September 6, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kyiv Wednesday for meetings with key Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. 

His trip comes as Ukraine's counteroffensive has been going slower than hoped.

Blinken is also expected to announce more than $1 billion in new funding for Ukraine, according to a senior State Department official.

Kyiv was targeted by Russian missiles overnight, which were intercepted, according to the city’s military administration. 

Blinken arrived in Kyiv Wednesday morning after making an overnight journey by train from Poland, in common with almost all high-profile visitors to war-torn Kyiv, including US President Joe Biden, who took the ride in February.

It is his third visit to Ukraine’s capital since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

In April 2022 he made the trip with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, just a few weeks after Russian forces had withdrawn from areas immediately to the north of the Kyiv. His second trip was in September last year as Ukraine’s first big counteroffensive was underway in the Kharkiv region.

According to the State Department, Blinken also briefly went into Ukraine in March 2022, when he met on the border with Kuleba.

The United Kingdom is set to classify Russian mercenary group Wagner as a terrorist organization, giving officials the power to prosecute its members and seize assets.

In a statement Wednesday, the UK Home Office said Home Secretary Suella Braverman has put a draft order before Parliament to proscribe the Wagner Group, which will come into effect on September 13.

Once passed, the order will render it “illegal to be a member or support Wagner Group and punishable by up to 14 years in jail,” and allow the government to seize Wagner's assets, the statement said.

Some context: The future of the Wagner Group remains uncertain following the death of its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash last month. Most security experts doubt Wagner can survive without Prigozhin, posing major questions about what will happen to the group’s fighters, weapons and operations.

Russian forces "tactically left" the southeastern village of Robotyne after losing control of it to Ukrainian troops, a Moscow-backed official said Tuesday.

The Ukrainians breached Russian defenses near the village and are now focusing on expanding their gains in the area, CNN reported earlier.

Speaking on local television, the Russia-appointed acting governor of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeniy Balitskiy, said Robotyne "almost no longer exists as a result of quite large and prolonged fighting."

Holding the bare ground where the village used to be is "not expedient," so Russian forces withdrew to the hills where they enjoy height advantage, Balitskiy added.

Some context: Much has been made of the strategic importance of Robotyne for Ukraine’s three-month-long southern counteroffensive and the remains of what was a village of 500 before the war continue to be pounded day and night.

Ukrainian efforts are now focused on widening the bridgehead near the village, with fighting near Verbove, a few kilometers to the east, according to Ukrainian sources.

Fierce fighting is raging near Bakhmut as Ukrainian forces try to drive entrenched Russian troops out of the hotspot city on the "difficult" eastern front, the commander of Ukraine's ground forces said Wednesday.

Bakhmut was captured by Russian forces in May but Ukrainian forces have made slight progress to the south and northwest of the city in recent weeks.

The overall situation on the eastern front "remains difficult," Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a statement on Telegram.

Near Kupiansk in northeastern Ukraine, Russia is “finalizing the preparation of assault units and firing at Ukraine’s positions with artillery and mortars on a daily basis,” Syrskyi said.

Russia is also replenishing its troops in the Lyman area, about 25 miles north of Bakhmut, he said.

The Ukrainian military’s main tasks are to hold its positions near Kupiansk and Lyman, and advance on the Bakhmut front, he added.

Ukraine's air defenses rebuffed a Russian missile attack on Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday. 

In a Telegram post, the Kyiv city military administration said all cruise missiles and presumed ballistic missiles fired by Russia were destroyed.

No casualties were reported and fires caused by missile fragments have been extinguished, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said.

An agricultural worker was killed and grain infrastructure damaged after Russian drones attacked a Danube River port, a Ukrainian official said Wednesday.

In a Telegram post, Oleh Kiper, chief of the Odesa region military administration, said several settlements were hit in the attack on Izmail district.

Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukrainian shipping infrastructure since it pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal in July. The accord’s collapse pushed up global food prices and fueled fears that the world’s poorest countries would struggle to feed their populations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Turkey's leader Tayyip Erdogan on Monday amid efforts to bring Moscow back into the critical deal, but no major breakthroughs came from the meeting.

US officials are urging North Korea to cease any arms negotiations with Russia amid reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may meet with President Vladimir Putin to discuss a potential deal to supply Moscow with weapons for its war in Ukraine.

The US National Security Council said Monday that arms negotiations between Russia and North Korea are "actively advancing," after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Pyongyang in July in an attempt to convince it to sell artillery ammunition to Moscow.

Russia has declined to comment on the claim.

Here's what you need to know about Russia's war in Ukraine:

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has signed a decree that would prevent its citizens from renewing their passports from outside the country, the presidential office said on Tuesday.

The decree outlines which notarial acts are allowed be performed by diplomatic missions of Belarus. The list does not include renewing or issuing new passports.

At least 200,000 to 500,000 people have fled Belarus since a government crackdown that followed Lukashenko’s disputed re-election in August 2020, according to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

What Minsk says: The decree intends to improve “the order of administrative procedures and optimizing the activities of diplomatic missions and consular offices of Belarus,” a statement from the presidential office said.

The decree does not go into effect until published by the presidential office.

US officials have warned North Korea it will “pay a price” if it strikes an arms deal with Russia, after saying that negotiations were “advancing” between the two nations.

If Pyongyang provides weapons to Moscow to use in the war against Ukraine, it is “not going to reflect well on North Korea and they will pay a price for this in the international community,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told a press briefing on Tuesday.

Sullivan did not elaborate on the potential repercussions for North Korea, which is already under United Nations and US sanctions imposed over Pyongyang’s weapons of mass destruction program.

On Monday, the National Security Council claimed arms negotiations between Russia and North Korea are “actively advancing,” after Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu visited Pyongyang in July in an attempt to convince it to sell artillery ammunition.

The council’s spokesperson Adrienne Watson said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expects “discussions to continue,” including “leader-level diplomatic engagement in Russia,” but did not say when or where a potential meeting between Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia might take place.

CNN has asked the Russian embassy in Washington for comment. The Kremlin declined to comment on the claim, with a spokesperson saying on Tuesday: “We have nothing to say on the subject.”

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