October 5, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

The winner of Miss Crimea 2022 has been fined 40,000 Russian rubles ($680) by occupying Russian authorities for singing a patriotic Ukrainian song, according to Russian state media and pro-Russia regional authorities.

Olga Valeeva was spared a jail sentence because she has young children, Russian state news agency TASS reported. Her friend was sentenced to 10 days detention.

What she sang: “Chervona Kalyna” is a patriotic Ukrainian song that has gained virality over the course of Russia’s full-scale invasion, including a cover version by Pink Floyd. The lyrics urge the Ukrainian nation to rise up and “rejoice” like a red kalyna shrub (“chervona kalyna”) that has drooped in the field.

The Ukrainian region of Crimea was illegally annexed by Russian in 2014.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Crimea said that it identified a video online in which “two girls sang a song that is the battle anthem of an extremist organization.”

The two were detained on suspicion of “committing illegal actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, as well as publicly displaying prohibited symbols," the spokesperson added. They were subsequently found guilty by a court, the ministry said.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the reason why Valeeva was spared jail. According to Russian state media, it is because she has young children.

A top Russian war correspondent on Tuesday conceded on state television that Russian forces had endured significant losses at the hands of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, saying “we are still learning.”

Sladkov is one of several Russian reporters in recent days to convey the losses Moscow is suffering in Ukraine.

War correspondent Alexander Kots told his Telegram followers Tuesday that the military was in “operational crisis,” while state media reporter Evgeniy Poddubnyy said, “for the time being it will become even harder.”

Sladkov, however, tried to put a positive spin on things.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law measures that claim to annex four Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation.

The claimed annexations of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are illegal under international law.

Leaders around the world have said they are the result of “sham” referendums held at gunpoint, and will never be recognized.

However, the move is an important step in Russia’s faltering effort to seize control in Ukraine, with Putin claiming that the will of occupied Ukrainians is to belong to Russia — offering a false pretext to his efforts to claim the occupied territories as Moscow’s.

Western officials have previously suggested that Putin will likely seek to reframe Ukraine's counteroffensive in the four regions and any others as an attack on Russia sovereignty.

Some context: Russia does not fully control the regions it claims to have annexed and Moscow is losing territory to the Ukrainian military in the south and east of the country by the day. In some areas, such as Kherson, those losses are coming at a rapid pace.

The Kremlin does not even appear to be clear on the borders of the territory it is annexing. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Monday said “we will continue consulting with the population of these regions.”

A regional Ukrainian official in the Zaporizhzhia region said on Tuesday that Russia was trying to establish a “state border” at the Vasylivka checkpoint, which separates Russian-held territory from the rest of Ukraine, including the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia.

Russian troops are leaving mines in southern Ukrainian villages as they retreat along the western bank of the Dnieper River, the Ukrainian military said on Wednesday.

It comes as Ukrainian forces have made additional gains in the south, pushing toward the occupied city of Kherson and capturing the town of Zolota Balka on the western bank of the Dnipro river, according to a regional official and pro-Russian military blogger.

Conscription claims: The Ukrainian Armed Forces also claimed Wednesday that pro-Russian authorities in occupied areas of Ukraine were “trying to compensate for the loss of personnel” on the battlefield by conscripting Ukrainians into the Russian military.

Ukrainian officials have been warning for some time that Russia planned to use its claimed annexations as a pretext to draft Ukrainians in occupied areas.

On Monday, the Ukrainian military said Russian troops were carrying out “door-to-door” checks in occupied areas of Ukraine, looking for young men of conscription age, adding that Moscow had stepped up document inspections at checkpoints.

Russian forces on Wednesday launched repeated attacks with Iranian-supplied "kamikaze drones" against targets in Ukraine's Kyiv region and to the south in Odesa, killing at least one person, according to Ukrainian officials. 

Kuleba added emergency crews were responding and asked all Kyiv residents "to remain in their shelters."  

"The danger is still present," Kuleba warned, as air raid sirens sounded in the region.

Kirilo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, said Russian forces had also launched an attack on the southern port city of Odesa with a "Shahed-136" kamikaze drone. 

Tymoshenko said Ukrainian air defense forces were able to "detect and destroy the enemy's drone over the sea," in a post on his Telegram account.

Unverified videos posted on social media Wednesday showed fire and plumes of smoke in the night sky following the attack on Bila Tserkva south of Kyiv.

Some context: US intelligence warned in July that Tehran planned to send Russia “hundreds” of bomb-carrying drones for use in the war in Ukraine. In August, a US official told CNN Russian troops were believed to have been training on the Iranian built drones for several weeks.

Iran began showcasing the Shahed-191 and Shahed-129 drones, also known as UAVs or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, to Russia at Kashan Airfield south of Tehran in June, US officials told CNN. 

Both types of drones are capable of carrying precision-guided missiles. 

Japan will reopen its embassy in Ukraine's capital Kyiv on Wednesday following a seven-month closure due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Japan temporarily closed its embassy in Kyiv in early March, transferring staff members and operations to a temporary liaison office in the western city of Lviv. Embassy staff left Ukraine later that month as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine intensified.

Japan's move Wednesday comes as other Group of Seven nations also resume diplomatic operations in Ukraine.

Ukrainian police on Tuesday claimed to have uncovered a “torture chamber” in the formerly Russian-occupied town of Pisky-Radkivski in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

Among the items found, according to police, was a container full of extracted gold teeth.

“After the liberation of the village of Pisky-Radkivski, local residents reported to the police that in the basement of one of the houses captives were kept — local residents, ATO [Anti-Terrorist Operation] soldiers and POWs from the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Serhiy Bolvinov, head of the investigation department of the National Police in the Kharkiv region, said in a statement on Facebook.

Bolvinov said local residents heard constant screaming from the building.

Ukrainian forces have pushed even further toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday.

In the southern Kherson region, he said the towns of Liubymivka, Khreshchenivka, Zolota Balka, Biliaiivka, Ukraiinka, Velyka, Mala Oleksandrivka and Davydiv Brid had all been liberated, “and this is not a complete list.”

Kherson is one of the four regions in Ukraine that Russia has claimed it is annexing in violation of international law.

US military aid to Ukraine is hastening the possibility of a “direct military clash” between Russia and NATO, a Russian diplomat said on Tuesday.

"The US continues to pump more weapons into Ukraine, facilitating the direct participation of its fighters and advisers in the conflict,” Konstantin Vorontsov, the head of the Russian delegation to the United Nations Disarmament Commission, said at the UN General Assembly’s First Committee.

The diplomat's comments come as the US announced an additional $625 million in security assistance to Ukraine. In a statement Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cited Ukrainian forces effectively using US support to push ahead with their “successful counteroffensive to take back their lands seized illegally by Russia.”