Russian security forces have taken dozens of supporters of the anti-war Yabloko party into custody in Moscow. The exclusion of the liberal opposition party from the parliamentary elections is being heard before the Supreme Court. No fewer than 35 people were taken away there, said Yabloko boss Nikolai Rybakov. The party also released videos of arrests. Rybakov went to court to demand the people's release and an end to police intimidation.
Russia's Supreme Court again heard the issue of expelling Yabloko from the September 18-20 parliamentary elections. The party had filed an appeal against the court's decision to revoke its admission to the Duma election a week ago. The prospects that Yabloko will still be approved are considered bleak.
Russia says it is continuing its advance into Ukraine and has reported the capture of two towns. The Defense Ministry in Moscow said they were Novosolozhyne in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region and Andriivska Hromada in the Donetsk region.
In Moscow, prominent economist Andrej Klepatsch predicted Russia would lose in its war of attrition against Ukraine and has now lost his job. State-owned company VEB.RF, Russia's leading economic development institution, has fired its chief economist, several Russian media outlets reported on Sunday evening. Klepatsch had previously been quoted as saying that it was impossible for Russia to win the war of attrition against Ukraine. He was also convinced that Russia was heading for a crisis.
The newspaper “The Moscow Times” reported on a lecture by Klepatsch in a club at the Moscow Stock Exchange, in which the economist had already confirmed Ukraine's economic survival in May. "We are under the illusion that everything will collapse there [in Ukraine]. It has not collapsed and will not collapse," the newspaper quoted Klepatsch as saying. Russia's costs, on the other hand, were rising and the country would lose out "in both technological and economic competition worldwide."
The statements are explosive because the power apparatus and the state-owned companies always claimed that the situation was under control despite all the problems. Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, who ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, repeatedly emphasizes that Russia will win. So far, however, there is no sign that the president will achieve his war goals. In Russia, economic problems are increasing every day.
According to the state agency Tass, criminal proceedings have been initiated against a German journalist in Moscow following his question at a press conference about the killing of Russian soldiers. The correspondent of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (“FAZ”) is being investigated for inciting hatred and hostility, reported Tass.
A decision is currently being made as to whether the reporter, who reports on Southeastern Europe for the Vienna newspaper, will be put on an international search warrant. When asked by the German Press Agency, the press office of the “FAZ” said that it was not aware of the procedure.
A week ago in Belgrade, the correspondent asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky what the Europeans could do to help Ukraine kill more Russian soldiers. This sparked widespread criticism. The newspaper then explained on Monday that the reporter's question had been phrased ambiguously. This is regrettable. It is not the editorial line of the “FAZ” that as many Russian soldiers as possible should be killed.
The Ukrainian military says it has attacked a rocket fuel production facility in Russia's Rostov region. “The company produces solid rocket fuel for multiple rocket launchers as well as for a range of missile systems and air-launched weapon systems,” the Ukrainian military said on Telegram. Rostov is located in the south of Russia and borders Ukraine.
According to the Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russian armed forces shot down 822 Ukrainian drones across the country. Russia does not disclose how many enemy drones were discovered or reached their target. About 45 kilometers south of Moscow, a large cloud of smoke can be seen over the hit Wildberries warehouse in Koledino, Reuters videos show. Ukraine has increasingly targeted the online retailer Wildberries in recent weeks. She accuses the company of selling military goods.
According to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Ukraine attacked the region of the Russian capital with around 600 drones during the night. Of these, 201 were destroyed by air defense in the Moscow region, Sobyanin wrote on the Telegram platform. Most of the drones had already been repelled when approaching the region, the state news agency Tass quoted the mayor as saying.
The Ukrainian attack on Moscow appeared to be one of the largest waves of attacks on Kiev to date. At the end of July, for example, Russian authorities reported 390 drones in one night; at the beginning of July there were 452. Mayor Sobyanin now spoke of three people being injured. He did not provide any information about possible damage.
According to the Ukrainian news site “Kyiv Independent,” the attacks in the Moscow region hit, among other things, industrial facilities and a warehouse belonging to the Russian online retailer Wildberries. Ukraine recently attacked its facilities in other parts of Russia.
The information provided by the two warring parties could not initially be independently verified.
An F-18 fighter jet shot down a drone that illegally entered Romanian airspace as part of a NATO mission. It was the fourth unmanned aerial vehicle to be shot down over the country this year, the Romanian Defense Ministry said on Sunday. A spokesman for NATO military headquarters, U.S. Col. Martin O'Donnell, said the drone appeared to be Russian. However, further investigations into the incident were ongoing.
For its part, the Romanian Ministry of Defense did not provide any information about the origin of the drone. It was detected by radar as it entered Romanian airspace from the neighboring Republic of Moldova, 24 kilometers north of the southeastern Romanian city of Galati. The F-18 jet, part of a Spanish NATO contingent stationed in Romania, made radar contact with the target and received permission to intervene, the ministry statement said. The drone was shot down safely at 5:01 a.m. local time (4:01 a.m. CEST). Debris apparently fell in an uninhabited area between two villages.
It was only at the beginning of July that Romanian F-16 pilots shot down three Russian drones that had invaded national airspace for the first time. There have been dozens of such incidents since Russia's war against Ukraine began. In May, a Russian drone crashed into an apartment block in Galati in a nighttime attack on neighboring Ukraine, injuring two people.
Russia attacks the Ukrainian capital Kyiv again with ballistic missiles. There are explosions in the city, Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on the Telegram platform that night. He called on the residents of the city of over a million people to stay in their shelters. There are fires in two districts and the fire brigade is on site.
The Ukrainian Air Force also reported on Telegram about attacks with ballistic missiles, glide bombs and drones on other parts of the country. In addition to Kyiv, the targets were also the industrial cities of Kremenchuk and Kryvyi Rih.
Because the Ukrainian armed forces lack missile defense ammunition after four and a half years of war, Russia has recently increased its ballistic missile attacks on Kiev and other cities.
Russia has called on the US and Turkey to clarify reports of possible plans to supply Ukraine with a "significant arsenal" of US weapons and ammunition that Turkey possesses, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman says. Such a delivery would “seriously damage our bilateral relations with Washington and Ankara,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
The Ukrainian military attacked an oil facility in Ust-Luga, Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj announced this on Telegram, but left it open whether the attack caused any damage. Just on Friday, Ukraine attacked the Russian gas condensate processing plant in the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga.
The Ukrainian military attacked the missile and space center in Samara, Russia. The armed forces also shelled the Zavasleika military airfield, a base for Russian fighter jets, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram.
Russian authorities in Samara had previously announced that local industrial facilities had been attacked. The air defense repelled a “massive attack,” said the head of administration of the regional capital of the same name, Samara, Ivan Noskov, in an online post. The city’s industrial infrastructure suffered “localized damage.” He did not provide any further information about the affected facility.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed the threat to food supplies from Russian attacks on cargo ships in the Black Sea with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Ukraine is one of the largest suppliers of food to Egypt and many other countries in Africa and the Middle East, Zelensky said on the X platform. Because of the war, these deliveries are now seriously threatened. There is already a significant decline, which could lead to rising prices and bottlenecks. Both countries agreed to work on solutions. Russia's recent attacks on ships and port infrastructure de facto block the main export route for Ukrainian grain to international markets.
The Russian justice system has included the Eastern European Research Center (FSO), based at the University of Bremen, in its controversial list of undesirable organizations. The Ministry of Justice thus expanded its list of foreign and international entities whose work on the territory of the Russian Federation is prohibited.
No specific reasons are given, but organizations are listed that the Moscow authorities believe are working against the interests of the Russian state. Several German organizations are already on the list, including the German Historical Institute (DHI), which has been active in Moscow for many years, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and numerous political foundations.
In Romania, a drone crashed in a forest area around five kilometers from the border with Ukraine. The NATO country's Defense Ministry announced this on Friday. The drone landed in the eastern Tulcea district. Military radar systems did not detect it because it was flying at a “very low” altitude, it said. The ministry initially did not provide any information about the origin of the drone.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has announced an expansion of Russian air strikes on Ukraine. “We will use much harsher methods to destroy everything that feeds Kiev's war machine from the West,” he said in an interview broadcast on Russian state television on Friday.
A Russian glide bomb destroyed six floors of a ten-story apartment building in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. One person was killed and 16 others were injured, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday. According to Zelensky, Russia attacked a total of twelve Ukrainian regions during the night.
A 29-year-old woman and her nine-year-old son were killed in a Russian drone attack on a residential building in the northern Ukrainian region of Sumy. The authorities announced this on Friday. Four other people were injured in the attack early Friday morning, including the father and grandmother of the boy who was killed. Both were taken to hospital with severe burns, the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Hryhorov, said.
According to insider information, crude oil exports from the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk have been suspended following a drone attack. Because of the attack, the loadings were stopped and the acceptance of
