August 22, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Russia has blamed an agent with the Ukrainian security service for a car bomb explosion that killed Darya Dugina, a Russian political commentator and daughter of prominent ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

It has been established that "the crime was prepared and committed by the Ukrainian special services," per TASS.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said that the assailant had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her young daughter, TASS reported. The pair attended the festival near Moscow on Saturday where Dugina was a guest of honor.

The FSB said that after remotely detonating explosives planted in Dugina's Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, the pair drove through the Pskov region to Estonia, a journey of around 12 hours. 

The FSB said that the woman had rented an apartment in Moscow in the same building where Dugina lived. "The criminals used a Mini Cooper car to monitor the journalist," TASS reported.

The FSB said that the woman had used a variety of identity documents, entering with one issued by the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic and leaving on a Ukrainian document, the report added.

CNN cannot independently verify the FSB claims cited by the TASS report.

Earlier, a Russian foreign ministry official implied that Ukrainian state structures were responsible for the explosion, a claim that Ukrainian authorities have denied.

“Ukraine definitely has nothing to do with this because we are not a criminal state, which the Russian Federation is, and even more so, we are not a terrorist state,” Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said in a Ukrainian TV interview.

He also tweeted on Monday, providing the first official comment from Kyiv specifically on the accusation from the Russian security service.

As Ukraine prepares for its Independence Day, President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Moscow might attempt "something particularly ugly" and events to celebrate the occasion in the country's two largest cities have been canceled.

Meanwhile, media personalities in Moscow have called for strikes on Kyiv following the murder of Darya Dugina, a Russian political commentator and the editor of a disinformation website called United World International, on Saturday.

On the ground in Ukraine, Russian forces have made limited gains pushing north from the occupied southern city of Kherson, while the Ukrainian military says it continues to target bridges and weapons concentrations in the region.

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The Ukrainian military says it has continued attacks on Russian-held parts of the southern region of Kherson, including against bridges and weapons concentrations.

The bridge at Nova Kakhovka was also hit, the command said.

"The occupiers are trying to repair the bridge; they have brought additional slabs. However, our armed forces are adjusting these efforts," said Serhii Khlan, an advisor to the head of the Kherson Civil Military Administration.

Social media reports and images Monday indicated there had been a number of strikes around Kherson city and Nova Kakhovka. One geolocated photograph showed a plume of smoke rising from the area of the Antonivskiy bridge over the river Dnipro. The bridge has been repeatedly hit and is seriously damaged. Russian forces have been trying to arrange pontoon bridges across the river.

"The Antonivskiy railway bridge is not functioning. The occupiers are trying to repair the Antonivskiy road bridge. There is a moving pontoon crossing. The Russians do not have a full supply of needs. Currently, they are installing some kind of engineering structure near the Antonivskiy bridge; fastening the barges to the piers of the bridge," Khlan added.

For the last six weeks, Ukrainian forces have been using long range weapons to hit Russian concentrations of munitions, transport links and command posts in the south. 

Russian state media personalities have demanded strikes against "decision-making" centers in Ukraine following the murder of Darya Dugina, a Russian political commentator and the daughter of influential ultranationalist Alexander Dugin.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) blamed an agent with the Ukrainian security service for the car bomb explosion that killed Dugina on Saturday, Russian state news agency TASS reported, triggering the calls for attacks in the capital Kyiv and elsewhere.

Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-backed TV network RT, said on her Telegram channel that the targets in Ukraine should be "Decision Centers! Decision Centers!! Decision Centers!!!"

In response to Simonyan's post on Telegram, a pro-Russian official in an occupied part of Ukraine, Volodymyr Rogov, shared the addresses of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the Presidential Administration and the Main Intelligence Directorate.

Another television personality in Moscow, Tigran Keosayan, said on his Telegram channel that he was "tired of all the talking. I don't understand why not arrest all the creatures that mock Dasha's death."

"I don't understand why our "sleepers" in Kyiv have not yet woken up. I do not understand why in the cities of my country it is possible to openly collect money for the Armed Forces of Ukraine," he added. "I don't understand why there are still buildings on Bankova Street in Kyiv."

CNN cannot independently verify the FSB claims cited by the TASS report. Ukraine has denied any involvement in the death of Dugina.

Events to mark Ukraine's Independence Day on Wednesday have been banned in the country's capital, Kyiv, and second-largest city, Kharkiv, as officials warn that Russia may carry out missile attacks. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Saturday that Russia might be planning something "ugly" to coincide with the day, which will mark 31 years since Ukraine broke its ties with the Soviet Union. 

In Kyiv, the city military administration issued a ban on all gatherings between Monday and Thursday, saying "it is forbidden to hold mass events, peaceful meetings, rallies and other events related to a large gathering of people."

General Mykola Zhyrnov, head of Kyiv's military administration, said that the order was imposed so that security forces could respond in a "timely manner to threats of missile and bomb attacks by the troops of the Russian Federation on decision-making centers, military facilities, defense industry facilities, critical infrastructure and nearby residential areas."

Zhynov said he had ordered city authorities to use the minimum necessary number of officials, civil servants and workers to ensure transport and other services.

In Kharkiv, where relentless, indiscriminate Russian attacks killed and injured hundreds of civilians in the first months of the war, authorities announced a curfew from 7 p.m. local time on the eve of Independence Day to 7 a.m. on the day after.

"We ask that you understand such measures and prepare to stay at home and in shelters -- this is our safety," authorities said.

Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine's southern military command, said Sunday that "the date of our independence and the anniversary of the invasion, half a year, coincide -- it is the 24th. And there’s Ukrainian flag day, on the 23rd. We are ready for the fact that there will be an increase in some kind of aggression, there will be an increase in missile attacks."

In the last week, Ukrainian officials have said that more Russian missiles have been deployed at an airbase in Belarus.

The car bomb that killed Darya Dugina, daughter of ultra-nationalist Russian idealogue Alexander Dugin, was detonated remotely, a law enforcement official told Russian state news agency TASS on Monday.

Dugina, a Russian political commentator and the editor of a disinformation website called United World International, died after a bomb planted in a car she was driving went off in the outskirts of Moscow on Saturday evening. 

Details of the explosion are currently being investigated by the Russian Investigative Committee.

Earlier, Russian officials said 400 grams of TNT was used the explosion and that the "explosive device was attached under the Jeep on the driver's side,” TASS reported Sunday. 

Russian forces have made some progress in pushing north from the occupied southern city of Kherson towards Mykolaiv, according to Ukrainian officials.

The Ukrainian military's General Staff said Monday that "in the Mykolaiv direction, the occupiers carried out assaults in the area of the settlement of Blahodatne, with partial success."

On Sunday, the General Staff acknowledged that Russian forces had "occupied the southern outskirts of the settlement of Blahodatne, and hostilities continue."

The area has seen almost constant combat for three months, but there has been little change in the position of the front lines. In early June, Ukraine said it had liberated the town from Russian occupation. 

The border of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions also saw heavy fighting, according to Ukrainian officials. "Five massive enemy attacks were repelled; battles continue in six other directions," regional authorities said. 

There were rocket attacks on several settlements in Donetsk, which killed two people. The General Staff said that Russian forces had again tried to push southwards towards the city of Sloviansk, but "did not succeed and withdrew." A similar offensive in the Bakhmut area further south had been repelled, it added.

Overall, there appears to have been little change in the frontlines running through Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, but CNN is unable to verify claims from either side on territory won and lost.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the town of Nikopol, across the Dnipro River from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, continued to come under fire. Authorities said the area was hit with more than 40 shells and four people were injured.

There was also shelling in the city of Dnipro, according to the regional administration, with as many as 50 properties damaged.

Six months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the West's response to the crisis has remained strong and largely united — to the surprise of many.

Despite years of fractured relations during the era of former US president Donald Trump and the Covid-19 pandemic, the trans-Atlantic alliance has managed to pull together and reach agreements on financial support and the donation of weapons to Kyiv, agreements to stop using Russian energy as well as sanctions designed to hit President Vladimir Putin and his cronies.

However, as the crisis reaches its half-year anniversary, officials across Europe are worried that the consensus could fall apart as the continent enters a bleak winter of rising food prices, limited energy to heat homes and the real possibility of recession.

For the purposes of this article, CNN spoke with multiple Western officials and diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In a possible taste of more draconian measures to come, German capital Berlin turned off the lights illuminating monuments in order to save electricity, while French shops have been told to keep their doors shut while the air conditioning is on, or else face a fine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has captured the West's imagination and put heat on countries to support his war effort, might find it harder to get the attention of his fellow European leaders as the conflict drags on.

Read the full analysis here.

US President Joe Biden and Western leaders on Sunday stressed the need for the United Nations nuclear watchdog to visit the Zaporizhzhia power plant in southeastern Ukraine, where shelling has sparked fears of a disaster, according to a White House statement.

The statement issued Sunday said Biden held a conference call with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in which the leaders "affirmed their continued support for Ukraine's efforts to defend itself against Russian aggression."

Some context: Kyiv and Moscow have made a barrage of accusations against each other about security and military action at and around the plant, the largest nuclear complex in Europe. But the lack of independent access to the plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since March, makes it impossible to verify what is happening there.

Over the past month, a number of rockets and shells have landed on the territory of the plant, according to satellite imagery analyzed by CNN. CNN is unable to verify what strikes occurred, nor who was responsible.

According to a source from the Elysee Palace, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed during a call with Macron Friday for an IAEA mission to visit the plant via territory controlled by Ukrainian forces.