Germany delivers two more air defence systems; Russian Ka-52 attack helicopters ‘shot down’

Kyiv’s troops continued to push ahead after capturing the small but strategically important village of Urozhaine in the south following an intense week-long battle, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook. They were seeking to cut off Russia’s land bridge to the Crimea region as a critical element of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Germany’s government announced the delivery of two more IRIS-T air defence systems to Ukraine, along with about 4,500 rounds of 155mm smoke ammunition and 10 more ground surveillance radars along with several logistical items including semi-trailers.

The first trade ship to leave Ukraine’s seaports since the collapse of a safe-corridor grain deal with Russia was expected to reach Istanbul on Thursday night. The Hong Kong-flagged container ship Joseph Schulte sailed from Odesa via a new temporary Black Sea route established by Kyiv as it seeks to reclaim control over its maritime trade.

Russian authorities won’t tighten capital controls for now after officials reached an informal agreement with exporters to surrender more of their foreign revenues, the business daily Vedomosti reported.

Latest developments

• Unexploded missile suggests Moscow is rushing weapons to front


• Russia turns screws on exporters after debating capital controls


• Niger coup threatens chaos as West fears Russian influence


• Russia wheat prices rise above rivals for first time since June


• Ukraine says Kyiv won’t receive F-16 fighter jets this year

 

Bosnia Serb chief ‘puppet on a string’ to Putin, says envoy

The top international envoy to Bosnia-Herzegovina accused the country’s Serb leader of playing into the hands of Vladimir Putin, who he says is exploiting the Balkan nation’s ethnic divisions to divert attention from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who has intensified efforts to cut ties with the rest of Bosnia, has become a “puppet on a string” to the Russian president, Christian Schmidt, who was appointed as the United Nations-backed High Representative in 2021, said in an interview.

As European governments have imposed ever-tighter measures to isolate Russia after its assault on Ukraine, Putin has sought to strengthen ties with Serbian allies in the Balkan region. Putin has hosted Dodik, himself targeted by US and UK sanctions, three times since the war began in February last year.

“There could be an interest to raise a hotspot crisis outside Ukraine — not militarily but politically,” Schmidt said via video link on Wednesday of Putin. “But that doesn’t serve the interests of Bosnia-Herzegovina or the people in Republika Srpska,” he said, referring to the Bosnian entity Dodik leads.

Under a US-brokered peace agreement that stopped a bloody civil war in 1995, Bosnia is comprised of two entities, Republika Srpska and a Muslim-Croat federation, linked by a weak central government in Sarajevo. As high representative, Schmidt has broad authority to maintain order and hold the nation of 3.3 million together.

European governments have accused Dodik of threatening that order with ever more provocative efforts to secure autonomy for the Bosnian statelet. Under his leadership, lawmakers in 2021 voted for a plan to wrest much control over areas including the judiciary, taxation, education and security to reverse a move toward centralisation overseen by Schmidt’s predecessors.

Brazil binges on Russian fuel like never before

Brazil is poised to import a record amount of Russian fuel this month, consolidating its position as the Latin American country’s top supplier as Moscow builds new markets following a European Union ban.

Imports of Russian petroleum products are set to rise by 25% from July to about 235,000 barrels a day, data from energy analytics firm Kpler show. That far outstrips the US, which used to be Brazil’s top foreign fuel supplier.

Brazil started ramping up the purchases sharply in February, the month the EU banned imports and joined other Group of Seven nations in imposing a cap on Russian fuel prices. The US and its allies are trying to limit the flow of petrodollars into Russia to reduce funding for the nation’s war in Ukraine. The measures have reduced Russian fuel prices which need to price attractively to compete in new markets.

Since the cap came into effect, Brazil became the second-largest buyer of Russian diesel globally, lagging behind only Turkey, according to Kpler. Brazil has tried to take a neutral stance over who is to blame for the war.

Russia turns screws on exporters after debating capital controls

Russia’s government will hold off on stiffening restrictions on the movement of capital and instead prepare recommendations for exporters to coax them into surrendering more of their foreign revenues to help stabilise the rouble.

Following a meeting on Wednesday between President Vladimir Putin and top officials, authorities were crafting informal measures of capital control, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

Guidelines for large exporters are being prepared on an individual company basis and will go beyond mandating the sale of foreign proceeds to include hard-currency transfers such as dividend payments and loans, said the people, who requested anonymity to speak about deliberations that aren’t public.

Putin was informed of the plans at the meeting that included central bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, according to the Russian business daily Vedomosti. Despite the rouble’s gains this week, it’s still among the three worst performers in emerging markets, having lost about 22% since the beginning of the year.

 

Unexploded missile suggests Moscow is rushing weapons to the front

A recently manufactured Russian missile recovered by Ukrainian forces suggests the invading army is running low on stocks of some advanced weapons, and is having to produce them more quickly to maintain the intensity of its war.

The finding of a rocket with an unusually late production date was revealed by pictures analysed by StateWatch, a Ukrainian non-government organisation, and Bloomberg News. It adds to other evidence that the Russians are under pressure to fire missiles as soon as they roll off manufacturing lines to defy international sanctions and Western predictions they would run out.

Almost 18 months after President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine, there is no sign the war is nearing an end. Russian forces are entrenched in the occupied territories while Ukraine’s counteroffensive has made limited ground. That means supplies of ammunition and advanced weapons — including precision-guided missiles and rockets — will remain critical to both sides.

“Russian defence firms have found themselves adjusting to a new reality, wherein they often have to downgrade their technical benchmarks and employ tactics to evade sanctions,” said Maria Shagina, an expert in economic sanctions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. That “might not ensure the best quality of Russian weapons, but it still serves the purpose for the Russian military to wreak maximum havoc on the battlefield”, she said.

Ukrainian forces have been edging toward barriers of prepared Russian defences in the south of the country since early June while targeting artillery and supply lines to create weak spots that might enable a breakthrough. Success, should it come at all in the current campaign, might see the makeup of the battlefield change quickly.

Yet the time frame is beginning to narrow, with rain and mud likely to interfere with wheeled vehicle movements from about November. And Western defence officials and analysts have said the kind of complex attack needed to break through Russia’s defensive methods such as minefields, trenches and tank traps would be extremely challenging without air superiority, something neither side has been able to achieve.

The missile found in Ukraine’s northern Sumy province in June came from a Tornado-S Multiple Launch Rocket System.

Casing markers show the projectile was made just the previous month, on 19 May. According to Statewatch, batches normally go through several months of tests before they are used and appear on the front line.

The casing also showed an unusually close expiry date of 12 September this year, according to StateWatch, another possible indication that Russian manufacturers are cutting corners to rush missiles to the front line.

That said, Russia’s ability to produce guided missiles is allowing it to continue near-daily long-range attacks across Ukraine. The relatively small number of rockets retrieved intact means it’s hard to conclude yet as to what impact the situation is having on the war more broadly, according to Kaushal.

A Western intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also cautioned against reading too much into the Tornado-S projectile’s signs of hasty build, as Russia’s approach to standards has been less than rigorous even without the pressures of war.

But the official also sees wider indicators of Russian battlefield shortages, including Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu’s visit to North Korea in July, while a general in charge of Russia’s 58th army in southern Ukraine was sacked in the same month he criticised a lack of counter-battery equipment. DM