September 18, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for the first time in person on Wednesday, a spokesperson said. The leaders are both in New York for the United Nations General Assembly meetings.

The meeting will take place at 4 p.m. ET, the Brazilian Presidency spokesperson Cynthia Ribeiro said. The spokesperson gave no further details.

People familiar with Zelensky's plans previously said he has several meetings with other world leaders during his time in New York.

More broadly, the Ukrainian president is planning to use an in-person appearance at the annual meeting to appeal for more support for Ukraine as it continues to wage a counteroffensive against Russia.

CNN's Jennifer Hansler, Kevin Liptak and Melanie Zanona contributed reporting to this post.

Ukraine's Commander of Land Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, released a video hailing the soldiers who recaptured the villages of Klishchiivka and Andriivka near the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut, saying their advance had succeeded in breaking a Russian defensive line.

"As a result of the successful actions of our troops, the enemy's defense line was broken, which it tried to close by throwing all available reserves into the battle," Syrskyi said on Telegram in a separate post, adding that Russian forces had not given up trying to recapture the lost territory, conducting “numerous counterattacks from different directions.”

He cautioned more widely that the "overall situation in the eastern sector remains difficult.”

“The enemy does not abandon its intentions to resume offensive actions in the Kupiansk and Lyman directions,” he said, referencing two towns both held by Russia for six months before being liberated by Ukraine almost exactly a year ago.

Russia's economy has withstood "unprecedented external pressure" from the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday.

He described the economic situation in the country as "stable and balanced" and praised the resilience of Russia's economy.

According to Putin, Russia's GDP has reached the level last seen in 2021, and now the government is set to create conditions for "further stable and long-term development."

Putin further disclosed that oil and gas budget revenues in July-August nearly recovered to last year's levels and continued actively growing.

However, Russia’s ruble last month plunged to 17-month lows, sinking at one point to less than a penny. Russia’s central bank responded by calling an emergency meeting and spiking interest rates to stem the bleeding. The United States has steadily imposed sanctions on Russia and the US official said Washington plans to continue doing so in a bid to ramp up pressure.

Recently, Putin denounced the West’s sanctions campaign at an economic summit held in South Africa. The West has imposed heavy sanctions on Moscow, targeting oligarchs, imposing a price cap on oil, banning imports of Russian oil and gold, targeting military equipment and limiting exports of key technology that feed the wear machine.

CNN's Matt Egan contributed reporting to this post. 

Bulgaria's Defense Minister says he assumes a drone that washed up on his country's shores is "related to the war that Russia launched against Ukraine," but added it was not possible to say conclusively whose drone it was and where it had come from.

A team was on-site in Tyulenovo early Monday morning after the drone was found the previous evening, Teodor Tagarev told CNN affiliate Nova TV. Tyulenovo lies on the Black Sea, more than 200 kilometers (about 130 miles) south of Ukraine.

The drone, which he speculated had possibly fallen into the water before being washed ashore, had carried an 82 mm high-explosive mortar. Video on the Reuters news agency showed the explosives later being detonated by army officials.

The minister said he did not know how long the drone had lain undiscovered, but said it was not the first such remnant of the war to turn up outside the conflict’s borders.

A fifth vessel has left Odesa port and is heading along a temporary Black Sea corridor established to evacuate vessels that became trapped when the war began, according to a statement from the Ukrainian government Monday.

According to the statement, "The bulk carrier PUMA (Cayman Islands) left the Odesa seaport this morning and is now heading to the Bosporus through the established corridor of ship traffic. The vessel is loaded with 16,000 tonnes of metal and 14,000 tonnes of rapeseed."

The Ukrainian government outlined that the vessel arrived at the Odesa port on February 19, 2022 and said could not leave due to “the outbreak of hostilities and the closure of the relevant areas of the Black Sea.”

More details: The temporary Black Sea corridor is being used to evacuate vessels that were in the Ukrainian ports of Chornomorsk, Odesa and Pivdennyi at the time of the full-scale invasion, according to the statement. 

Four vessels had already used the temporary corridor since August 15, the statement said.

The Ukrainian government also stated that it is considering using the temporary corridor for “civilian vessels carrying non-military cargo, including grain, mainly to Africa and Asia” due to the “blocking of the Grain Initiative and the growing global demand for Ukrainian products.”

Ukraine filed lawsuits against Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia over a ban on imports of its agricultural products, Economy Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said in a statement Monday. 

The lawsuit comes after the European Union said on Friday that it planned to suspend a temporary ban on the export of Ukrainian wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seed to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The measure was put in place to counter the risk of farmers in these countries being undercut by a bottleneck of cheap Ukrainian grain.

However, Poland, Hungry, and Slovakia said they would defy it. CNN has reached out to Poland’s Ministry of Agriculture, Hungary’s Ministry of Agriculture, and Slovakia’s Ministry of Agriculture for comment.

Ukraine calls this situation “a violation by the three EU countries of their international obligations.” It asked the EU members “to coordinate and harmonize trade policy, as it is within the exclusive competence of the EU," according to the statement. 

Ukraine trade representative Taras Kachka told Politico that such acts of defiance show a lack of unity within the bloc and pose a “systemic concern."

Spain's agriculture minister has warned that the move by Poland, Slovakia and Hungary may be illegal. 

"The fact that any member country — I'm not judging one member country, but any member country — takes unilateral action restricting what is the access to the single market, seems to me something that is out of the law," Luis Planas Puchades told reporters on his way into a meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Brussels.

Puchades said it will be for the European Commission to judge whether the unilateral bans are illegal, adding that commission representatives will brief the ministers on potential follow up action on Monday afternoon. 

CNN's Niamh Kennedy contributed reporting to this post.

Editor's note: The post was updated with details of the lawsuit.

Ukraine's new defense minister Rustem Umerov began the week by cleaning house, dismissing seven key officials from their posts as part of his mandate to bring a new approach to the role.

The dismissals were reported by cabinet minister Oleh Nemchinov. Umerov later wrote on social media that the ministry was "rebooting."

Here's what else you should know:

Seven high-ranking officials have been dismissed from the Ukrainian defense ministry, cabinet minister Oleh Nemchinov said Monday, the biggest shakeup of personnel at the top of Ukraine's defense establishment since its leader was ousted earlier this month.

Six of Ukraine's seven deputy defense ministers were fired, as was the country's state secretary for the ministry, a position that is seen as more administrative.

The comes in the wake of a number of corruption scandals involving the ministry -- and a little more than two weeks after Oleksii Reznikov lost his job as defense minister. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Reznikov was being replaced in order to bring "new approaches" to the post. The president has since tapped Rustem Umerov as his replacement.

Though Reznikov was not implicated in any of the scandals, they still appeared to damage him by association.

Before Russia's full-scale invasion, rooting out corruption was the top priority for Zelensky's administration. His promise to do so was one of the reasons for his unprecedented political success.

Zelensky, a former comedian, had zero political experience at the time of his election in 2019. But he managed to tap into the nation’s deep-rooted disappointment and disgust over rampant corruption.

It's unclear whether the dismissals on Monday were connected to allegations of corruptions or were part of the new leadership cleaning house, though Umerov hinted at the latter in a Facebook post.

CNN has reached out to the Ministry of Defense for comment.

The Russian government possesses no information on the health of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, whose health has been the subject of speculation in recent days, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.

On Saturday, a Ukrainian intelligence official said that Kadyrov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a vocal supporter of the war in Ukraine, was gravely ill.

A video shared on Kadyrov’s official channel on the messaging app Telegram showed him outdoors with a caption: “I strongly advise everyone who cannot distinguish truth from lies on the Internet to take a walk in the fresh air and put their thoughts in order. The rain is wonderfully invigorating.”

CNN cannot independently verify claims about Kadyrov's health.

New reports concerning Kadyrov emerged Monday. Alexey Venediktov, a prominent journalist who led the now-defunct Echo of Moscow radio station, said on Telegram that Kadyrov was undergoing hemodialysis at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow due to “renal failure.”

When asked about Kadyrov's reported arrival in Moscow and whether he met with Putin, Peskov said he had nothing to say and there were no meetings between the two individuals.

Some background: There have been persistent reports, including from some former Chechen officials, that Kadyrov has had liver and kidney problems.

In March, Kadyrov said he had taken a number of medical tests which showed that he was absolutely healthy.

“And if anyone doubts this, then you need to change the eyes that are deceiving you,” he said at the time.

Kadyrov’s Telegram channel has been active, but he’s not been seen in public recently. A video of the Chechen leader attending a meeting was posted to his Telegram channel on September 12, but it’s unknown when it was filmed.