President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was attacked by any state and that any conventional attack on Russia that was supported by a nuclear power would be considered to be a joint attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday dismissed efforts by China and Brazil to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, questioning why the pair were proposing an alternative to his own peace formula and warning: “You will not boost your power at Ukraine’s expense.”
The Republican leaders of US House of Representatives national security committees demanded on Wednesday that Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration release an unclassified version of its report on its strategy for the war in Ukraine.
Putin issues nuclear warning to the West over Ukraine
President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was attacked by any state and that any conventional attack on Russia that was supported by a nuclear power would be considered to be a joint attack.
Putin, opening a meeting of Russia’s Security Council attended by top officials, said that proposals had been made to change Russia’s nuclear doctrine and said he would like to underscore one of the proposed key changes.
“It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation,” said Putin.
“The conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly fixed,” Putin said, adding that Moscow would consider such a move if it detected the start of a massive launch of missiles, aircraft or drones against it.
Russia, Putin said, also reserved the right to use nuclear weapons if it or Belarus were the subject of aggression, including by conventional weapons.
Putin said the clarifications were carefully calibrated and commensurate with the modern military threats facing Russia.
Zelensky slams China and Brazil’s proposal for peace in Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday dismissed efforts by China and Brazil to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, questioning why the pair were proposing an alternative to his own peace formula and warning: “You will not boost your power at Ukraine’s expense.”
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Nine months later Zelensky announced a 10-point peace plan to bring a just end to the war on the basis of the founding UN Charter and international law. Moscow rejected the plan.
“The peace formula has already existed for two years, and maybe somebody wants a Nobel Prize for their political biography, for (a) frozen truce, instead of real peace, but the only prizes Putin will give you in return are more suffering and disasters,” Zelensky told the United Nations General Assembly, referring to Putin.
Zelensky said proposing “alternatives, half-hearted settlement plans, so-called sets of principles” would give Putin the political space to continue the war.
China has been trying to enlist developing nations to join the six-point peace plan it issued with Brazil in May.
Their proposal calls for an international peace conference “held at a proper time that is recognised by both Russia and Ukraine, with equal participation of all parties as well as fair discussion of all peace plans”.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva advocated for the plan when he addressed the General Assembly on Tuesday.
“Any parallel or alternative attempts to seek peace are, in fact, efforts to achieve a lull instead of an end to the war,” Zelensky told the 193-member assembly.
“When the Chinese-Brazilian duo tries to grow into a choir of voices — with someone in Europe, with someone in Africa — saying something alternative to a full and just peace, the question arises, what is the true interest? Everyone must understand, you will not boost your power at Ukraine’s expense,” he said.
The Ukrainian president plans to lay out a “victory plan” to US President Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday.
Republicans want US administration to release Ukraine report
The Republican leaders of US House of Representatives national security committees demanded on Wednesday that Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration release an unclassified version of its report on its strategy for the war in Ukraine.
They made their demand a day before Zelensky was to visit the US Capitol to meet with legislators.
Congress has approved nearly $175-billion of aid and military assistance for Ukraine and allied nations in the 2½ years since Russia’s full-scale invasion, and many legislators said they expected Washington would need to approve more money to help the government in Kyiv within the next several months.
Reuters reported on 9 September that the administration had sent the report to Congress, months after a June deadline mandated in a multibillion-dollar spending bill passed in April. That bill had required the Biden administration to submit a detailed strategy for Ukraine by early June.
That report was classified and legislators have been pushing since for a version to be made available to the public, especially as they face a possible vote by early next year on providing more funding.
“Given the vital US interests at stake in Ukraine defeating Putin’s invading forces, all of Congress and the American people deserve to understand how their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent,” the chairs of the House Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, Intelligence, Appropriations and other committees said in a joint statement.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Russia has secret war drones project in China, say intel sources
Russia has established a weapons programme in China to develop and produce long-range attack drones for use in the war against Ukraine, according to two sources from a European intelligence agency and documents reviewed by Reuters.
IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned arms company Almaz-Antey, has developed and flight-tested a new drone model called Garpiya-3 (G3) in China with the help of local specialists, according to one of the documents, a report that Kupol sent to the Russian defence ministry earlier this year outlining its work.
Kupol told the defence ministry in a subsequent update that it was able to produce drones including the G3 at scale at a factory in China so the weapons could be deployed in the “special military operation” in Ukraine, the term Moscow uses for the war.
Kupol, Almaz-Antey and the Russian defence ministry did not respond to requests for comment for this article. China’s foreign ministry told Reuters it was not aware of such a project, adding that Beijing had strict control measures on the export of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based defence think-tank, said the delivery of UAVs from China to Russia, if confirmed, would be a significant development.
“If you look at what China is known to have delivered so far, it was mostly dual-use goods — it was components, sub-components, that could be used in weapon systems,” he said. “This is what has been reported so far. But what we haven’t really seen, at least in the open source, are documented transfers of whole weapon systems.”
Still, Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank, said Beijing would be hesitant to open itself up to international sanctions for helping Moscow’s war machine. He said more information was needed to establish that China was playing host to the production of Russian military drones.
The White House National Security Council said it was deeply concerned by the Reuters report of the drone programme, which it said appeared to be an instance of a Chinese company providing lethal assistance to a US-sanctioned Russian firm.
The White House had not seen anything to suggest the Chinese government was aware of the transactions involved, but China had a responsibility to ensure companies weren’t providing lethal aid to Russia for use by its military, a spokesperson added.
Britain’s Foreign Office called on China to stop providing diplomatic and material support to Russia’s war effort.
“We are extremely concerned by reports that Russia is producing military drones in China,” a spokesperson said.
The G3 can travel about 2,000km with a payload of 50kg, according to the reports to the Russian defence ministry from Kupol, which was placed under US sanctions in December 2023. Samples of the G3 and some other drone models made in China had been delivered to Kupol in Russia for further testing, again with the involvement of Chinese experts, they said.
The documents do not identify the Chinese drone specialists involved in the project that it outlined, and Reuters was unable to determine their identity.
Kupol has taken delivery of seven military drones made in China, including two G3s, at its headquarters in the Russian city of Izhevsk, according to the two separate documents reviewed by Reuters, which are invoices sent to Kupol in the summer by a Russian firm that the two European intelligence sources said serves as an intermediary with Chinese suppliers. The invoices, one of which requests payment in Chinese yuan, do not specify delivery dates or identify the suppliers in China.
The two intelligence sources said the delivery of the sample drones to Kupol was the first concrete evidence their agency had found of whole UAVs manufactured in China being delivered to Russia since the Ukraine war began in February 2022.
They asked that neither they nor their organisation be identified due to the sensitivity of the information. They also requested certain details related to the documents be withheld, including their precise dates.
The sources showed Reuters five documents in all, including two Kupol reports to the ministry in the first half of the year and the two invoices, to support their claims of the existence of a Russian project in China to manufacture drones for use in Ukraine. The programme has not previously been reported.
Russian-guided bombs kill two, injure 12 in Kramatorsk
A Russian-guided bomb strike on Ukraine’s eastern town of Kramatorsk on Wednesday killed at least two people and injured 12 more, the Donetsk region governor said.
Moscow troops used three highly destructive bombs, said Vadym Filashkin on the Telegram messenger, in the attack on the town’s centre that damaged two apartment blocks, shops and cars.
Three children were among the wounded, he added.
“This is another war crime of the Russians and another sad reminder that there are no absolutely safe places left in the Donetsk region,” said Filashkin.
Video from the site alongside the Telegram post showed rescuers helping an elderly woman to leave a damaged building with smashed windows and piles of construction waste around.
Kramatorsk, which lies about 20km from the active combat line, regularly comes under Russian strikes.
Russia must be forced into peace, Zelensky tells UN
Zelensky told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the war between Russia and Ukraine could not be calmed by talks alone, but that Moscow must be forced into peace.
Zelensky has sought the support of Western leaders for what he calls a “victory plan” to end the war that began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of his country in February 2022.
Zelensky said the war would end one day, but not because “someone got tired of the war” or through a trade with Putin, a reference to proposals that Ukraine cedes some territory seized by Russia to settle the conflict.
“This war can’t be calmed by talks. Action is needed,” said Zelensky, thanking nations who had provided Ukraine with support.
“Putin has broken so many international norms and rules that he won’t stop on his own, Russia can only be forced into peace, and that is exactly what’s needed, forcing Russia into peace, as the sole aggressor in this war, the sole violator of the UN Charter,” said Zelensky.
He took aim at North Korea and Iran for providing arms to Russia for the war, calling them “de facto accomplices” of Moscow.
Zelensky has said that if his plan is backed by the West, it will have a broad impact on Moscow, including a psychological one that could help compel Putin to end the war diplomatically.
He has said very little so far about his victory plan except that it would act as a bridge to a second Ukraine-led summit on peace that Kyiv wants to hold and invite Russia to later this year.
Russia said on Wednesday that Zelensky’s plan to force it to make peace was a “fatal mistake” that would have consequences for Kyiv.
In a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “Such a position is a fatal mistake, a systemic mistake. This is a profound misconception that will inevitably have consequences for the Kyiv regime.”
Peskov said Russia wanted peace, but the issue could not be forced, adding: “A position based on an attempt to force Russia into peace is an absolutely fatal mistake, because it is impossible to force Russia into peace.”
Nato plans transport of wounded troops in case of Russia war
Nato plans to coordinate the transport of a large number of wounded troops away from the frontlines in case of a war with Russia, potentially via hospital trains as air evacuations may not be feasible, according to a senior general.
The future scenario for medical evacuations would differ from allies’ experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, the head of Nato’s logistics command, told Reuters in an interview.
In a conflict with Russia, Western militaries would probably be faced with a much larger war zone, a higher number of injured troops and at least a temporary lack of air superiority close to the front lines, the German general said.
“The challenge will be to swiftly ensure high-quality care for, in the worst case, a great number of wounded,” he said without specifying how many injured troops Nato would expect.
The planning for medical evacuations is part of a much broader drive by Nato, prompted by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, to overhaul and boost its ability to deter and defend against any Russian assault.
The German military has said it expects Russia to be able to attack a Nato country as soon as 2029, while Putin casts the West as the aggressor for arming Ukraine. The Ukraine war has caused the sharpest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. DM