Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 549

Summary for Saturday, 26th August 2023 - DAY 549

Key developments over the past 24 hours:

• Russian air defences destroyed a drone as it approached Moscow, the city’s mayor said early on Saturday.
  Sergei Sobyanin said there were no casualties or damage on initial information.
  The launch is the latest in a string of drone attacks on the capital region.
  
  
• A second plane linked to Prigozhin by some Russian media has no connection to Wagner group and never did, the CEO of the aircraft operator company said. Russian media, mainly associated with a Wagner Telegram channel, had linked a second business jet with the mercenary group and reported it was also in the air at the time of the crash.
  
  
• Russian investigators said they had recovered flight recorders and 10 bodies from the crash scene. “Molecular genetic analyses are being carried out to establish their identities,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said on social media on Friday.
  
  
• Russia’s paramilitary group Wagner is a spent force, Ukraine’s defence minister has said after Prigozhin’s presumed death. “There is actually no longer a Wagner group left as they were a year ago, as a serious fighting force,” Oleksii Reznikov told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Friday. “They are broken.”
  
  
• The US will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced. The training would begin after the pilots received English-language training next month, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Several pilots and dozens of aircraft maintenance crew would take the training at an airbase in Arizona, he added.
  
  
• Turkey sees “no alternative” to the original grain export agreement Ukraine struck with Russia, Ankara has said, dismissing an alternate route reportedly being considered by the US. Russia last month pulled out of the deal that enabled Ukraine to export grain from three Black Sea ports but Ukraine this month sent a cargo vessel to Istanbul to test the alternate route. However, Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Friday, said Ankara was focused on reviving the original deal.
  

• Heineken has completed its lengthy exit from Russia with the sale of its operations there for a symbolic €1, after Moscow clamped down on asset sales in retaliation for western sanctions.
  
  
• German prosecutors say they are investigating the attempted murder of Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko after she was one of three Russian-exile journalists who experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning last October.
  

Russia blocks fresh drone attack on Moscow, says mayor

Russia’s western group of forces had made their advances around the towns of Kupiansk and Lyman through “continued small-scale attacks”.

There is a realistic possibility Russia will increase the intensity of its offensive efforts on the Kupiansk-Lyman axis in the next two months, probably with the objective of advancing west to the Oskil River and creating a buffer zone around Luhansk oblast.

‘That’s our guy’: how UK military chief became key Nato liaison in Ukraine

Adm Sir Tony Radakin recognised in Washington and Kyiv as an increasingly important actor

Eleven days ago, some of the most senior soldiers in the Nato alliance travelled to a secret location on the Polish-Ukrainian border to meet Ukraine’s chief military commander, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, for what was privately billed as “a council of war”.
It was no ordinary discussion: Zaluzhnyi brought his entire command team with him on the roughly 300-mile journey from Kyiv. The aim of the five-hour meeting was to help reset Ukraine’s military strategy – top of the agenda was what to do about the halting progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, along with battle plans for the gruelling winter ahead plus longer-term strategy as the war inevitably grinds into 2024.
Particularly notable was the presence not just of Nato’s military chief, the American Gen Christopher Cavoli, but also Adm Sir Tony Radakin, Britain’s most senior military officer, who is now acknowledged in Washington and Kyiv as an increasingly important actor in helping Ukraine overcome the Russian invaders.

https://twitter.com/AdmTonyRadakin_/status/1692586287453118533?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1692586287453118533%7Ctwgr%5E4ed4ac20dcb0817e1e720292185f56c45cd777bf%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Flive%2F2023%2Faug%2F26%2Frussia-ukraine-war-live-us-trying-to-nail-down-what-caused-prigozhin-plane-crash-drone-aimed-at-moscow-destroyed

Ukrainian forces believe they have broken through a difficult line of Russian defences in the south and will now be able to advance more quickly, a commander fighting in the south has told Reuters.

We don’t stop here … Next we have [the town of] Berdiansk, and then more. I made it clear to my fighters at once: our goal is not Robotyne, our goal is (the Sea of) Azov. We have passed the main roads that were mined. We are coming to those lines where we can go (forward). I’m sure we’ll go faster from here.

Russian authorities have said that air defences had destroyed one drone as it approached Moscow and another close to the border with Ukraine.

Putin orders Wagner fighters to sign oath of allegiance to Russian state

Putin signed the decree bringing in the change with immediate effect yesterday after the Kremlin said that western suggestions that Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”. The Kremlin declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.
Putin’s introduction of a mandatory oath for employees of Wagner and other private military contractors was a clear move to bring such groups under tighter state control, reports Reuters.
The decree, published on the Kremlin website, obliges anyone carrying out work on behalf of the military or supporting what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine to swear a formal oath of allegiance to Russia.
Fighters must pledge “their loyalty to the Russian Federation... strictly follow their commanders and superiors’ orders, and conscientiously fulfill their obligations,” it reads, according to the Moscow Times.
Described in the decree as a step to forge the spiritual and moral foundations of the defence of Russia, the wording of the oath includes a line in which those who take it promise to strictly follow the orders of commanders and senior leaders.

Russian investigators inspect the crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia’s Tver region. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

The whole world knows full well – and is intended to know – that the man behind the killing of Prigozhin and the Wagner group leadership, not the mention the deaths of the crew, is the very same man who authorised, for instance, the poisonings in the UK of Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal.
Prigozhin thought he had guarantees … Prigozhin thought he had sorted it out. Look at that deal now. Look what happened to him. There is only one way forward – defeat for Putin, and victory for Ukraine, as fast as possible.

Russian shelling of Kharkiv Oblast kills two, injures one

On 26 August, Russian troops shelled the village of Podoly in Kupiansk district, Kharkiv Oblast, killing two civilians and wounding one more, the Prosecutor’s Office of Kharkiv Oblast reported.

Summary of main events so far today...

• President Putin last night ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state after a deadly plane crash killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the volatile chief of the mercenary group.
  

• President Biden said US officials are trying to determine precisely how Prigozhin’s plane was brought down, leaving no survivors. Russia criticised Biden for expressing his lack of surprise that Prigozhin had been killed and cautioned that it was not appropriate for Washington to make such remarks.
  

• Russia reported a new drone attack on Moscow in the early hours today which again forced authorities to temporarily shut down all three major airports serving the capital. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drone was brought down by air defence systems.
  

• Pope Francis urged young Russians to be “sowers of seeds of reconciliation” in a virtual address to a congregation of 400 in St Petersburg that gathered for the annual Catholic youth day.
  

• Russian forces struck a cafe in a key frontline area in northeastern Ukraine today, killing two civilians and wounding a third, regional officials said. The shelling near the city of Kupiansk took place amid warnings from UK officials that Russia may try to retake the area.
  

• US reporter Evan Gershkovich appealed against a Russian court’s decision to extend his pre-trial detention by three months after his detention under spying charges which he denies, according to documents published by a Moscow court. Unlike many Western reporters, he had continued to report from Russia during Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine.
  

• German magazine Der Spiegel published a lengthy and detailed investigation into the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline. It cites German investigators – who are undertaking “the most important investigation of Germany’s postwar history because of its potential political implications” – and reported that “a striking number of clues point to Ukraine”.
  

Three pilots of the Air Force of Ukraine killed in the Zhytomyr region

On Friday, August 25, a plane crash occurred in the Zhytomyr region, killing three Ukrainian military pilots.

The Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported this on Saturday, August 26.
While performing a combat mission, the crews of two L-39 combat trainer aircraft collided in mid-air.
As a result, all three pilots were killed. An investigation into the circumstances of the crash is ongoing.
The Air Force reported that among the killed was a well-known Ukrainian pilot of the 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade with the call sign JUICE. Media reports say his name was Andrii Pilshchykov. He was a MiG-29 fighter pilot.

Ukrainian pilot with callsign JUICE

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, the young pilot has been defending the skies of Ukraine, flying dozens of combat missions. He participated in the air defense of the capital.



JUICE urged the partner countries to provide Ukraine with modern F-16 fighter jets and traveled to the United States to talk to U.S. officials and politicians. The military officer repeatedly gave extensive interviews to Ukrainian and Western media.

In May 2022, Captain Andrii Pilshchykov was awarded the Order for Courage, 3rd grade, by a decree of the President of Ukraine.
The Air Force Command expressed condolences to the relatives of the fallen pilots.
Criminal proceedings have been initiated over the plane crash in the Zhytomyr region, the Prosecutor General’s Office said.

The wreckage of an L-39 airplane in the Zhytomyr region, August 2023. Photo credits: Office of the Prosecutor General

According to the investigation, on August 25, 2023, two L-39 combat training aircraft collided in the sky in the Zhytomyr region. The tragedy killed three pilots of the Air Forces of Ukraine. The circumstances of the crash are being investigated.
The priority investigative actions are currently underway: the scene is being inspected, witnesses are being questioned, and a set of examinations has been ordered to be conducted in the criminal proceedings. The pre-trial investigation in the criminal proceedings is carried out by the State Bureau of Investigation.

Budanov refutes claims of mass Russian departure from Crimea

Currently, Russians do not have any plans to depart from occupied Crimea, though local collaborators have begun winding down their businesses, said Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) chief Kyrylo Budanov, in an interview with RFE/RL on August 26.