Updated August 30, 2023 at 4:40 am EDT|Published August 30, 2023 at 2:24 am EDT
Smoke rises over Kiev early Wednesday after drone and missile attacks hit the city. (Gleb Garanich/Portal)
According to the city administration, at least two people were killed in a spate of drone and missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital. Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said the city “has not experienced such a violent attack since the spring.”
The early morning attacks on Kiev came after a series of drone strikes on at least six Russian regions, including one on a military airfield in Pskov that reportedly damaged four Russian military aircraft, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Here you will find the latest information about the war and its impact around the world.
Two people aged 26 and 36 were killed in the drone strikes in Kiev. According to the Kiev military administration, two more were injured and hospitalized, the city’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said on Telegram. A Washington Post journalist in Kiev reported hearing several loud explosions just after 5 a.m. local time while many locals sought emergency shelter. Popko said buildings were damaged and fires broke out as a result of the attacks, but more than 20 “enemy targets” were destroyed by Ukraine’s air defenses, he added.
Four military transport aircraft were damaged in a drone attack on a military air base in Pskov, Russia, near the border with Estonia and Latvia, Russian state news agency Tass reported. The attack damaged the Il-76 aircraft and It caused a major fire at the Pskov airfield, said regional governor Mikhail Wedernikov in Telegram. No deaths or injuries have been reported and the local airport is expected to close on Wednesday to investigate possible damage to the runway, he said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said civilian infrastructure had been attacked in at least six Russian regions which was subjected to drone attacks overnight. No casualties were reported. In addition to Pskov, the drones hit five other areas, including Oryol, Bryansk, Ryazan, Kaluga and the Moscow area. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the attacks, but increasingly used drones to attack Russia’s interior.
Russia said it destroyed four Ukrainian military speedboats in the Black Sea Transport of up to 50 paratroopers, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. A naval aircraft from the country’s Black Sea Fleet carried out the attack around midnight Moscow time on Wednesday, it said. The Washington Post could not independently verify the reports.
The head of the Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin was privately buried in a cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russian media reported. News organization MSK1 reported, citing a cemetery representative, that Prigozhin’s family wanted the burial arrangements to be kept secret. The funeral was confirmed by Russian state news agency Interfax. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin did not plan to attend the funeral and that it had no details about a possible ceremony.
Ukrainian forces advanced into southern and eastern Ukraine, According to an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War, which cited geolocated footage. Ukrainian troops advanced near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region and Robotyne in the Zaporizhia region, the DC-based think tank said. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said this week that the country had recaptured the village of Robotyne, considered a strategic target point in Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Melitopol.
Almost 1,400 people, including 343 children, were evacuated from Kupiansk, a city in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, over the past three weeks, according to the governor of the Kharkiv region. Authorities have ordered thousands of Kupiansk residents to flee the spate of shelling and fighting in recent weeks.
The United States announced an additional support package worth around $250 million to strengthen Ukraine’s security and defense, with a commitment to provide demining equipment, anti-aircraft missiles and ammunition for artillery and small arms. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Washington and its allies and partners “will stand with Ukraine for as long as necessary.”
A Moscow court convicted two independent Russian military analysts sentenced in absentia to 11 years in prison for her online posts about the Russian military. The two, who live outside Russia, are Ruslan Leviev of the Conflict Intelligence Team, which investigates military activities based on open data, and Michael Nacke, a former radio host who runs a YouTube channel with 1.4 million subscribers . The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office described the Conflict Intelligence Team as an “undesirable organization,” banned its work in Russia and made republication of its content a criminal offense.
He advocated for F-16s for Ukraine, but died in a crash before he could fly one: A 30-year-old Ukrainian pilot, Andrii “Juice” Pilshchikov, had been lobbying Washington to send U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine and was waiting to take an English exam that would mark the start of his long-awaited flight training would have made possible. But before he could take off, he and two other pilots – Vyacheslav Minka and Serhiy Prokazin – died last week in what the Ukrainian air force called an accident during a combat mission.
The crash left a pall of sadness across the country, where the national mood had already darkened over the challenges of the sluggish counteroffensive, Siobhán O’Grady, Serhii Korolchuk and Serhiy Morgunov report.
The pilots’ deaths also sparked anger in the United States. Some critics in Ukraine accused Washington of unnecessarily delaying the deployment of F-16 fighter jets.
Serhiy Morgunov and Siobhán O’Grady contributed to this report.