Ukraine updates: India's Modi to visit Kyiv

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that Kyiv forces controlled more than 1,250 square kilometers (777 square miles) and 92 settlements in the Kursk region of Russia.

Zelenskyy called on Ukraine's allies to allow Western weapons to be deployed and strike inside Russia, saying the lack of that permission was the principal reason behind Ukraine not being able to stop Moscow advances on the frontline in the east.

"The naive, illusory concept of so-called red lines regarding Russia, which dominated the assessment of the war by some partners, has crumbled apart in these days somewhere near Sudzha," Zelenskyy said, referring to the border town in Russia's Kursk region currently under Ukrainian control.

Construction work began in Lithuania on Monday on a new military base which will accommodate 4,000 German troops from 2027 onwards, plus storage and maintenance for tanks and other equipment.

At a ceremony in the town of Rudninkai, 32 kilometers (20 miles) south of Vilnius, Lithuanian defense chief Raimundas Vaiksnoras said his government would be committing over €1 billion ($1.1 billion) to the base over the next three years – "a huge investment" for a nation of 2.9 million.

Lithuania recently increased defense spending to 3% of GDP, funded partly by tax hikes.

"If we are not secure, there is no security for [Germany and the rest of Europe]," said Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte.

Germany committed to deploy troops to Lithuania, a fellow European Union and NATO member which borders both Russia's ally Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, last year.

The stationing of troops there will constitute the first permanent foreign deployment of German military units since the Second World War.

"The [German] brigade will work as reassurance to our population and as deterrence, to push the Russians out," said Vaiksnoras.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Ukraine on Friday after an invitation came from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"This is the first visit of the head of the Indian government to our country in the history of bilateral relations," the Ukrainian presidential office said in a statement on Telegram.

Modi will also visit Poland as part of his trip.

The announcement of the planned visit to Ukraine and Poland comes just weeks after Modi visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia, drawing criticism from Kyiv after pictures emerged of him hugging his host at Putin's country residence.

India has close ties to Moscow, and its government has stopped short of explicitly condemning Russia's invasion of its neighbor, calling instead for dialogue to resolve the conflict.

Russia is not only a key supplier of arms to India, but has also provided the South Asian country with cut-price crude oil since the invasion begun as it seeks markets not hit by Western sanctions imposed over its aggression.

However, there have been some tensions as New Delhi urges Moscow to return several of its citizens who signed up for "support jobs" with the Russian military, but were later sent to fight on the frontlines in Ukraine.

At least five Indian soldiers have died in the conflict. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was "clear" that the United States had ordered the 2022 attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

Russia has also complained to Germany over its probe into the blasts that ruptured the pipelines, the RIA state news agency reported.

Last week, German prosecutors reportedly identified a Ukrainian diving instructor as a suspect in the sabotage attack and issued a warrant to arrest him in Poland.

Warsaw received the warrant but the suspect had already left the country as Germany did not include his name in a database of wanted persons, Polish prosecutors told the news agency Reuters.

Moscow believes the German probe will now be closed without identifying those responsible, RIA cited Oleg Tyapkin from the Russian foreign ministry, as saying.

"We have raised the issue of Germany and other affected countries fulfilling their obligations under the UN anti-terrorist conventions," Tyapkin said. "We have officially made corresponding claims on this matter bilaterally, including to Berlin."

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov later told the Izvestia media outlet: "Germany must reply to all the questions."

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said Berlin should not cut its military aid to Kyiv.

In remarks made in response to a letter by Finance Minister Christian Lindner that seemed to suggest doing so, Steinmeier said the German government, as the biggest European military supplier to Kyiv, had often publicly justified its aid.

"And I therefore also expect Germany to remain a big, and Europe's biggest, supporter of Ukraine," he said.

Lindner, who leads the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), had previously written a letter to Defense Minister Boris Pistorius of the Social Democrats and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock calling new aid into quesiton.

In the letter, he said "new measures" with obligatory payments could be introduced only if "financing was secured" in budget plans for this and the coming years.

For this year, Germany has earmarked some €7.5 billion ($89.2 billion) for military aid to Ukraine, and €4 billion for 2025.

The sums can be increased by parliamentary vote, as has already occurred for 2024.

 Steinmeier made the remarks in Sopron, Hungary, where he is attending a memorial event to mark the 35th anniversary of the Pan-European Picnic, which was a prelude to the fall of both the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain.
 

Ukrainian authorities have warned residents in the eastern town of Pokrovsk that they have "a week or two, no more" to evacuate as Russian troops draw near.

Regional governor Vadym Filashkin estimated that some 50,000 civilians remain in the town and surrounding settlements, including 4,000 children.

He said that authorities have the capacity to evacuate at least 1,000 people a day but that only 500-600 people per day are currently leaving.

"The situation at the front is very difficult," he said, adding that the forced evacuation of families with children had begun.

Russian forces have been slowly pressing towards Pokrovsk, a key road and rail hub in the Donetsk region, for several months. As of last week, they were just 10 kilometers (six miles) from the town, officials said.

"Heavy fighting continues in the Pokrovsk direction," Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi wrote on Telegram.

Meanwhile, 66 kilometers (41 miles) further east, the Russian Defense Ministry said its troops had "liberated" the town Zalizne, which adjoins the key Ukrainian fortress town of Toretsk and which it refers to by its former Soviet name of Artemovo.

Close to the original line of contact with those territories seized by Russian-backed separatists in 2014, Toretsk has been a key bastion for the Ukrainian army ever since.

"The defense forces are also doing everything necessary to protect Toretsk," General Syrskyi said.

Local authorities in the southern Russian town of Proletarsk declared a state of emergency on Monday as firefighters continued to battle a blaze at a fuel storage warehouse for a second day.

Officials said the facility had been hit by a Ukrainian drone early on Sunday morning. Videos on social media showed a huge cloud of smoke above the town, which is some 200 kilometers (120 miles) from Ukraine's eastern border.

Vasily Golubev, governor of the surrounding Rostov region, said 18 firefighters have been injured tackling the blaze but that the "liquidation of the fire is continuing."

"Given the difficulty of the fire in the Proletarsk district, a high alert regime has been turned into a state of emergency," he said on Telegram, adding that the "forces and means" to put out the fire had been increased.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called such strikes on targets far behind the frontline "fair" retaliation for Russia's attacks on his country.

Russia's state RIA news agency says Russian marines have captured 19 Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region, where Kyiv's forces have been carrying out an incursion for almost two weeks.

RIA published what it said was a video of the captured troops.

The report has not been confirmed either by Kyiv or independent sources.

A United Nations report published on Monday listed Ukraine among the most dangerous regions for humanitarian workers in 2023.

According to the report by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), a total of 280 aid workers were killed in conflict zones worldwide, making 2023 the deadliest year on record.

Six of the fatalities were registered in Ukraine across the first full calendar year of the ongoing Russian invasion.

Russian authorities have banned The Clooney Foundation for Justice, founded by the human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and her film star husband George, declaring its activities "undesirable on the territory of our country."

The status of "undesirable" means that organizations must shut down in Russia and expose any Russians involved with them in any way to possible prosecution. 

The Russian prosecutor general claimed in a statement that the foundation "conducts extensive work aimed at discrediting Russia, actively supports false patriots and members of banned terrorist and extremist groups."

The statement was ironically entitled "The Russian Prosecutor General's Office Appreciates Hollywood Activists' Acting Talent."

In July, the Clooney Foundation joined with other nongovernmental organizations in filing a case with the UN Human Rights Committee in which Russia was accused of violating the human rights of Ukrainians killed in a 2022 missile attack on Vinnytsia.

Since Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian authorities have been conducting the biggest repression of dissent seen in the country since Soviet times.

In early August, the German pro-democracy Konrad Adenauer Foundation was also banned as "undesirable."
 

Gordon Black, a 34-year-old US soldier who was sentenced in June to nearly four years in a Russian penal colony for stealing $113 (€102) from his Russian girlfriend and allegedly threatening to kill her, lost his court appeal against the verdict on Monday.

A judge at the Primorsky Regional Court in Russia's Far East ordered that the verdict remained unchanged, Russia's RIA news agency reported.

RIA reported that Black's defense lawyer had argued that the verdict did not
rely on case materials, ignored evidence confirming Black's innocence, and incorrectly interpreted his actions towards the victim.

Black had pleaded not guilty to having voiced death threats toward his girlfriend, Alexandra Vashchuk, but did confess to having taken the money, justifying the act by saying it was done out of necessity.

Black, one of several Americans currently in Russian custody, was arrested on May 2 in Vladivostok.

Last week, dual Russian-American citizen Ksenia Karelina was sentenced to 12 years in prison after a Russian court found her guilty of treason for donating $51.07 to a charity supporting Ukraine.

Ukraine's air defense units have successfully warded off drone attacks launched by Russian forces during the night, destroying 11 drones, including some headed for the capital, Kyiv, according to the country's air force.

The drones were destroyed over the Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Sumy and Donetsk regions, the air force said on the Telegram messaging app.

There were no immediate reports of damage from the drones or debris from downed weapons.

tj/rc (AFP, AP, Reuters, dpa)