Monday, August 29, 6:55 a.m.: Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are scheduled to inspect the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine this week. “I’m proud to lead this mission, which will be at the nuclear power plant later this week,” tweeted IAEA chief Rafael Grossi on Monday morning. IAEA experts are to examine damage and security systems of the nuclear power plant, which was repeatedly fired upon in the Russian war of aggression.
10:05 p.m .: According to the authorities, the Rivne region in northern Ukraine was attacked by Russia with rockets on Sunday evening. A military object was hit in the Sarny district, regional chief Vitaly Koval said on Telegram. A residential building was also damaged, said Mayor Ruslan Serpeninow. There was no information about possible victims. The information could not initially be verified independently.
Activists from neighboring Belarus linked the attack to several Russian warplanes taking off from airfields in Belarus. The ruler there, Alexander Lukashenko, made his country available to the Russian troops as a deployment area against Ukraine.
Two rockets fell in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Sunday evening, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. An administration building was destroyed. There, too, there was initially no information about victims.
10:01 p.m .: The Ukrainian army says it has repelled Russian assaults in several places in the east of the country.
This included the village of Wessela Dolyna near the town of Bakhmut in the Donbass, as the Ukrainian General Staff announced in its evening report on Sunday. The Russian attack has been stuck off Bakhmut for weeks with little progress. The information provided by the two warring parties can initially hardly be checked independently.
Northwest of the city of Donetsk, pro-Russian separatists and Russian troops tried to attack the village of Pervomaiske. According to the General Staff, this attack was also repelled. In that region, Ukraine recently lost control of the Donetsk suburb of Pisky.
Dozens of places along the more than 2,000-kilometer-long front line were fired on by Russian tanks, barrel and rocket artillery on Sunday, sources in Kyiv said. The General Staff recorded reconnaissance flights by Russian drones in several places on the front.
9:02 p.m .: Russian troops have reported a Ukrainian attack with an armed drone on the occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. The drone was shot down and fell on the safety shell over a reactor, the occupation administration of the city of Enerhodar reported on Sunday, according to Russian agencies. The explosive charge detonated without causing any damage. The information could not be independently verified.
The Russian side implied that the drone was intended to attack a spent fuel storage facility. The largest nuclear power plant in Europe was occupied by Russian troops shortly after the start of the war in March. It has been fired at repeatedly for weeks, for which both sides blame each other. The International Atomic Energy Agency wants to send a team of experts to the nuclear power plant, but is still waiting for the necessary safety guarantees.
9:19 p.m .: Ukrainian troops say they have attacked three Russian command posts and at least two ammunition depots in the Cherson region in the south of the country. Eleven Russian soldiers were killed in the process, the southern command of the Ukrainian army said on Sunday in Kyiv. In addition, according to initial findings, eleven rocket launchers, three armored vehicles and a self-propelled howitzer were destroyed.
The head of administration appointed by Russia, Vladimir Leontiev, confirmed Ukrainian attacks to the Russian state agency Ria Novosti. The city of Nowa Kachowka was shelled four times. A hydroelectric power station with a strategically important crossing over the Dnipro River was also hit. Initially, none of the information could be independently verified.
10.42 a.m .: Great Britain doubts that the announced increase in the Russian army by almost 140,000 forces will increase the combat capability of the troops in the war against Ukraine.
“In any case, under the current legislation, the order is unlikely to bring any significant progress in strengthening Russia’s combat capability in Ukraine,” the Ministry of Defense said in London on Sunday. “That’s because Russia has lost tens of thousands of soldiers,” it said, citing intelligence findings. In addition, very few new contract soldiers are currently being hired and conscripts are not required to serve outside Russian territory.
On August 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree ordering an increase in the coming year by 137,000 soldiers to around 1.15 million. “It remains unclear whether Russia will attempt to meet this increase by recruiting more contract volunteers or by raising annual targets for conscription,” a statement from London said.
Sunday, August 28, 08:38: Several explosions occurred in the city of Melitopol during the night. This is what the former mayor of the Russian-occupied city reports on Telegram. Accordingly, there were several attacks around one o’clock in the morning. The Ukrainian army attacked a large military base in the city. A building in which one of the pseudo-referendums for the region’s accession to Russia is said to have been prepared was also said to have been destroyed.
1:02 p.m .: Russia and Ukraine have again accused each other of shelling the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant occupied by Moscow’s troops. There is a risk that standards for protection against radioactive radiation would be violated, said the state power plant operator Enerhoatom on Telegram on Saturday. The largest European nuclear power plant was shot at several times by the Russian military within a day. On the other hand, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the nuclear power plant had been shelled three times by artillery from the Ukrainian side within 24 hours.
Four projectiles hit the roof of a facility that stores nuclear fuel from the US company Westinghouse, said ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov in Moscow. This could not be checked independently. The spokesman also said that other projectiles fell near storage facilities with fuel rods and radioactive waste. However, the radiation situation is still within the normal range.
“Technical personnel are responsible for checking the technical condition of the nuclear power plant and ensuring its operation,” Konashenkov said. He reiterated that Russian forces were guarding the facility but had no heavy weapons nearby. The Russian occupation authorities in the Zaporizhia region had previously spoken again of shelling the nuclear power plant.
9:24 a.m .: According to British findings, the Russian army has recently increased its attacks in eastern Ukraine. In the past five days, the intensity of Russian attacks near the city of Donetsk has increased again, the Ministry of Defense in London said on Saturday, citing intelligence findings. With the attacks, the Russian troops probably wanted to tie up additional Ukrainian troops in the east in order to complicate an expected Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south of the country, it said.
There was heavy fighting near the cities of Siwersk and Bakhmut north of Donetsk. Troops of the Moscow-loyal separatists have probably advanced further into the center of the village of Pisky near the destroyed Donetsk airport, it was said. Overall, however, the Russian units only gained a little ground.
Saturday, August 27th, 8:57 a.m.: Russia is obviously moving heavy equipment towards Crimea. Tanks can be seen on a train in videos said to have been taken at a train station just before the bridge to the peninsula. Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, has been the target of Ukrainian attacks for several days. President Selenskyj had repeatedly promised the reconquest.
9:17 p.m .: A Russian collaborator died in an explosion in occupied Berdyansk, in southern Ukraine. As the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports, the Russian administrative worker Alexander Kolesnikov was killed by an improvised explosive device. Russia accuses Ukraine of carrying out the attack.
8:53 p.m .: Ukraine reports a missile attack on a strategically important bridge in the occupied south of the country, which Russia can no longer use. The Darivsky Bridge in the Cherson region was hit by Ukrainian missiles, the southern military command said. Should the bridge fail, it would severely limit connectivity between parts of Russian-held territory west of the Dnipro River.
6:15 p.m .: One of the Ukrainian President’s closest military advisors has now dared to predict a possible end to the war. “In the worst case it could be in July or in the summer of next year, 2023, and in the best case it could be in January or February, something like that I think,” Oleksy Arestovych told the “Bild” newspaper .
The military adviser assumes that Ukraine will manage to repel the Russians even from Crimea and Donbas. “I think we will continue to weaken their rear line with HIMARS and artillery. And then our infantry will come, our land forces will come and recapture our territory,” said Oleksy Arestovych.
The most important condition for even conducting negotiations with the Russians is that they leave the country. “Only after two or three major defeats by the Russian army, when their negotiating position decreases, can there be talks. Zelenskyy said very clearly that only Ukraine will decide when negotiations will start.”
According to Arestovych, Putin is already defeated. The Russian economy can no longer afford any major mobilization. “We see old tanks and old artillery from the 1960s with the Russians on our front line. All modern weapons come to us.”
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
