West guessing about whether Beijing will cooperate with tougher sanctions on Moscow as he meets President Vladimir Putin a year after declaring a “no limits” friendship ahead of Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Ukrainian troops keep up the pressure on retreating Russian forces
Ukrainian troops piled pressure on retreating Russian forces Tuesday, pressing deeper into occupied territory and sending more Kremlin troops fleeing ahead of the counteroffensive that has inflicted a stunning blow on Moscow’s military prestige.
As the advance continued, Ukraine’s border guard services said the army took control of Vovchansk — a town just 3km (2 miles) from Russia seized on the first day of the war. Russia has acknowledged that it recently withdrew troops from areas in the northeastern region of Kharkiv.
Russian troops were also pulling out from Melitopol, the second largest city in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, the city’s pre-occupation mayor said. His claim could not immediately be verified.
Melitopol has been occupied since early March. Capturing it would give Kyiv an opportunity to disrupt Russian supply lines between the south and the eastern Donbas region, the two major areas where Moscow-backed forces hold territory.
Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram that the Russian troops were heading toward Moscow-annexed Crimea. He said columns of military equipment were reported at a checkpoint in Chonhar, a village marking the boundary between the Crimean peninsula and the Ukrainian mainland.
In the newly freed village of Chkalovske in the Kharkiv region, Svitlana Honchar said the Russians’ departure was sudden and swift.
“They left like the wind. They were fleeing by any means they could.”
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