August 17, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Starting September 1, Finland will only allow Russian citizens to schedule 500 visa application appointments per day, authorities in the Nordic nation said.

The move is designed to punish Moscow for its decision to continue to wage war in Ukraine. The Finnish government had already slashed the number of appointments per day for Russian nationals to 1,000. But with no end to the fighting in sight, Helsinki decided to act again.

Of the 500 appointments per day, Finnish authorities will only allow 100 to be used for tourist visas, according to Jussi Tanner, the director general for consular services at Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Finland has long been a popular travel destination for Russians. In 2013, prior to Russia invading and subsequently annexing Crimea from Ukraine, Russians accounted for 75% of 13 million crossings over Finland’s eastern border, according to Tanner.

The number of Russian visa applications rejected has risen tenfold since 2019 and was now at around 15%, Tanner said.

Around 425 visas are now expected to be issued per day.

Sanna Marin, the Finnish Prime Minister, said that, while she recognizes the issue is not "black and white" and there are many Russians who do not support the invasion, many people in Europe are frustrated when they see "Russians traveling like nothing has happened."

Finland’s decision follows European leaders on Monday exchanging arguments over a potential Schengen or European Union visa ban for Russian citizens, with the leaders of Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark agreeing to further discuss the matter. 

Western nations are not doing enough to punish Russian oligarchs with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to prominent Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny.

Navalny, who is serving a prison sentence that Putin's critics say is politically motivated, wants Western governments to sanction thousands of people his organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, accuses of wrongdoing.

According to Navalny, only 46 out of the 200 Russian oligarchs from the Forbes list have been sanctioned by the West. Others, despite their close ties to Putin, were spared.

The jailed Kremlin critic also proposed imposing a 20-year travel ban to the UK, the US and the EU for Russian officials and oligarchs who publicly support the war in Ukraine.

Specific cases: Navalny decried the fact that Alexei Miller, the head of Russia's state-run energy giant Gazprom and purportedly a friend of Putin's, is not on the European sanctions list.

Navalny also questioned why the US had not sanctioned Roman Abramovich, the former owner of Chelsea football club. Navalny claims Abramovich supplies metal to the Russian defense ministry. 

Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK government in March and forced to sell the club, despite repeatedly denying that his business activities merited any punishment.

At least four people were injured in a Russian attack on the southern city of Odesa overnight, Ukrainian officials said.

In a Telegram post, Serhii Bratchuk, spokesman for the Odesa military administration, said a recreational center and several buildings had been destroyed and a fire was now raging in a 600-square-meter area.

Russia fired on the city with Kh-22 anti-ship missiles from Tu-22M3 strategic bombers Bratchuk wrote. Russia has previously used anti-ship missiles against targets on land. 

Rescue operations were ongoing, Bratchuk added.

This post has been updated with additional information.

Russia flew Su-34 fighter jets in Belarussian airspace to launch missiles on the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr, a major transportation hub that links to the capital Kyiv, the Ukrainian Air Force said.

The strike on the northern city Tuesday damaged an airfield and surrounding infrastructure, officials said, adding that Russia had also used Kh-59 tactical land-attack missiles.

Elsewhere in the northern and eastern regions of the country, fighting raged as Russian forces focused on taking territories still under Ukrainian control. Ukrainian officials reported shelling in multiple cities including Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

The city of Kharkiv, the country's second largest, was also targeted.

The General Staff added that Russian forces had also been trying to take control of the Donetsk town of Bakhmut but Ukrainian forces continue to hold it, despite air and missile strikes, and intense shelling.

Before the war broke out, Igor Kurayan, a 55-year-old from the southern Ukrainian port city of Kherson, shared frequent gardening updates on social media. His feeds were full of palms, pomegranate trees, marigolds, bamboo and avocados, grown at his home and small business near the Black Sea. He called it his "fairytale garden."

On Feb. 25, a day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kurayan posted a selfie on Instagram with a rifle, announcing he had volunteered to fight in the Territorial Defense Forces, reserve units of Ukraine's military.

Soon after, Kherson fell to Russian troops and in early April, after weeks living under and protesting against their occupation, Kurayan was abducted. He was watering plants in his shoe store when he said Russian soldiers dragged him outside and threw him into a van.

Soon after Kurayan's kidnapping, his Facebook and Instagram pages, and a new TikTok account registered under his name, began posting messages entirely out of character for the man known to family and friends as a proud Ukrainian, a passionate activist and avid gardener.

Read the full story here.

Ukraine's state nuclear power company Energoatom accused hackers based in Russia of launching a “powerful” attack on the company's website for three hours on Tuesday, but said the attack had not “significantly” affected operations of the site. 

The statement blamed the Russian group "People's Cyber ​​Army" for carrying out the attack using 7.25 million bot users, who simulated hundreds of millions of views of the company's main page. 

Valeriy Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, has acknowledged that Russian forces "continue to advance" in Donbas but said the "intense" situation is "fully controlled."

That estimate is in line with many made by Western analysts about the volume of ammunition being used by Russian forces, after a relative lull in early July.

"The enemy’s main efforts are concentrated on pushing our troops back from the Donetsk oblast. The most intense situation is now on the axis of Avdiivka-Pisky-Mariinka," Zaluzhny said. 

That axis is a stretch of some 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Donetsk.

Russian forces tried to advance again from north of Sloviansk but their offensive was unsuccessful and they withdrew, the Ukrainian military said.

The battle occurred near Mazanivka on the border of the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, an area that first saw Russian efforts to break through more than 40 days ago, according to the General Staff.

Fighting has been going on in that district for well over a month. 

Ukrainians say Russian objectives remain the same — they are "focused on conducting active offensive and assault actions in the Kramatorsk, Bakhmut, and Avdiivka directions," the General Staff said.

Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been within a few miles of the front lines for several months, but they remain in Ukrainian hands.

The Ukrainians say further efforts to advance in the Bakhmut area had been rebuffed.

Meanwhile, the Russians appear to have put renewed effort into breaking through Ukrainian lines in southern Donetsk, between Pavlivka and Novomykhailivka, where "hostilities continue," according to the General Staff.

Further north, in the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian General Staff said nearly 20 settlements had come under fire, including several close to the border with Russia.

The mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekov, urged civilians to stay indoors after shells landed in the Saltivka district.

The town of Nikopol across the river from the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has again come under rocket fire from the Russians, Ukrainian authorities say.

Residential areas had been hit and four people were injured, said Valentyn Reznichenko, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration.

Some 20 strikes from GRAD multiple rocket launchers and 10 artillery shells hit Nikopol, he added.

Nikopol has frequently come under fire from Russian forces' based on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River, where the nuclear power plant is situated.