A spy ring was supposed to bring down Kyiv. The new update from the British secret service also speaks of a “new phase” in the Ukraine war. Long convoys of Russians would head south from the Donbass. All news about the war in Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.
Saturday, August 6, 9:01 a.m.: The British Ministry of Defense and military intelligence announced on Saturday that the Ukraine war is now entering a “new phase”.
Accordingly, the Russian troops would now gather in the south of the country to prepare for a counter-offensive by Ukraine. Ukraine has been counterattacking for days, and now the British are expecting the Russians to respond.
Several convoys of military trucks, tanks and artillery would be moving southwest away from the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. The ministry announced this on Twitter.
In the “new phase,” fighting would “shift to an approximately 350-kilometer front line stretching southwest from near Zaporizhia to Kherson, parallel to the Dnieper River,” London writes in the update.
3:56 p.m .: In the first weeks of the war, Russia wanted to take Kyiv. This was also to be done with the help of a spy ring that the Kremlin had sent to the Ukrainian capital a year earlier. The agents were supposed to infiltrate important places – and they were quite successful.
As reported by “Welt”, the Russian spies recruited two SBU employees as sources. The SBU is the secret service of Ukraine. Ukraine has now identified and arrested three members of the spy ring. The agents were not successful: Kyiv could not be taken by Russia.
10.42 a.m .: According to British secret services, actions by the Russian armed forces are highly likely to endanger the security of the Ukrainian Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. Moscow’s intentions regarding the largest nuclear power plant in Europe are still unclear five months after the start of the war, the British Defense Ministry said in an update on Friday.
The Russians are believed to have used artillery units in the areas adjacent to the power plant to attack Ukrainian regions west of the Dnipro River. They may have used the high-security status of the power plant site to protect themselves and their equipment from Ukrainian counterattacks at night, sources said.
With six blocks and an output of 6000 megawatts, the plant in the city of Enerhodar in the Zaporizhia Oblast is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Russian troops occupied the facility in early March. After that, the nuclear power plant continued to be operated by Ukrainian personnel, but was monitored by Russian nuclear specialists.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has described the situation at the nuclear power plant as extremely unstable and fragile. “All the principles of nuclear safety have been violated in one way or another,” Rafael Grossi said in New York this week. An IAEA inspection to check technical safety is urgently needed.
Friday, August 5, 8:50 a.m.: According to Ukrainian sources, Russian troops have launched a major offensive in the Donetsk region. “In the Donetsk area, the enemy is conducting an offensive operation in the direction of Bakhmut and Avdiivka,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in its situation report on Friday morning. With the fighting, the Russian troops are trying to put themselves in a good starting position to capture the cities of Soledar and Bakhmut and to expand their control to the area west of Donetsk.
The cities of Soledar and Bakhmut are part of the line of defense east of the conurbation around the major cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. More than half a million people lived there before the war. It is the last large area in Donbass that is still controlled by Kiev troops. Ukraine has turned the area into a fortress.
According to the General Staff, the battles in front of Bakhmut were unsuccessful. In front of Avdiivka, on the other hand, just north of Donetsk, fighting continued. The reports cannot be verified independently. In the past few days, hostilities in the region had intensified again after a short break.
9:36 p.m .: The losses on the Russian side are not officially communicated, but observers assume around 15,000 casualties. In order to advance his “special operation”, Putin needs many new soldiers. And they come primarily from remote, poor provinces.
You can read more about this here: Analysis provides insights – who Putin sends to war – and who he “does not let die”
5:56 p.m .: According to British secret services, Russia protects important infrastructure with radar reflectors from attacks in the contested Ukrainian region of Cherson. The pyramid-shaped reflectors are positioned in the Dnipro River next to the Antonivka Bridge, which was damaged by Ukrainian missile attacks, the Ministry of Defense said on Thursday in London. In this way, the bridge is hidden from surveillance technology and protected from further attacks.
According to Western security circles, the Ukrainian counter-offensive in Russian-occupied Cherson in south-eastern Ukraine has picked up speed. Multiple rocket launchers from the USA are also to be used. In addition to bridges, the Ukrainians also hit weapons depots and important junctions, according to British sources. This caused Moscow difficulties in moving and supplying its troops.
The reflectors strategy shows that Russia fears the increased range and precision of Western weapon systems, the British report goes on to say. Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in late February, London has regularly released intelligence information. Moscow speaks of a disinformation campaign.
3:12 p.m .: According to Ukrainian sources, eight people were killed and four others injured in a Russian attack on a bus stop in the eastern Ukrainian border town of Torezk. According to initial information, the stop was hit by artillery shells, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Thursday. Three children were among the injured.
The governor again urged residents to leave the Donetsk region: “I appeal to all residents of the region: do not make yourself a target for the Russians! Evacuate in time!” wrote Kyrylenko.
According to the city administration of Mykolaiv in the south of the region, houses in two parts of the city were damaged by Russian shelling on Thursday. Mykolayiv is repeatedly the target of Russian attacks.
6:29 a.m .: According to the head of the local military administration, Vitalii Barabash, only 2,500 of the originally more than 30,000 residents are still in the hard-fought city of Avdiivka. The conditions in the city in the Donetsk region are “inhuman”, said Barabash. There is no more water, no gas and no electricity. Russian troops would bombard the city up to 20 times a day.
4:15 a.m .: Ukraine has released figures on how many men of fighting age have tried to flee Ukraine since the beginning of the war. According to the Ukrainian border guard, 6,400 people were arrested. It is said that they presented forged documents, hid in vehicles or tried to bribe border officials. In total, border officials refused bribes totaling $95,000.
Thursday, August 4, 2:29 a.m.: Heavy fighting continues in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk. In the east and south of the neighboring cities of Bakhmut and Soledar, Russian attacks were repelled in eight sections, the Ukrainian general staff said on Facebook on Wednesday. Russian troops have also attempted to attack five sectors in the north, east and south of the industrial city of Avdiivka, which is held by Ukrainian units. All were repelled. The information cannot be verified independently. Avdiivka is located in the immediate vicinity of Donetsk.
Along the entire front in the areas of Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Cherson and Mykolaiv, Russian artillery fired on Ukrainian positions in dozens of places. According to the situation report, another Russian ground attack failed in the southern Ukrainian region of Cherson. In addition, there is talk of massive Russian air strikes
6:03 p.m .: While there is no peace solution in Ukraine in sight, from Moscow’s point of view at least the exchange of prisoners is working. “With the participation of the Red Cross, we managed to organize a dialogue with Kyiv on the exchange of prisoners and dead soldiers. So far, 27 such operations have been conducted,” Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said Wednesday at a briefing with foreign military attachés, according to the Interfax agency. The largest single exchange occurred in late June, when 144 POWs were exchanged from each side.
The negotiations on the exchange of prisoners are one of the last diplomatic channels between Moscow and Kyiv after talks on a peace solution in Ukraine were broken off. Recently, there have been several proposals to use these contacts to resume fully-fledged peace negotiations.
Fomin pointed out that the evacuation of the Azovstal factory in the port city of Mariupol had also been agreed through this channel. At that time, more than 3,000 people, including hundreds of civilians, were taken out of the steelworks. “The operations were exclusively humanitarian in nature,” Fomin said. Most recently, however, a prisoner of war camp in the separatist areas in eastern Ukraine was shelled. Many fighters of the Azov regiment from Mariupol lost their lives. Moscow and Kyiv blame each other for the crime.
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