Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 546

Summary for Wednesday, 23rd August 2023 - DAY 546

Good morning

• A drone hit a building under construction in central Moscow early on Wednesday, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has said, in what AFP reported was the sixth straight night of aerial attacks on Russia’s capital region.
  
  
• Ukraine said its troops had entered the strategically important south-eastern village of Robotyne, a potentially significant advance in its counteroffensive against Russia. Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, said Ukrainian soldiers were organising the evacuation of civilians, but were still coming under fire from Russian forces.
  
  
• A prominent Russian journalist said on Tuesday that Gen Sergei Surovikin, former commander of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, had been dismissed as head of Russia’s aerospace forces. There was no official confirmation of the report by Alexei Venediktov, the well-connected former head of the now defunct Ekho Moskvy radio station, but it was cited by some other Russian news outlets on social media, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Three people were killed and two were injured as a result of Russian shelling of several villages in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the prosecutor general’s office said. According to the prosecutors, all three people, two women and a man, were killed in the village of Torske on Tuesday evening. The prosecutors provided no further detail of the attack.
  
  
• Russia said on Tuesday that it destroyed two Ukrainian military boats in the Black Sea. Moscow’s defence ministry said one of its Sukhoi Su-30sm jets destroyed a Ukrainian “reconnaissance boat” near Russian gas production facilities. It later said it also destroyed a US-made speedboat carrying Ukrainian troops east of Snake Island, without providing further detail. The claims were not verified.
  
  
• A group of Ukrainian “saboteurs” tried to breach Russia’s border in the Bryansk region, the regional governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The claim was not verified.
  
  
• The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Russia would remain a “responsible supplier” of food and grain to African countries and could take Ukraine’s place as an international supplier of grain, in recorded remarks to a summit of the Brics countries in South Africa. He also said said the use of US dollars in trade between Brics nations was decreasing, as the countries moved towards national currencies and away from dollars in an “irreversible process of de-dollarisation”.
  
  
• The international court of justice will hear Russia’s objections to its jurisdiction in a genocide case brought by Ukraine in hearings starting in September, the body said on Tuesday. Ukraine filed a case with the ICJ shortly after Russia’s invasion began on 24 February 2022, which accused Moscow of falsely applying genocide law to justify the attack, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Denmark has begun training eight Ukrainian pilots in flying F-16 fighter jets as part of its commitment to donate aircraft, the Danish armed forces said on Tuesday. Denmark and the Netherlands pledged on Sunday to donate F-16s to Ukraine.
  
  
• The leaders of 11 Balkan and eastern European countries signed a joint declaration backing Ukraine’s territorial integrity at a summit in Athens on Monday. In the presence of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, they expressed their “unwavering support for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders” in the face of Russia’s aggression.
  
  
• Poland’s president has said Russia is in the process of shifting some short-range nuclear weapons to neighbouring Belarus. Andrzej Duda said the move would shift the security architecture of the region and the entire Nato military alliance, Associated Press reported.
  
  
• Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said the commitment made by some European countries to donate F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will help to minimise Ukrainian losses and de-escalate the conflict.
  
  
• A drone appears to have destroyed a supersonic Russian bomber on an airfield hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine, British military intelligence has said, the latest in a string of successful assaults on prestige infrastructure and military hardware. These attacks, far beyond the frontlines, are powerful propaganda for Ukraine, though Kyiv rarely claims them directly.
  

Three drones downed in Moscow region, says mayor

Moscow airports suspend flights briefly as drone hits site in city centre, with two others brought down across the region

Russia attacks grain facilities in Ukraine's Danube region

The Netherlands to send Ukraine a thousand chargers for remote demining

Ukraine says air defences shot down 11 of 20 drones launched by Russia overnight

Three dead in Belgorod drone strikes, says governor

The UK is due to proscribe the Wagner mercenary group as a terrorist group within weeks

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 23 August 2023

Medvedev says Russia may annex Abkhazia and South Ossetia

Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council and Former President of the Russian Federation, has said Russia may annex the occupied Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Conflict between FSB and Russian Army brewing as Russia fails on the battlefield

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin fears a conflict between Russia’s FSB Federal Security Service and the country’s military is imminent, international relations expert Ivan Yakovyna revealed on Radio NV on Aug. 22.

“In Russia, there isn’t yet panic, of course – let’s not exaggerate – but there is a significant level of concern,” Yakovyna told NV. “The Russian military command is growing increasingly apprehensive as it recognizes that the situation is unfolding in an unfavorable direction for them.”
“Against this backdrop, Vladimir Putin visited Rostov-on-Don this week – or at least, it was shown that he visited there. I’m uncertain about whether it was genuinely him or not. Although I do believe he was present, I’m not inclined to believe he has doubles. He went there and performed a symbolic gesture by entering the headquarters.
“Do you recall when this headquarters was in the news previously? It was during Prigozhin’s capture of it. It was precisely there that Prigozhin sat, interrogating Russian generals, demanding their surrender of Shoigu and Gerasimov to him. Putin needed to step in, assert his presence there and state, ‘This is my territory. I’m in charge here.’
“And there, I think they told him about how things are happening at the front. Most likely, they exaggerated and didn’t tell the whole truth, as Russian generals often tend to do that. But we already have an idea of the situation at the front, especially from reports by Russian sources, and those reports indicate that things are not going well there.
“In fact, the situation is quite bad. What does that mean? Ukrainian forces have successfully taken back the village of Urozhayne. This gives them the opportunity to keep moving south into the Azov region, and they have two options for their next steps.
“One option is to move towards Mariupol and Volnovakha. The other choice is to head to Berdyansk. By the way, Berdyansk has been hit by heavy shelling multiple times in the last few days. The Russian military bases in Berdyansk are already quite damaged.
“Robotyne has also been liberated. However, fighting is still happening on its southern outskirts. Beyond Robotyne is the town of Tokmak, and after Tokmak comes Melitopol. Basically, this is the same direction that everyone initially thought was really important and strategic. So, why is Ukraine succeeding in their offensive? Well, Ukraine now has new types of weapons, and on top of that, the Russian army is extremely worn out.
“I would like to say a few words about Western media, which recently, like machine guns, have been firing headlines about how the Ukrainian army is failing, that the offensive is over or hasn’t yielded the necessary results.
“You know, the Western media has done this multiple times before. Right when the invasion started, they were loudly claiming that Kyiv would be taken by the enemy within 72 hours. But how did that turn out? Nothing of the sort happened. They were even quoting sources from the Pentagon and the CIA. Yet, as we all know, Kyiv wasn’t captured. All those talks turned out to be complete nonsense.
“They said the exact same thing about Mariupol when it got surrounded – that Mariupol wouldn’t last more than two days. But guess what? Mariupol actually managed to hold out for a full two months, completely surrounded.
“Before Ukraine’s push into Kherson Oblast last year, everyone was going on about how Ukraine’s progress there had come to a standstill. People were saying that Ukraine was tired out, didn’t have any more soldiers, that the weapons from the West were almost gone, and that the West wouldn’t send more weapons. But you know what happened? Some time passed, and boom – Ukraine advanced first in Kharkiv Oblast and then in Kherson Oblast.
“And now they’re writing the same stuff all over again. Wondering why they keep doing this? From what I gather, their job seems to be painting the darkest, most negative pictures possible. Why? Because if they predict the worst and it doesn’t happen, they can just shrug and say, “Hey, our bad! It’s not that serious after all!” They’re afraid to sound too positive because then people might criticize them if things don’t turn out as rosy as they predicted.
“I’m not worried about looking too hopeful, but they definitely are. That’s the first thing. Second, they have a pretty strange way of judging how successful an advance is. To them, it only counts if they conquer big areas that get freed up. But I have a different take on that.
“I think a successful push should be measured by the number and quality of enemy soldiers and military gear they manage to take out. And in that department, things are looking good. Even high-up Russian military leaders are admitting to their losses. Remember General Ivan Popov, nicknamed Spartak, who got sent off to Syria? He made an audio message where he straight up said, “We’re facing huge losses.”

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Two killed in Russian attack on Ukrainian school

A Russian drone attack on the Danube River port of Izmail in southern Ukraine destroyed 13,000 tons of grain

Ukrainian flag raised outside Verkhovna Rada

The State Flag of Ukraine was raised outside the building of the Verkhovna Rada on Wednesday, August 23.

Speaker of the Parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, posted this on Facebook and shared the corresponding video, Ukrinform reports.



"Today, as always, on August 23, we are raising the Ukrainian Flag at the walls of the Ukrainian parliament. It is important not to break this tradition, so that only our blue and yellow flag will fly here and throughout Ukraine always and for many years to come!" emphasized Stefanchuk.
As reported by Ukrinform, Ukraine marks National Flag Day on August 23.
The holiday was established "…to honor the centuries-old history of Ukrainian statehood, the state symbols of independent Ukraine, and to foster citizens' respect for the state symbols of Ukraine," reads the presidential decree of August 23, 2004.
In 2009, this decree was amended, and an annual official flag-raising ceremony was introduced across Ukraine on August 23.

Summary of the day so far...

• At least two educational workers were killed and three other people injured in a Russian attack on a school in Romny, north-eastern Ukraine, on Wednesday, the interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said.
  
  
• Brics leaders will debate admitting new members to their five-nation bloc as it pursues a bigger role in shaping world affairs it sees as dominated by western powers, AFP reports. China’s president, Xi Jinping, and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi said on Wednesday they supported an expansion of the group. During a virtual address on the second day of the summit, being held in Johannesburg, Vladimir Putin again blamed the West for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
  
  
• Russian general Sergei Surovikin, not seen in public since a mutiny by Wagner mercenaries in late June, has been replaced as head of the airforce, according to state news agency RIA.
  
  
• UK government support for Ukraine’s nuclear fuel supply will help end the country’s reliance on Russian supplies, the energy secretary, Grant Shapps, said after a trip to a Ukrainian power station.
  
  
• The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said on Tuesday that three civilians were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a sanatorium in the village of Lavy, close to the Ukrainian border.
  
  
• Ukrainian air defences shot down 11 out of 20 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks, the airforce said on Wednesday. The Ukrainian military and local officials said Russia carried out attacks in the southern region of Odesa and in the Danube River area, which is important for grain exports, reportedly causing fires in grain facilities.
  
  
• A drone hit a building under construction in central Moscow early on Wednesday, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said. The Russian military downed two more drones over the western part of the Moscow region, the mayor said on his Telegram channel.
  

Ukraine said on Wednesday that Russian strikes on its sea and river ports had destroyed 270,000 tonnes of grain in the space of a month

Since July’s collapse of the UN-brokered Black Sea grain deal, which aimed to ensure safe grain shipments from Ukraine, Moscow has bombarded Ukrainian ports on the sea and Danube river.
“Russia is systematically hitting grain tanks and warehouses to stop agricultural exports,” infrastructure minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said in a post on social media.
“In total, 270,000 tonnes of grain have been destroyed in a month of attacks on ports,” he added.
Last night alone, an attack had reduced the port of Izmail’s export capacity by 15% and the port of Reni lost 35,000 tonnes of grain, he said.
“This is the eighth attack on port infrastructure since Russia withdrew from the (grain deal),” Kubrakov added.

Zelenskiy vows to end Russia’s occupation of the Crimean peninsula

Ukraine confirms 5 strategic bombers damaged in drone attacks on Russian airfields

Kyiv deputy killed in action in Donbas

“A great loss for all of us. Our friend, the deputy of the Kyiv City Council from the European Solidarity party, Serhiy Ilnytskyi, has passed away. He fought for the Ukrainian Donbas since 2014 and was killed there, in Donbas, near Kurdiumivka village,” Poroshenko said.

Wagner Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin Believed Dead After Plane Crash in Russia

According to preliminary reports, the Wagner boss was listed aboard a private jet that crashed in Moscow's Tver region, killing all ten people on board.

Summary of events so far today...

• The Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a private jet which crashed north of Moscow and killed ten people on board.
  
  
• Russia has relieved Gen Sergei Surovikin of his command of the Russian aerospace forces, in the highest-level sacking yet of a military commander after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s abortive mutiny in June.
  
  
• A Russian military helicopter has landed in Ukraine. reportedly after the pilot was convinced to defect in a six-month intelligence operation.
  
  
• Vladimir Putin has defended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sought to rally leaders of the Brics nations meeting in South Africa to the Kremlin’s side.
  
  
• Four educational workers were killed and four other people were hurt in a Russian attack on a school in the city of Romny in north-eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, the interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said.
  
  
• The US has approved the possible $500m sale to Taiwan of infrared search and track systems for F-16 fighter jets, as well as other equipment, Reuters reports, citing the Pentagon.
  
  
• Ukraine has said on Wednesday it destroyed a Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system on the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, Reuters reports.
  
  
• A Moscow court will decide on Thursday whether to extend the pre-trial detention of detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, a court spokesperson told AFP on Wednesday.
  

Top Russian general linked to Prigozhin dismissed, state media reports

Gen. Sergei Surovikin, a former commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine who was linked to the leader of a brief armed rebellion, has been dismissed as chief of the air force, Russian state media reported Wednesday after weeks of uncertainty about his fate.

Surovikin has not been seen in public since June 23-24, when Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, sent his men to march toward Moscow. In a video released during the uprising, Surovikin — who was believed to have close ties to Prigozhin — had urged him to pull the mercenaries back.
The Wagner uprising posed the most serious challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s 23-year rule and reports circulated that Surovikin had known about it in advance. Prigozhin called off the rebellion short of reaching Moscow after he said he wanted to avoid bloodshed.

Surovikin’s absence has been one of several enduring mysteries surrounding the rebellion. During his absence, Russian media have speculated about Surovikin’s whereabouts, with some claiming he had been detained, but his daughter told the Russian social media channel Baza in late June that her father had not been arrested.
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, citing an anonymous source, reported that Surovikin has been replaced as commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces by Col. Gen. Viktor Afzalov, who heads the main staff of the air force.
The agency frequently represents the official position of the Kremlin through reports citing anonymous officials in Russia’s defense and security establishment.
The Russian government has not commented on the report, and The Associated Press was not able to confirm it independently.

The Russian daily newspaper RBC reported that Surovikin is being transferred to a new job and is now on vacation.
Alexei Venediktov, the former head of the closed radio station Ekho Moskvy, and Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of a Putin-linked politician, both wrote on social media Tuesday that Surovikin had been dismissed.
Sobchak said Surovikin was removed from his post Aug. 18, “by a closed decree. The family still has no contact with him.”
Surovikin was dubbed “General Armageddon” for his brutal military campaign in Syria and led Russia’s operations in Ukraine between October 2022 and January 2023. Under his command, Russian forces unleashed regular missile barrages on Ukrainian cities, significantly damaging civilian infrastructure and disrupting heating, electricity and water supplies.
Both Surovikin and Prigozhin were both active in Syria, where Russian forces have fought to shore up President Bashar Assad’s government since 2015.

Surovikin was replaced as commander in Ukraine by Chief of General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov following Russia’s withdrawal from the southern city of Kherson amid a swift counteroffensive by Kyiv’s troops, but the air force general continued to serve under Gerasimov as a deputy commander.
Prigozhin had spoken positively of Surovikin while criticizing Russia’s military brass, and suggested he should be appointed General Staff chief to replace Gerasimov.

While the reports circulated about actions against Surovikin, Prigozhin, appears to be still in charge of the mercenary group, which won a key battle to capture the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut earlier this year. Prigozhin said he launched the rebellion to oust Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other military leaders who he accused of mismanaging the war in Ukraine.

Shortly after the rebellion, the Kremlin confirmed Putin had a three-hour meeting with Prigozhin and Wagner commanders shortly before they apparently agreed to depart for exile in Belarus. In July, Prigozhin was seen on the sidelines of a Russia-Africa summit in the Russian city of St. Petersburg, and this week he posted his first video address since the mutiny, saying he was seeking “bogatyrs” — courageous and strong men — to work for Wagner in Africa

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of the office of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted following reports of the crash, saying, “Regarding Prigozhin: we have to wait for the fog of war to clear.”

Joe Biden has commented on the plane crash involving Prigozhin, saying that he is “not surprised” by reports.