Russia targets Kyiv and Odesa; Dutch minister pledges €400m for Ukrainian drone support

Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans said on a surprise visit to Kyiv on Sunday that his country would invest €400-million in advanced drone development with Ukraine and deliver more F-16s in the coming months.

Ukraine would present its “victory plan” to its allies in Germany next weekend, said President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday, setting up a test of support for Kyiv’s vision of ending the war with Russia.

Russia targets Kyiv, Odesa in latest drone attack

Russia unleashed an overnight drone attack across Ukraine targeting the capital, Kyiv, and hitting infrastructure in the Black Sea port of Odesa, said Ukrainian officials on Sunday.

The State Emergency Service said one person was wounded and warehouses and cargo trucks were damaged in Odesa during the multi-wave attack, which kept much of the country under air-raid alert for several hours.

The Ukrainian military shot down 56 out of at least 87 drones launched by Russia over various regions of the country, the air force said. It added that another 25 were “lost” due to electronic jamming but did not elaborate.

Kyiv city military administrator Serhiy Popko said air defences destroyed all the drones that had been aimed at the capital. No injuries were reported.

Air raid alerts for Kyiv and the surrounding region were announced three times throughout the night, totalling more than five hours, added Popko.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

Russia has denied targeting civilians in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, begun in February 2022, but regularly launches missiles, drones and bombs at population centres far behind the front line.

Dutch defence minister pledges €400m for drone action plan

Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans said on a surprise visit to Kyiv on Sunday that his country would invest €400-million in advanced drone development with Ukraine and deliver more F-16s in the coming months.

“The war, of course, is intensifying every day, and Ukraine is setting up more brigades who all need support, who all need military equipment. We need to have this continuous flow of support,” Brekelmans told Reuters in Kyiv.

The drone action plan would combine Ukraine's innovation and Dutch knowledge to improve the technology used on the battlefield, he said.

“We will focus on different types of drones, so both surveillance drones, more defensive drones, but also the attack drones, because we see that Ukraine needs those more offensive drones also to target military facilities,” said Brekelmans.

About half of the investment would be spent in the Netherlands, while the rest would be split between Ukraine and other countries, he added.

If the developed drones were successful, more funding would be available to scale up production, said the defence minister.

The Netherlands has pledged €10-billion in military support for Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion and spent around €4-billion so far.

After visiting the city of Kharkiv, pummelled by Russian glide bombs, on Saturday, Brekelmans said attacking military targets in Russia was the only way to defend the city.

Ukraine has asked its partners to give it permission to use their weapons to strike targets deep in Russia and provide it with more air defences.

The Netherlands has contributed to its air defence support by driving international partners to supply Ukraine with F-16 jets and pledging 24 of them.

The first batch of planes from the Netherlands was already operating in Ukrainian airspace, according to the minister, while the others would be delivered “in the upcoming months and maybe beginning of next year”.

The country was also delivering reserve parts, ammunition and fuel for jets as it seeks to expand pilot training opportunities through meeting with partner countries and private sector players like Lockheed Martin to keep jets operational, he said.

The Netherlands has also announced a plan to assemble a Patriot air-defence system for Ukraine relying on parts from different countries but Brekelmans said it had struggled to source some parts.

He said Ukraine was already using one Dutch-supplied Patriot radar and “three launchers are going to be delivered very soon”.

Zelensky to present ‘victory plan’ at Ramstein meeting

Ukraine will present its “victory plan” to its allies in Germany next weekend, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday, setting up a test of support for Kyiv’s vision of ending the war with Russia.

“We will present the victory plan, clear, specific steps for a just end to the war,” wrote Zelensky wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Zelensky will meet US President Joe Biden and other leaders at a regular meeting of Kyiv’s key Nato and other allies at the US Ramstein Air Base on 12 October.

Ukraine, fending off an invasion from its much larger neighbour for nearly 1,000 days, suffered a major setback on the battlefield on Wednesday, when Russian forces took the eastern town of Vuhledar after two years of resistance.

Zelensky said in his nightly video address that his government, military and diplomatic officials would do “everything” they could in the coming days to ensure that the Ramstein meeting could become “positive for our defence, for our vision of how the war should end”.

He presented the plan to Biden and both the candidates running to succeed him, Vice-President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, last week after months of Kyiv’s teasing ideas on how to end the war.

The White House said Zelensky’s plan contained “a number of productive steps”.

But a US official described it as a repackaged request for more weapons and a lifting of restrictions on the use of long-range missiles. The plan presupposes the ultimate defeat of Russia in the war, said the official. Some officials see that aim as unrealistic.

The Financial Times, citing unnamed diplomats, reported on Saturday that Ukraine ceding land to Russia to gain Nato membership may be the “only game in town”. But Ukrainian media cited a source in Zelensky’s office as saying Kyiv does not “trade sovereignty and territories” and calling the report “simply chatter”.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said in June that Moscow would end the war he launched in February 2022 only if Kyiv agreed to hand over all of the four regions claimed by Moscow and to drop its ambitions to join Nato. Kyiv rejected those demands as tantamount to surrender.

Russia’s envoy to US ends his term at time of bilateral turmoil

Russia’s envoy to the US, a Kremlin hardliner, was returning to Moscow on Saturday, state media reported, with the end of his term coming at a time of the most hostile relations between the two nations in decades.

“Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Ivanovich Antonov is concluding his Washington assignment and heading to Moscow,” Tass state news agency cited the foreign ministry as saying.

The Siberia-born Antonov (69), a career diplomat, was seen as a hawk who was still capable of striking compromises. Head of the Russian mission in Washington since 2017, he said in July his assignment was coming to an end.

There was no mention of who would replace the envoy, considered a military-style negotiator. His stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown stalwart support for Putin’s actions.

“It is obvious to us that the enemy will be defeated and victory will be Russia’s,” said Antonov on Saturday in an unrelated post on the Telegram messaging app, commenting on Russian forces capturing Ukraine’s mining town of Vuhledar.

Kazakhstan votes on whether to build first nuclear plant

Kazakhstan voted in a referendum on Sunday on whether to build its first nuclear power plant, an idea promoted by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s government as the Central Asian nation seeks to phase out polluting coal plants.

The plan has faced public criticism on concern over any related hazards, the Soviet nuclear testing legacy, and fears that Russia will be involved in the project.

Almost 64% of registered voters cast their ballots by 8pm local time when the polling stations closed, the Central Election Commission said, making the vote valid. It will announce the preliminary results on Monday.

“I have come to the conclusion that the decision to build the nuclear power plant, and to build it with [Russian state nuclear firm] Rosatom, has already been made in [Tokayev’s office] and the people of Kazakhstan are being invited to polling stations as “notaries” to authenticate this decision with their votes,” wrote popular blogger Vadim Boreiko. DM