Ukraine-Russia war live: Putin’s forces launch major drone attack as they claim key hill town of Vuhledar
Vuhledar has been a bastion of Ukrainian resistance since Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion in February 2022
Your support helps us to tell the story
My recent work focusing on Latino voters in Arizona has shown me how crucial independent journalism is in giving voice to underrepresented communities.
Your support is what allows us to tell these stories, bringing attention to the issues that are often overlooked. Without your contributions, these voices might not be heard.
Every dollar you give helps us continue to shine a light on these critical issues in the run up to the election and beyond
Eric Garcia
Washington Bureau Chief
Putin’s forces have launched a major drone attack on 15 Ukrainian regions, causing widespread damage to commercial and residential infrastructure.
The Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 78 out of 105 Russian drones during the assault, with 23 more likely impacted by active electronic jamming.
Authorities in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv said the air force had downed around 15 drones over the city and its surroundings during an air alert that lasted more than five hours.
An attack on the southern region of Odesa damaged power lines, regional governor Oleh Kiper said. Workers restored power to more than 3,000 consumers, though a further 2,000 people remained without power in one of the districts.
It comes as claimed a key town in eastern Ukraine as Kyiv’s troops were forced to withdraw from the area after years of fighting.
The Russian Army said it had seized Vuhledar, Donetsk, a bastion that had resisted intense attacks since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Control of the area, which lies at the intersection of the eastern and southern battlefields, is significant because it will ease Russia’s advance as it tries to pierce deeper behind the Ukrainian defensive lines.
Vladimir Putin wants to wipe us off the map, Ukraine’s top tennis player warns
Trump-endorsed candidate slams Republican nominee for refusing to back Ukraine
Ukraine’s troops pull back from key eastern town as Putin’s forces advance
White House slaps down House Republicans for ‘political stunt’ over Zelensky visit
Putin’s forces are desperate for a prize eastern city and Ukraine will fight street to street to keep them out
Putin’s forces are in ‘complete control’ of Vuhledar, Russian bloggers claim
Vladimir Putin’s forces are in complete control of the strategic Ukrainian frontline town of Vuhledar, the SHOT Telegram channel and pro-Russian war bloggers said.
The Russian defence ministry has not yet claimed the town’s capture.
On Tuesday, a regional Ukrainian official said Russian troops had reached the town centre, a bastion on strategic high ground that has resisted Russian assaults for more than two years.
Images of Russian forces waving their flag on the roof of an administrative building on Tuesday in the town centre showed a structure which had been reduced to rubble in parts and whose blackened windows had all been blown out.
Vuhledar is a coal mining town that lies at the intersection of the eastern and southern battlefields, giving it added importance to supplying both sides’ troops.
Moscow has long sought to capture Vuhledar, which had a pre-war population of around 14,000, as a key stepping stone to incorporating the entire Donetsk region into Russia.
Vuhledar also sits close to a railway line connecting Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, to Ukraine’s industrialised Donbas region, which comprises Donetsk and the eastern region of Luhansk, most of which Moscow controls.
Watch: Russian fighter jet narrowly misses American aircraft off coast of Alaska
Putin’s plans to boost defence budget draw ire from some Russians
Vladimir Putin’s plans to boost its defence budget next year and prolong the war have drawn backlash from some quarters of the Russian public.
Russia is set to increase its spending on defence by 25 per cent next year, taking it to the highest level on record.
The newly proposed increase in spending will push Russia’s defence budget to a record 13.5 trillion rubles (£109bn) by 2025, according to draft budget documents released on Monday on the parliament’s website.
The spending on defence and security combined will account for 40 per cent of Russia’s total budget. Irina, a pensioner, called it an “outrage” and said “we need to end this war”, reported AFP. She said increasing spending on war is a “crime”.
Another pensioner called it a “shame and a disgrace” in a country that has no money to treat its own children.
Russia to conduct nationwide emergency public warning tests
Russia will run a nationwide test of its emergency public warning systems on Wednesday, letting sirens wail and interrupting television and radio broadcasts in a twice-yearly initiative amid the war in Ukraine.
At around 10.30am in most of Russia’s 11 time zones, sirens will sound for a minute, with loudspeakers broadcasting an “Attention everyone!” call, the emergency ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
The exercise aims to check the warning systems, the readiness of those responsible for launching them and to raise public awareness, the ministry said, adding, “Don’t panic - everything is according to a plan.”
The frequency of rehearsals was doubled from last year, following the first event held in 2020.
It comes amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, which Moscow started in 2022, triggering the deepest crisis in its relations with the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Vladimir Putin wants to wipe us off the map, Ukraine’s top tennis player warns
Vladimir Putin wants to wipe us off the map, Ukraine’s top tennis player warns
Exclusive: Kyiv’s top tennis player Elina Svitolina tells Alexander Butler the West must act to get Ukraine’s stolen children back from Russia
Death toll rises to six in Ukrainian supermarket strike
At least six people were killed and three were injured in an alleged Russian artillery strike in a busy market in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson yesterday.
The attack came on the same morning Ukrainians across the country were observing a minute’s silence for their military and war dead.
The strike happened as shoppers made their way between stalls at the city centre market, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
He published a video showing the blurred corpses of people in civilian clothes lying near a stall with tomatoes and other vegetables.
Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office said the strike was “most likely” carried out by Russian artillery and hit close to a public transport stop.
It initially reported that seven people were killed but later corrected that toll to six, saying a severely wounded person thought to be dead was in intensive care at a local hospital.
Zelensky confirms successful test of ballistic missile
Ukraine successfully tested its own ballistic missile and has exponentially ramped up domestic ammunition production, president Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Addressing Ukraine’s second international defence industry forum, Mr Zelensky said Ukraine produced 25 times more artillery and mortar ammunition so far this year than in the entire year of 2022.
“The total number of drones we are now capable of producing annually in Ukraine is 4 million, with more than 1.5 million already contracted,” he said.
Mr Zelensky also touched on the advancement of long-range weaponry, highlighting Ukraine’s Palianytsia missile-drone and domestically developed ballistic missile.
“Our new ballistic missile has successfully completed flight tests,” he announced.
He had initially revealed that Ukraine tested its own ballistic missile in late August, though specific details of the project remain undisclosed.
UK sanctions Russian cyber-crime gang tasked with attacking Nato
Britain said it sanctioned 16 members of the Russian cyber-crime gang Evil Corp, a group it said had been tasked by Russia to conduct operations against Nato allies.
Evil Corp was once believed to be the most significant cyber-crime threat in the world, Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said after taking coordinated action with officials in the United States and Australia.
“Today’s sanctions send a clear message to the Kremlin that we will not tolerate Russian cyber-attacks - whether from the state itself or from its cyber-criminal ecosystem,” foreign minister David Lammy said in a statement.
In 2019, the US indicted and sanctioned Evil Corp’s alleged leader, the Lamborghini-driving Maksim Yakubets, and put a $5m bounty out for information leading to his arrest.
In its latest disclosure, the NCA said the group had been tasked by Russian intelligence services to conduct cyber-attacks and espionage operations against Nato allies, although it gave no further details.
Yakubets, it said, had worked with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and military intelligence unit GRU.
Ukraine investigating alleged killing of 16 POWs by Russian army
Ukraine said it had launched an investigation into what it said was an apparent shooting of 16 Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian soldiers.
The soldiers who were allegedly killed had surrendered on the eastern Ukrainian frontline.
“This is the largest reported case of the execution of Ukrainian POWs on the front line and yet another indication that the killing and torture of prisoners of war are not isolated incidents,” Ukraine’s prosecutor general Andriy Kostin said on X.
“This is a deliberate policy of the Russian military and political leadership.”
Moscow did not immediately comment on the accusations. The Kremlin denies that Russia commits war crimes in Ukraine.
The Ukraine prosecutor general office said on the Telegram messaging app that it was looking into a video shared on social media showing the alleged killing.
A video with grainy drone footage purported to show a group of more than ten people leaving a trench. They are lined up and then fall down after being fired upon by other, indistinct figures.
Mr Kostin said the incident took place on the Pokrovsk front, an area of intensified Russian assaults.
Russian troops reach centre of Ukraine's Vuhledar in the east, Ukrainian governor says
Russian troops have reached the centre of Vuhledar, a bastion on strategic high ground in eastern Ukraine that has resisted Russian assaults since Moscow’s full-scale invasion, the regional governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region said on Tuesday.
Vadym Filashkin, the governor, said the situation in Vuhledar was extremely difficult.
“The enemy is already nearly in the centre of the city,” Filashkin told Ukrainian TV.
Russian forces reached the outskirts of the small mining town last week and intensified their offensive push in recent days.
Moscow’s troops in eastern Ukraine advanced at their fastest rate in two years in August, according to multiple open-source maps. Their relentless advance in the Ukrainian east comes despite Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments