September 1, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

A Russian military blogger who has frequently been critical of the way the campaign in Ukraine has been conducted has been arrested in Moscow, according to state news agency RIA Novosti.

"A criminal case was opened against the administrator of the Moscow Calling telegram channel Andrey Kurshin for fake news about the Russian army," RIA Novosti said.

Moscow imposed harsh penalties on spreading "fake news" about the military shortly after it invaded Ukraine, amid a brutal crackdown on dissent.

"While he is being held as a suspect, the case is being investigated by Moscow investigators," the agency said, citing law enforcement agencies.

The Telegram channel of Moscow Calling has some 87,000 subscribers.

The Institute for the Study of War notes that Kurshin is not a mainstream blogger but an ultra-nationalist who "commonly attacks many aspects of Russia’s military conduct of the war in Ukraine while supporting the ultranationalist goals underpinning the war itself."

ISW said that "the wider Russian ultranationalist information space welcomed Kurshin’s arrest and noted that he routinely discredited the Russian military."

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Ultra-nationalist military blogger arrested in Moscow | CNN

As drones increasingly become a weapon of choice for both Russia and Ukraine, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was able to witness Ukrainians training to become drone pilots.

At a sprawling field at an undisclosed location, the Victory Drones charity initiative is teaching both military personnel and civilians how to fly first-person view (FPV) civilian drones. These devices can be bought off a store shelf for as little as $500, but once weaponized they can take out entire tanks in the battlefield.

Some of the trainees have strapped water bottles full of sand to their drones as mock rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) so they can practice munition drops around an obstacle course.

“We do whatever we can now to resist because [the] Russians want to kill all of us,” 40-year-old Yuliia tells Amanpour. She used to be a writer and film director before the war.

Just this week, Ukraine launched the largest drone assault on Russian territory since the beginning of the invasion, striking at at least six regions across the country. It is unclear what types of drones were used for that attack.

Software engineer Lyuba Shipovich co-founded Victory Drones. She calls FPVs “the most cost-effective weapon” because they also have the advantage of being used for reconnaissance purposes. “If you see the enemy you can hit the enemy, you can hide,” she explains.

The school, which trains both men and women, is working in conjunction with Ukraine’s Armed Forces.

“We are trying to fight this myth that women cannot fight,” Shipovich tells Amanpour. “If you have hands, fingers you can operate drones.”

CNN's Victoria Butenko, Olha Konovalova and Mark Phillips also contributed reporting.

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Ukraine has opened more than 3,000 criminal cases over Russia’s alleged crimes against children in the country, including dozens of torture cases, Ukrainian prosecutors said Thursday.

Usenko said these alleged crimes are “often combined with torture and illegal deprivation of liberty” and “pretrial investigation bodies and prosecutors document such crimes in more than 3,200 criminal proceedings.”

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, Ukrainian authorities, rights groups, international bodies and news organizations have documented an overwhelming body of evidence of alleged Russian war crimes and human rights abuses.

Russia has repeatedly denied these accusations of torture and human rights abuses.

According to Usenko, prosecutors documented 75 children who suffered various forms of torture at the hands of Russian forces.

She said 69 of them were located in the village of Yahidne, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region. The children were held in the basement of a school together with adults and their conditions and treatment, “is equated to torture,” Usenko said.

Isolated cases of child torture were also documented in the southern Kherson and northeastern Kharkiv regions, where children were “deprived of their freedom and subjected to physical torture,” Usenko said.

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Flights serving Moscow airports were once again disrupted Friday after the Russian capital's mayor reported another Ukrainian drone attack.

It did not provide a specific reason for the temporary restrictions. 

Earlier Friday, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said air defenses had downed a Ukrainian drone headed toward the capital.

It comes after all four Moscow airports temporarily suspended flight operations Wednesday as Russia saw the biggest drone assault on its territory since it launched its invasion of Ukraine last year.

Ukraine has increasingly been emboldened to hit strategic targets inside Russia through the air in recent weeks, even as it suffers assaults on its own cities, setting up a new phase of the conflict defined by Kyiv’s apparent efforts to wear down domestic Russian support for the war.

Ukrainian drones again targeted Russia's capital and a southwestern region bordering Ukraine, Russian officials said Friday.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said air defenses downed a drone approaching the capital overnight. No casualties or damage were reported, he said.

Meanwhile in the Kursk region, a Ukrainian drone targeted the town of Kurchatov in the early hours of Friday, its governor said.

Kursk Gov. Roman Starovoit said the drone hit a non-residential building, damaging its facade.

Starovoit earlier said two drones had targeted the town, but later said the fall of the second one could not be confirmed.

Some context: Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia have ramped up this week. Early Wednesday, Russia saw the biggest drone assault on its territory since it launched its invasion last year, as six regions including Moscow and Bryansk came under attack.

This post has been updated to reflect the Kursk governor's latest remarks.

Ukrainian forces say they have penetrated the “first line” of Russian strongholds in the Zaporizhzhia region, in a sign that Kyiv is edging closer to Moscow’s sprawling network of fortified trenches along the southern front.

News of the latest progress comes following reports that US and Western allies had noted the slow pace of the counteroffensive. CNN reported earlier this month that the US had been receiving increasingly “sobering updates.”

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Russia is "losing ground in the international community" as Moscow's attacks on Ukrainian grain supplies impact countries far away from the conflict, the European Union's top diplomat claimed on Thursday.

Speaking at a news conference in Brussels following a meeting of European foreign ministers, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell cited the 2nd Russia-Africa Summit held in July as a "diplomatic failure," for Moscow.

Global food prices ticked up after Russia pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal allowing the safe passage of ships carrying grain from Ukrainian ports in July. In the following weeks, Russian forces have repeatedly attacked the ports in what Kyiv officials say is a deliberate attempt to disrupt its vital grain exports, which are relied upon by many developing countries, including in Africa.

Some context: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday presented "a set of concrete proposals" in order to renew the Black Sea grain deal in a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. It comes after Lavrov said Russia is ready to return to the deal as soon as what Moscow claims to be promises become concrete guarantees. Kyiv said any consideration of supporting Russian grain exports in the Black Sea without resuming exports from Ukrainian ports would bolster Moscow's "sense of impunity" and "deal a severe blow to international obligations and international law."

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres presented “a set of concrete proposals” in order to renew the Black Sea grain deal in a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

According to Guterres, it is “extremely important to renew” the grain deal. 

He said the initiative "has given a very important contribution to make the food markets more adequate to the UN objectives of food security,” such as bringing down prices and creating “conditions for access to the global markets of many countries, namely the developing world.” 

However, he said, the UN “took into concern the Russian requests.” 

“We have some concrete solutions for the concerns allowing for a more effective access of Russian food and fertilizers to global markets at adequate prices,” he said. 

Guterres said he believes the UN “presented a proposal that could be the basis for a renewal, but a renewal that must be stable.” 

Some context: Earlier Thursday, Lavrov said Russia is ready to return to the Black Sea Grain Initiative as soon as promises made to Moscow become guarantees. 

Russia withdrew from the initiative in July, nearly a year after it was brokered by Turkey and the UN to guarantee the safe passage of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea and help facilitate Russian exports of grain and fertilizer. 

Russia has persistently complained that benefits due under the agreement never materialized.

Russian military hackers have been targeting Ukrainian soldiers’ mobile devices in a bid to steal sensitive battlefield information that could aid the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine, the US and its allies warned Thursday.

The new advisory from the US and its “Five Eyes” allies — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — corroborates a report from Ukraine’s SBU security service that found the Russian hackers sought to infiltrate the Android tablets that the Ukrainian military used for “planning and performing combat missions.”

The Russian hackers’ malicious code was designed to steal data sent from soldiers’ mobile devices to the Starlink satellite system made by billionaire Elon Musk’s company, according to the SBU. Starlink satellites have been crucial to Ukraine’s battlefield communications, CNN previously reported.

The news shows how the struggle to control sensitive military data in cyberspace has been a key front in Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine.

It’s unclear just how successful the hacking effort was. Ukraine’s SBU security service claimed to have “blocked” some of the hacking attempts, but also conceded that the Russians had “captured” the tablets on the battlefield and planted malicious software on them.

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