Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy orders military to triple daily long-range strikes on Russia
Kyiv to increase attacks; Russian gasoline production drops after drone strikes; Fedorov joins Italy’s defence ministry. What we know on day 1,648 What we know on day 1,648
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he has ordered his military to increase its long-range drone strikes against Russia to 1,000 per day, up from about 300 currently. “There needs to be more: there is a concrete goal, and we will fulfil this task,” the Ukrainian president declared on Friday in his evening address.
Russia’s gasoline production fell to about 70% of domestic consumption levels by the end of August after a series of drone attacks forced major refineries to suspend operations, according to two industry sources who spoke to Reuters. After a brief respite at the end of July, when some local authorities began easing or lifting restrictions on fuel sales, shortages returned to Russian regions in August. Over the past week, drones struck and halted operations at several major refineries, including plants in Perm, Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl, all significant producers of motor gasoline.
Russia is losing about 6,000 more troops in Ukraine each month than it can recruit, western officials have said. While Russia is still acquiring new battlefield recruits at speed, with an estimated rate of 1,000 a day, in the past two months even this has not been sufficient to replace those killed or injured, Peter Walker writes.
Recent Russian air attacks have destroyed about 90% of retailers’ food logistics in Ukraine, Kyiv’s agricultural minister said on Friday. Both countries have stepped up strikes in recent weeks on economic targets such as major retailers, with Russia targeting warehouses for Ukraine’s premier supermarket chains, top postal service and home-goods stores. “As of today, roughly speaking, 90% of food logistics operated by retail chains have been destroyed, but that doesn’t mean Ukrainians will be left without food,” farm minister Taras Vysotskyi was cited by the Ukrinform agency as saying. His comments to reporters in Kyiv are the most frank official assessment of the damage Russia’s escalating strikes have brought on Ukraine’s increasingly fragile economy in the fifth year of war.
Ukraine has stored 14.6bn cubic metres of gas in underground storage, enough for the upcoming winter season, the country’s energy minister said. “Ukraine has stockpiled natural gas for the baseline scenario for getting through the winter,” Denys Shmyhal said on Friday.
Authorities in Russia’s Rostov region declared a state of emergency on Friday, saying port closures and disruptions to navigation in the Azov-Black Sea basin had led to a significant accumulation of agricultural products at farms. The regional government said on Telegram an emergency response had been introduced across the region, without going into more detail.
Ukraine’s former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has accepted a role as innovation adviser at Italy’s Defence Ministry, officials said on Friday. Italy’s defence minister Guido Crosetto had disclosed the offer shortly after Fedorov was dismissed in July. Fedorov, 35, was fired six months after his appointment, having initiated reforms around procurement and mobilisation that put him on a collision course with the military establishment and political rivals.
The UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday it had been informed of three drone incidents at Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south-eastern Ukraine earlier this week. The International Atomic Energy Agency said a drone attack on 25 August reportedly occurred near the plant’s cooling pond, injuring two plant employees, while two other drones on 26 August reportedly struck the site’s dry spent nuclear fuel storage area and the sprinkling device of the power units system. Radiation levels at the Zaporizhzhia plant remained normal, the watchdog added.
Russian forces on Friday resumed their drone barrage of Ukraine’s Kyiv region, hitting more than a dozen apartment buildings and storage depots in a second straight day of aerial attacks, officials said. Russian strikes in the Kyiv region damaged 14 warehouses, 16 private houses, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said Friday.