President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that he and International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan had discussed how to ensure that arrest warrants for Russian officials wanted for war crimes in Ukraine were implemented.
President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the West would be directly fighting with Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with Western-made long-range missiles, a move he said would alter the nature and scope of the conflict.
Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had anticipated Moscow’s counteroffensive in the Russian region of Kursk, his first comments on the pushback this week more than a month after Ukraine’s cross-border incursion.
Zelensky and ICC discuss implementing arrest warrants for Russian officials
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that he and International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan had discussed how to ensure that arrest warrants for Russian officials wanted for war crimes in Ukraine were implemented.
“It is crucial to comply with the Rome Statute and ensure that court decisions on arrest warrants for Russian war criminals are not ignored,” Zelensky said in a post on X after the two men had met.
The ICC has issued arrest warrants for several Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin for the unlawful deportation of children during the war.
A warrant on the same grounds was issued for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian commissioner for children’s rights.
Also subject to warrants are Sergei Shoigu, head of Russia’s Security Council, and Viktor Sokolov and Sergey Kobylash, who are accused of directing attacks against civilian sites.
Russia has dismissed the warrants as meaningless and “null and void”.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said it had undertaken a diplomatic protest against Mongolia for not implementing the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin during the Russian president’s visit to the country last week.
The ministry said that a Mongolian diplomat had been informed about Ukraine’s “deep disappointment” and added that the decision would affect relations.
Putin says West will be fighting Russia if it lets Kyiv use long-range missiles
Putin said on Thursday that the West would be directly fighting with Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with Western-made long-range missiles, a move he said would alter the nature and scope of the conflict.
Zelensky has been pleading with Kyiv's allies for months to let Ukraine fire Western missiles including long-range US Atacms and British Storm Shadows deep into Russian territory to limit Moscow's ability to launch attacks.
In some of his most hawkish comments on the subject yet, Putin said such a move would drag the countries supplying Kyiv with long-range missiles directly into the war since satellite targeting data and the actual programming of the missiles’ flight paths would have to be done by Nato military personnel because Kyiv did not have the capabilities itself.
“So this is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It is a question of deciding whether or not Nato countries are directly involved in a military conflict,” Putin told Russian state TV.
“If this decision is taken, it will mean nothing less than the direct involvement of Nato countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine. This will be their direct participation, and this, of course, will significantly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict.”
Russia would be forced to take what Putin called “appropriate decisions” based on the new threats.
He did not spell out what those measures could be, but he has spoken in the past of the option of arming the West’s enemies with Russian weapons to strike Western targets abroad and in June spoke of deploying conventional missiles within striking distance of the US and its European allies.
Kyiv anticipated Russian counterattack in Kursk, says Zelensky
Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had anticipated Moscow’s counteroffensive in the Russian region of Kursk, his first comments on the pushback this week more than a month after Ukraine’s cross-border incursion.
Ukraine’s troops captured an enclave of western Russian territory in a surprise raid that began in early August, a move aimed at wresting the battlefield initiative from Russia including by diverting Moscow’s forces from the eastern front.
Its forces made rapid initial gains before stalling, while the situation around the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk, which has been the focus of Russia’s main offensive operations in recent weeks, remained perilous.
“The Russians have begun counteroffensive actions. It is going according to our Ukrainian plan,” Zelensky told a news conference in Kyiv with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda.
A Russian commander said on Wednesday that his soldiers had taken back control of about 10 settlements in the Kursk region in a counterattack. Reuters has not been able to independently verify the battlefield reports on either side.
Zelensky repeated earlier assertions that Ukraine had also noticed a buildup of forces across the border with Belarus, Russia’s main ally in its full-scale war on Ukraine.
“We have seen it for a long time — this process is under control,” he said.
His comments came as fighting continued on several fronts.
Russian forces knocked out power and water to a rail hub in northern Ukraine and severed water supplies to Pokrovsk, causing disruptions behind the frontlines.
Russian forces have been gaining ground in parts of east Ukraine including the area around Pokrovsk, whose capture could enable Moscow to open new lines of attack and complicate Ukrainian logistics.
Donetsk’s regional governor said a filtering station had stopped working because of heavy fighting, severing the water supply to Pokrovsk. He said it would be impossible to fix soon and renewed calls to civilians to flee the town.
Pokrovsk, which straddles several important roads that pass through the Donetsk region and has a rail line, has also lost supply of electricity and gas used for cooking and heating, local authorities said.
Russian momentum has slowed in the areas nearest the town, but Moscow’s forces have pressed south from that line of attack, closing in on the nearby town of Ukrainsk, open-source intelligence reports by Ukraine’s Deep State analysts indicate.
The city of Konotop, a rail hub in Sumy region which Kyiv used as a staging ground for its cross-border incursion, reported heavy damage from an overnight Russian drone attack.
Officials said at least 14 people had been hurt in an attack that “significantly” damaged energy infrastructure and cut electricity to the settlement.
Rescuers were working to restore power in the town, which had a pre-war population of about 83,000.
Across the country, Russia attacked using 64 drones, the air force said. It shot down 44 of them over nine different regions.
Russian shelling kills three Red Cross workers in Ukraine
Russian shelling on Thursday killed three Ukrainians working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and wounded two others in a village in the frontline Donetsk region, said Ukrainian officials.
“Another Russian war crime. Today, the occupier attacked vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross humanitarian mission in the Donetsk region,” said Zelensky on X.
The village of Viroliubivka came under shelling, regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on the Telegram messenger app, reporting casualties.
“I condemn attacks on Red Cross personnel in the strongest terms. It’s unconscionable that shelling would hit an aid distribution site,” said ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric.
She added that ICRC teams were regularly present in the Donetsk region, and their vehicles were marked with the Red Cross emblem.
The Prosecutor General’s Office said on Telegram that ICRC employees had brought fuel briquettes to residents for heating before winter. They were unloading the aid when the attack happened, it said.
Two employees were hospitalised, and one was in a serious condition, prosecutors added.
Poland hosts Blinken, joins calls to lift weapons restrictions on Ukraine
Poland added its voice on Thursday to calls to allow Ukraine to fire Western-supplied missiles deep into Russia as it hosted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for talks in Warsaw.
Kyiv has been pressing the Biden administration and other Western governments to authorise long-range strikes that it says will help to counter Russia’s relentless aerial attacks on Ukraine.
“We should continue to deliver advanced air defence systems [to Ukraine] ... and lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told a joint news conference with Blinken.
Blinken, winding up a visit to Europe, said he had held extensive discussions with Ukrainian officials in Kyiv on Wednesday about how they saw the war developing and what their needs were, but declined to say whether Washington was ready to approve such strikes.
“What we learned from our Ukrainian partners will inform discussions that we’ll be having with other allies and other partners in the days and weeks ahead, as we work through and think through the coming months,” said Blinken.
It was fitting to begin such discussions in Poland, Blinken said, citing its staunch support for Ukraine.
Russia puts six journalists on wanted list for illegally crossing border
The Russian interior ministry has placed six foreign journalists on its wanted list for illegally crossing the Russian frontier to report inside the Kursk region after a Ukrainian cross-border incursion, the Tass news agency reported on Thursday.
Russia’s FSB security service said last month it had opened criminal cases against the journalists, who include a British correspondent for CNN, a reporter for Deutsche Welle, a journalist for Italian state broadcaster RAI, and three Ukrainians working for the 1+1 TV channel.
The journalists’ employers have previously said their reporting trips into Kursk were legitimate.
Italy’s foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador in Rome to express “surprise at Moscow’s singular decision” against RAI reporter Stefania Battistini, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on social media X.
Zelensky dismisses ‘destructive’ China-Brazil peace initiative
Zelensky has dismissed a Chinese-Brazilian peace initiative for the war in Ukraine as “destructive”, and complained that Kyiv had not been involved in the process.
China and Brazil called in May for an international peace conference recognised by both Russia and Ukraine, involving equal participation of all parties, and what they called a fair discussion of all peace plans.
“The Chinese-Brazilian proposal is ... destructive, it’s just a political statement,” Zelensky said in an interview posted on Wednesday by the Brazilian media outlet Metropoles.
“How can you offer ‘here is our initiative’ without asking anything from us?”
Zelensky said the initiative lacked respect for Ukraine and its territorial integrity, according to video footage posted by Metropoles, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin had to take steps to show he wants to end the war.
The Ukrainian leader said he had offered to discuss the proposals with China and Brazil.
Reuters reported in June that China had been trying to enlist developing nations to join the six-point initiative, issued before a Ukraine-led summit in Switzerland.
Zelensky’s own proposals include a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, the restoration of Ukraine’s 1991 post-Soviet borders and bringing Russia to account for its actions.
China’s Xi ‘may meet Zelensky next month’
Chinese President Xi Jinping could meet Zelensky next month, a former Ukrainian official said in Beijing on Thursday at the opening of China’s biggest annual military diplomacy event.
Oleksandr Chalyi, a former deputy foreign minister, told one of the opening sessions of the Xiangshan Forum that diplomacy with Beijing had improved, and a meeting was now possible.
Noting Chinese efforts to help restore European security, Chalyi said: “Now all of us in Ukraine are waiting for some contacts, direct contacts between President Zelensky and President Xi.”
Beijing has cast itself as neutral in Russia’s 30-month-old invasion of Ukraine, but maintains close strategic ties with Moscow and did not join a peace summit organised by Ukraine in June.
Cui Hongjian, director of the Department of European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said on the sidelines of the forum that China was open to joining a future summit as it did not want its efforts “to go to waste”.
“We are willing to do anything that is conducive for peace,” Cui said when asked about the prospect of a Xi-Zelenskiy meeting.
Ukraine is among 90 countries and international organisations represented at the highly choreographed forum, taking place from 12-14 September in Beijing.
UK’s Lammy sets out further financial support for Ukraine
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on Wednesday Britain would provide a further £600-million of support for Ukraine as he visited Kyiv with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The British government said it would provide £242-million of funding, including for humanitarian needs, and £484-million in loan guarantees for World Bank lending to Ukraine before the end of the year.
Britain has already committed £3-billion a year of military support to Ukraine for as long as needed.
Lammy said the latest funding would provide “vital support to Ukrainians as they continue to endure relentless Russian attacks. With the US, we stand firmly with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
Britain said it would also deliver hundreds of additional air defence missiles, tens of thousands of more artillery ammunition rounds, and more armoured vehicles to Ukraine by the end of the year.
Russia hits grain vessel near Nato member Romania
Ukraine accused Russia on Thursday of using strategic bombers to strike a civilian grain vessel in a missile attack in Black Sea waters near Nato member Romania, escalating tensions between Moscow and the military alliance.
Zelensky said the vessel carrying Ukrainian grain to Egypt had been hit overnight by a Russian missile just after it left Ukrainian territorial waters. There were no casualties, he said.
There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the strike was “a brazen attack on freedom of navigation and global food security”. Ukraine’s navy said Russian Tupolev Tu-22 bombers fired cruise missiles at 11.02pm local time on Wednesday.
It was the first time a missile had struck a civilian vessel transporting grains at sea since the start of Moscow’s invasion in February 2022. Some vessels have been damaged during Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports where they were moored.
British maritime security company Ambrey said in a note that a Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged bulk carrier had been struck by a Russian-launched missile after leaving the Ukrainian port of Chornomorsk in Ukraine’s Odesa region.
The vessel sustained damage to its port side, including a cargo hold and a crane, it said.
The Navy identified the vessel as the Aya bulk carrier.
Russian pranksters target Polish foreign minister in hoax call
Russian pranksters released footage on Thursday of a video call with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski after apparently tricking him into thinking he was speaking to former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov, who use the aliases Vovan and Lexus, have duped Western politicians over the years into discussing topics of interest to Moscow.
The duo, who have denied Western accusations of having links to Russia’s intelligence services, were given a top state award in the Kremlin in July for their exploits.
Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the video call, which shows Sikorski speaking in English as he discusses Poland’s support for Ukraine and other topics.
Pawel Wronski, a spokesperson for the Polish foreign ministry, told Reuters the material had probably been gathered in March, and questioned whether and how it had been edited.
He said Sikorski’s comments were similar to things the minister had said many times to various politicians.
“You can put it all together, there is nothing here to be ashamed of in any way,” said Wronski.
The pranksters released the video on the same day as Sikorski held talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in an apparent attempt to embarrass him.
Sikorski is heard saying he thinks it will take a decade or more for Ukraine to join the European Union, that he thinks some Western countries want to use the prospect of Kyiv joining Nato as a possible bargaining chip with Russia, and that fighting a war with Moscow in western Europe is “an absolute red line”.
Asked about the prospect of Donald Trump becoming the next US president, he says he has spoken to “Trump’s people” who told him Trump would threaten Moscow with further escalation to try to get a peace deal.
Russian hawk pushes case for Putin to toughen nuke policy
Russia should clearly state its willingness to use nuclear weapons against countries that “support Nato aggression in Ukraine”, according to an influential foreign policy hawk who is pressing Putin to adopt a more assertive nuclear posture towards the West.
Sergei Karaganov told Kommersant newspaper that Moscow could launch a limited nuclear strike on a Nato country without triggering an all-out nuclear war.
The US, he added, was lying when it said that it guaranteed nuclear protection to its allies.
The main goal of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, Karaganov said, “should be to ensure that all current and future enemies are sure that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons”.
In comments published weeks after Ukraine captured a part of Russia’s Kursk region, from which Moscow’s forces are still fighting to eject it, he said: “It is time to declare that we have the right to respond to any massive strikes on our territory with a nuclear strike. This also applies to any seizure of our territory.”
Karaganov’s statements are closely watched by Western security experts as an indicator of Russian thinking on foreign, defence and nuclear policy.
His opinions do not represent official policy but the Kremlin has given him repeated opportunities to voice them in influential forums and put them directly to Putin.
For more than a year, he was the most prominent figure calling for changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which Moscow has now said it will revise.
The current doctrine states that Russia would be prepared to use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack by another country or a conventional attack that threatened the existence of the state.
That doctrine was irresponsible and even suicidal, Karaganov said, however, because it did not adequately deter Russia’s enemies and led them to believe there were hardly any circumstances in which Moscow would use a nuclear weapon.
Russia was heading for disaster unless it succeeded in shifting that assumption and re-establishing deterrence, he said.
Karaganov has called in the past for Russia to consider a pre-emptive nuclear strike to “sober up” its enemies. DM