August 17, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has moved here.

Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is seen as Russian military's presence at the power plant continues, on August 11, in Zaporizhzia, Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is demanding that Russian forces withdraw from the territory of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia.

In his daily video message, Zelensky said the Russian army “must withdraw from the territory of the nuclear power plant and all neighboring areas, and take away its military equipment from the plant.”

He added that “Ukrainian diplomats, our nuclear scientists and the IAEA are in constant touch” and are working on “sending the IAEA mission to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.”

Zelensky is due to meet UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Thursday in the Ukrainian city of Lviv.

In his address, Zelensky also referred to the current situation on the front lines in Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, saying, “the Avdiivka area, Bakhmut area, Kharkiv region, and some other regions are where the most difficult fighting is going on right now.”

The Ukrainian military acknowledged Wednesday that Russian forces had “partial success” in advancing on some parts of the front west of Donetsk city.

A BP Plc gas station is seen in London, UK on August 1.

As US natural gas prices spike to 14-year high, Europe’s natural gas crisis is being driven by its reliance on energy from Russia, which has slashed natural gas flows to Europe in response to Western sanctions.

The European Union has been forced to lay plans to ration natural gas, a drastic step that will hurt families and businesses. Natural gas prices have skyrocketed so high in Europe that it threatens to send the continent’s economy into recession.

For context, Europe’s natural gas prices are trading at levels equivalent to about $70 per million BTUs, according to Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.?

That is roughly seven times higher than prices in the United States.

But that is little consolation to Americans grappling with high prices at the grocery store, clothing stores and at restaurants.?

Even as natural gas prices surge, oil prices have tumbled, helping to drive gasoline prices sharply lower. The US national average for regular gasoline has dropped 64 days in a row, according to AAA.

Exports pick up to Europe

While analysts say Europe’s natural gas crisis is contributing to the higher natural gas prices in America, although it’s not the main driver.

“Higher global prices are trickling down to the US. Natural gas has become a global commodity with the emergency of LNG,” said Rob Thummel, senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital Advisors.

The United States has stepped up its exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe in an effort to mitigate the impact of the loss of Russian gas.?

Read more here.

The Ukrainian armed forces have published a video purportedly showing a strike on a Russian position in the occupied Kherson region.

The armed forces said between 10 and 15 Russian soldiers had been killed in the strike against a Russian post near the town of Nova Kakhovka.

“The base of the occupiers was destroyed in Nova Kakhovka,” the State Border Guard Service said separately.

Russian positions in and around Nova Kakhovka — as well as ammunition depots and rail links — have been repeatedly hit by long-range Ukrainian weapons and combat aircraft over the past month.

Emergency service workers tend to a woman injured in a shelling in Opytne, Ukraine, on August 1.

The Ukrainian military’s general staff has acknowledged that Russian forces have had some success advancing westwards from the outskirts of Donetsk city.

It said Russian forces continued to fire at several settlements to the west and south-west of Donetsk.

“The enemy has partial success in the direction of Opytne,” it said. Opytne is just north of Donetsk city’s airport and has been a front line since 2014, when the airport was destroyed in fighting between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists.?

The general staff also said that Russian forces had partial success “in the direction of Novomykhailivka (south of Mariinka).”

On Tuesday,?Valeriy Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said Russian forces “continue to advance” in Donbas but said the “intense” situation is “fully controlled.”

“The enemy’s main efforts are concentrated on pushing our troops back from the Donetsk oblast. The most intense situation is now on the axis of?Avdiivka-Pisky-Mariinka,” Zaluzhny said.?

That axis is a stretch of some 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of the city of Donetsk and includes front lines in the areas of both Opytne and Novomykhailivka.?

In its briefing Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry said it inflicted heavy casualties on Ukrainian forces through artillery strikes near Mariinka. It also said Russian air force attacks had inflicted losses on Ukrainian units further south around Vuhledar and Dobrovillia.?

The Russians also appear to be mounting new attacks in Kharkiv region, striking westwards toward Ukrainian defenses.

“The enemy tried to break through the defense of our troops in the direction of the settlements of Lebiazhe and Bazaliivka, but had no success and withdrew,” the General Staff said. It added that the Russians had also failed to advance north of Sloviansk.

The Ukrainians also said there had been no change in the front lines around Bakhmut in Donetsk, which has been under bombardment for weeks.

They said that “Ukrainian soldiers suppressed all attempts by the enemy to improve the tactical position of units” in areas to the east and south of the town.

In recent days, Russian forces appear to have shifted the focus of their assaults to areas close to Donetsk city and to parts of Kharkiv region.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived in Lviv on Wednesday ahead of his meetings with the leaders of Ukraine and Turkey, according to the office of his spokesperson.

Guterres will be in Lviv?Thursday for bilateral issues and will travel to Odesa on Friday to discuss the grain deal, the UN previously announced.

Guterres will hold a trilateral meeting with Ukrainian leaders and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an to discuss the inner workings of the Black Sea grain deal, according to spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric. He also plans to hold a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the UN said.

In July, Ukraine and Russia?agreed to a deal?brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to allow the resumption of?vital grain exports?from Ukrainian Black Sea ports.

Guterres will travel to Istanbul on Saturday. The Russians are aware of the secretary-general’s plans, Dujarric said.

CNN’s Richard Roth contributed reporting to this post.

Nearly half of Ukraine’s schools and universities are ready to resume classes in September, the country’s education minister Serhiy Shkarlet said on Tuesday.

“Currently, about 41% of all educational institutions have the opportunity to start education in the traditional format,” Shkarlet said.

The education minister said schools would have shelters and that principals should invite parents in a bid to assure them of the safety of the building.

“It is very important that parents have the opportunity to make sure with their own eyes that their children will be safe in educational institutions,” he said. “Therefore, I urge school principals to give parents the opportunity to see the conditions of students in shelters in the event of an “Air Alarm” signal and to be in constant communication with them.”

“Principals can offer to organize parent meetings, which are traditionally held before the beginning of the new school year, in protective buildings,” he concluded.

Mystery still surrounds the extent of damage and casualties following a Ukrainian strike on the weekend against an apartment block in the Luhansk region being used by Russian private military contractors known as Wagner.

The building in the town of Popasna was said to be the local headquarters of the Wagner PMC group in Luhansk.?Video and images from the site suggest extensive damage, but there are few details about casualties.

Ukrainian officials have suggested there were dozens of casualties.

“For now, we will not divulge the details. But if, in the end, it turns out that more than 100 members of the Wagner leadership have died, this will not be news to us,” said Serhii Hayday, the Ukrainian official who is head of the Luhansk regional military administration.

Hayday and other Ukrainian officials have also suggested that a post on one of the pro-Wagner Telegram channels earlier this month had allowed Ukrainian forces to identify and attack the building, which is some 15 to 20 kilometers from the front line.

Hayday said that Ukrainian forces “hit an enemy HQ whose whereabouts were established, thanks to a Russian journalist.”

That post appeared on the Grey Zone channel, run by Russian journalist Sergei Sreda, and was viewed at least 181,000 times before being deleted.

“Arrived to Popasna, visited the Wagner headquarters. I was greeted like family.” the post read. It included a photograph that showed the address of the building in Popasna.?

The Grey Zone has more than 260,000 subscribers.?However, there have been no posts on the channel since Aug. 13 — the day before the strike.

Another Telegram channel associated with Wagner has also gone silent.

Since April, Wagner contractors have been prominent among Russian and pro-Russian infantry units in Luhansk and Donetsk.

A satellite image from August 10 shows the charred remains of at least seven aircraft after explosions at Saki air base.?

Ukraine was behind at least three explosions in Crimea — at Saki air base, an ammunition depot in Maiske and an air field in Gvardeyskoe — according to a Ukrainian government report?circulated?internally and?shared with CNN by?a??Ukrainian?official.??

The official requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information with the media.??

The report describes the Saki air base as a hard but one-time loss for Russian military infrastructure in the peninsula, with subsequent attacks as proof of Ukraine’s systematic military capability in targeting Crimea.?

The air base was rocked by explosions on Aug. 9, which destroyed at least seven Russian warplanes and killed at least one person?. Ukraine has not claimed responsibility on the record.

Another set of explosions were reported in Crimea on Tuesday — this time at an ammunition depot in Maiske and at an airfield in Gvardeyskoe. Russian officials said the incident in Maiske had been the result of sabotage?, but they did not specify the kind of sabotage or who they believed was responsible.?

Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence has hinted the start of a long-awaited and touted counteroffensive to retake territory lost to Russia could be starting soon, its spokesperson said in a televised address on Wednesday.

“In the near future, there will be very acute events on the entire front,” said Andrii Yusov, a spokesperson for the Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

“This is not about binding to any dates, however, we have to consider [the] factor of the Independence Day of Ukraine,” Yusov added, referencing the country’s independence day on Aug. 24.?

Ukrainian officials have been announcing a Ukrainian counteroffensive to retake occupied territory — specifically in the south — for weeks, but so far they’ve limited their actions to striking Russian supply lines, air bases and ammunition depots, with very small gains at the front.?

A building burns following a Russian missile strike in Odesa, Ukraine on August 17.

Here are the latest developments:

Targets struck across Ukraine

Four people were injured overnight after Russian forces struck the port city of Odesa with anti-ship missiles strategic bombers, a local Ukrainian military official said.

Further north, Russian fighter jets flying in Belarusian airspace launched missiles targeting Zhytomyr, a major transportation hub, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was also targeted.

More questions in Crimea

For the second week in a row, the peninsula on the Black Sea was rocked by a mysterious blast at a Russian military installation. Explosions at a key Crimean air base last week killed one, injured nine and destroyed several Russian warplanes. Then, on Tuesday, a Russian ammunition depot in the region went up in smoke, wounding two people.

The Kremlin said the first incident was caused by the accidental detonation of ammunition — though satellite imagery appeared to show that a deliberate attack had taken place — while the Tuesday blast was the result of a fire.

Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for either incident, but silence could be intentional. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this month that Kyiv will not end the war against Russia until it retakes the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

The battle for Donbas

Fierce fighting still rages across the key eastern Ukrainian region as Russia continues its advance. The Kremlin’s forces are shelling targets in Donbas up to 800 times a day, according to one Ukrainian official.

Russia is trying to push Ukraine’s troops out of Donetsk, one of the two regions that make up Donbas. The other region is Luhansk, which is effectively under Russian control.

Meanwhile, Russian forces reportedly tried to advance again from north of the key city of Sloviansk, but their offensive was unsuccessful and they withdrew, the Ukrainian military said.

China’s People’s Liberation Army will send troops to Russia to participate in the “East-2022” drills, also known as?Vostok-2022, the Chinese Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday.?

“China’s participation in the exercise is aimed at deepening practical and friendly cooperation with the armies of the participating countries, enhancing the level of strategic cooperation among the participating parties, and strengthening the ability to respond to various security threats,” the defense ministry said, adding that “it is unrelated to the current international and regional situation.”

The exercises will include participation from India, Belarus, Tajikistan, Mongolia and other countries, according to China’s defense ministry, and they are due to take place in late August.?

Some background: In July, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held “candid” talks for more than five hours, and Blinken raised concerns over Beijing’s “alignment” with Moscow. Blinken said he said he did not think?China?was behaving in a neutral way as it had supported Russia in the United Nations and “amplified Russian propaganda.”

Shortly before Russia began invading Ukraine on Feb. 24, Beijing and Moscow announced a “no limits” partnership, although US officials say they have not seen China evade tough US-led sanctions on Russia or provide it with military equipment.

Putin says Russia can train foreign fighters: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia is ready to supply military equipment to allied countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Moscow is open to training foreign fighters, Putin said during the “Army-2022” opening ceremony.

“We highly value the fact that our country has many allies, partners, like-minded people on different continents,” Putin said.

Putin also stressed the advantages of training foreign soldiers in Russia and said Russia invites allies to do joint military exercises.

“We also see great prospects in the training of foreign servicemen and their advanced training. Thousands of military professionals from around the world are proud alumnus of the military universities and academies of our country,” Putin said.

Russia will continue to work in this area, he said.

CNN’s Uliana Pavlova contributed reporting to this post.

Video taken on August 10 shows traffic near Kerch, Crimea.

A record number of vehicles drove across the Crimean Bridge, Russian road state agency reported on Tuesday, just days after explosions rocked the Saki Air Base in Crimea’s western coast.

“During the day on August 15, 38,297 cars drove across the bridge in both directions,” the statement read.

The number was recorded hours before another set of explosions at military installations in the Crimean peninsula.

Although Russia’s state road agency said the traffic record was recorded “in both directions,” videos posted on social media and geolocated by CNN showed long lines and traffic jams in roads leading toward the Crimean Bridge, heading toward Russia, in the days after last week’s explosions.

Local officials have downplayed the size of the lines saying they were the result of stricter controls on the bridge for security reasons and not because of an increase in outward traffic.

“From the point of view that they are fleeing Crimea, this is a complete lie, there is no doubt about it,” the head of the Russian-controlled Crimean administration, Sergei Aksyonov, told Russian state TV on Tuesday.

However, last month Aksyonov acknowledged the hit on the tourism industry in Crimea, saying that a 40% decline was expected over the summer. The Russian Tourism Association made a similar prediction in June.??

Starting September 1, Finland will only allow Russian citizens to schedule 500 visa application appointments per day, authorities in the Nordic nation said.

The move is designed to punish Moscow for its decision to continue to wage war in Ukraine. The Finnish government had already slashed the number of appointments per day for Russian nationals to 1,000. But with no end to the fighting in sight, Helsinki decided to act again.

Of the 500 appointments per day, Finnish authorities will only allow 100 to be used for tourist visas, according to Jussi Tanner, the director general for consular services at Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Finland has long been a popular travel destination for Russians. In 2013, prior to Russia invading and subsequently annexing Crimea from Ukraine, Russians accounted for 75% of 13 million crossings over Finland’s eastern border, according to Tanner.

The number of Russian visa applications rejected has risen tenfold since 2019 and was now at around 15%, Tanner said.

Around 425 visas are now expected to be issued per day.

Sanna Marin, the Finnish Prime Minister, said that, while she recognizes the issue is not “black and white” and there are many Russians who do not support the invasion, many people in Europe are frustrated when they see “Russians traveling like nothing has happened.”

Finland’s decision follows European leaders on Monday exchanging arguments over a potential Schengen or European Union visa ban for Russian citizens, with the leaders of Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark agreeing to further discuss the matter.?

Alexey Navalny attends a rally in Moscow, Russia, in 2019.

Western nations are not doing enough to punish Russian oligarchs with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to prominent Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny.

Navalny, who is serving a prison sentence that Putin’s critics say is politically motivated, wants Western governments to sanction thousands of people his organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, accuses of wrongdoing.

According to Navalny, only 46 out of the 200 Russian oligarchs from the Forbes list have been sanctioned by the West. Others, despite their close ties to Putin, were spared.

The jailed Kremlin critic also proposed imposing a 20-year travel ban to the UK, the US and the EU for Russian officials and oligarchs who publicly support the war in Ukraine.

Specific cases: Navalny decried the fact that Alexei Miller, the head of Russia’s state-run energy giant Gazprom and purportedly a friend of Putin’s, is not on the European sanctions list.

Navalny also questioned why the US had not sanctioned Roman Abramovich, the former owner of Chelsea football club. Navalny claims Abramovich supplies metal to the Russian defense ministry.?

Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK government in March and forced to sell the club, despite repeatedly denying that his business activities merited any punishment.

A firefighter works at a site of a hotel building hit by a Russian missile strike in the?Odesa?region on Wednesday.

At least four people were injured in a Russian attack on the southern city of Odesa overnight, Ukrainian officials said.

In a Telegram post, Serhii Bratchuk, spokesman for the Odesa military administration, said a recreational center and several buildings had been destroyed and a fire was now raging in a 600-square-meter area.

Russia fired on the city with Kh-22 anti-ship missiles from Tu-22M3 strategic bombers Bratchuk wrote. Russia has previously used anti-ship missiles against targets on land.?

Rescue operations were ongoing, Bratchuk added.

This post has been updated with additional information.

Russia flew Su-34 fighter jets in Belarussian airspace to launch missiles on the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr, a major transportation hub that links to the capital Kyiv, the Ukrainian Air Force said.

The strike on the northern city Tuesday damaged an airfield and surrounding infrastructure, officials said, adding that Russia had also used Kh-59 tactical land-attack missiles.

Elsewhere in the northern and eastern regions of the country, fighting raged as Russian forces focused on taking territories still under Ukrainian control. Ukrainian officials reported shelling in multiple cities including Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

The city of Kharkiv, the country’s second largest, was also targeted.

The General Staff added that Russian forces had also been trying to take control of the Donetsk town of Bakhmut but Ukrainian forces continue to hold it, despite air and missile strikes, and intense shelling.

Before the war broke out, Igor Kurayan, a 55-year-old from the southern Ukrainian port city of Kherson, shared frequent gardening updates on social media. His feeds were full of palms, pomegranate trees, marigolds, bamboo and avocados, grown at his home and small business near the Black Sea. He called it his “fairytale garden.”

On Feb. 25, a day after?Russia invaded Ukraine, Kurayan posted a selfie on Instagram with a rifle, announcing he had volunteered to fight in the Territorial Defense Forces, reserve units of Ukraine’s military.

Soon after,?Kherson fell to Russian troops?and in early April, after weeks living under and protesting against their occupation, Kurayan was abducted. He was watering plants in his shoe store when he said Russian soldiers dragged him outside and threw him into a van.

Soon after Kurayan’s kidnapping, his Facebook and Instagram pages, and a new TikTok account registered under his name, began posting messages entirely out of character for the man known to family and friends as a proud Ukrainian, a passionate activist and avid gardener.

Read the full story here.

Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom accused hackers based in Russia of launching a “powerful” attack on the company’s website for three hours on Tuesday, but said the attack had not “significantly” affected operations of the site.?

The statement blamed the Russian group “People’s Cyber ??Army” for carrying out the attack using 7.25 million bot users, who simulated hundreds of millions of views of the company’s main page.?

A man tries to extinguish fire in a damaged house after a Russian airstrike in Slavyansk, Donetsk oblast on Tuesday.

Valeriy Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, has acknowledged that Russian forces “continue to advance” in Donbas but said the “intense” situation is “fully controlled.”

That estimate is in line with many made by Western analysts about the volume of ammunition being used by Russian forces, after a relative lull in early July.

“The enemy’s main efforts are concentrated on pushing our troops back from the Donetsk oblast. The most intense situation is now on the axis of Avdiivka-Pisky-Mariinka,” Zaluzhny said.?

That axis is a stretch of some 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Donetsk.

Russian forces tried to advance again from north of Sloviansk but their offensive was unsuccessful and they withdrew, the Ukrainian military said.

The battle occurred near Mazanivka on the border of the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, an area that first saw Russian efforts to break through more than 40 days ago, according to the General Staff.

Fighting has been going on in that district for well over a month.?

Ukrainians say Russian objectives remain the same — they are “focused on conducting active offensive and assault actions in the Kramatorsk, Bakhmut, and Avdiivka directions,” the General Staff said.

Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been within a few miles of the front lines for several months, but they remain in Ukrainian hands.

The Ukrainians say further efforts to advance in the Bakhmut area had been rebuffed.

Meanwhile, the Russians appear to have put renewed effort into breaking through Ukrainian lines in southern Donetsk, between?Pavlivka and Novomykhailivka, where “hostilities continue,” according to the General Staff.

Further north, in the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian General Staff said nearly 20 settlements had come under fire, including several close to the border with Russia.

The mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekov, urged civilians to stay indoors after shells landed in the Saltivka district.

The town of Nikopol across the river from the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has again come under rocket fire from the Russians, Ukrainian authorities say.

Residential areas had been hit and four people were injured, said Valentyn Reznichenko, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration.

Some 20 strikes from GRAD multiple rocket launchers and 10 artillery shells hit Nikopol, he added.

Nikopol has frequently come under fire from Russian forces’ based on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River, where the nuclear power plant is situated.

Russian forces?in the occupied Kherson region in?southern Ukraine?are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the flow of ammunition, armor and fuel to frontline units, according to Ukrainian officials and Western analysts, thanks to a concerted Ukrainian campaign to cut off river and rail supply lines as well as target ammunition depots.

The Russians are moving command posts from the north of the Dnipro River to the south bank as bridges have been heavily damaged, Ukrainian officials say.

The first deputy head of Kherson regional council, Yuri Sobolevsky, claimed on his Telegram channel that a significant portion of the Russian military command had already left Kherson city. Ukrainian forces are about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) north of the city, toward Mykolaiv.

Much of Kherson region has been occupied since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As part of Kyiv’s counteroffensive to try to retake lost territory in the south, Ukrainian forces are targeting critical bridges to disrupt supply routes in and around Kherson.

Videos have appeared on social media in the past few days showing renewed long-range artillery attacks on the Antonivskyi bridge and a road bridge over the dam near Nova Kakhovka, rendering them impassable for heavily armored vehicles. In some areas, the river is up to 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) wide, making pontoon bridges impractical.

The Ukrainians have also targeted several railway lines from the Russian-occupied Crimea Peninsula into the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. On Tuesday, a series of fierce explosions rocked the town of Dzankhoy on the main line towards Kherson. Recent video showed a substantial stock of military vehicles and ammunition at the site.

Read the full report here.