Russia-Ukraine latest updates: Blasts rock Russian base in Crimea

The United States has announced that it would provide $89m to Ukraine for removing land mines put in place by Russian forces.

The money will support 100 demining teams as well as the training and equipping of more Ukrainian personnel to undertake the risky work across the estimated 16 million hectares (39.5 acres) of territory that Kyiv says has been mined by the Russians.

“Russia’s unlawful and unprovoked further invasion of Ukraine has littered massive swaths of the country with landmines, unexploded ordnance, and improvised explosive devices,” the US Department of State said in a statement.

Ukrainian authorities have held a burial ceremony for 15 bodies found in Bucha four months after Russian forces withdrew from the area.

Deputy Mayor Mykhailyna Skoryk told reporters that 14 bodies could not be identified, adding most had gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

“All the people who were shot and exhumed from a mass grave have torture marks on them,” she said.

Ukraine and its allies accuse Russian forces of committing atrocities in Bucha, a satellite town of Kyiv, after launching its assault in February. Russia denied the charge.

French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have reaffirmed their commitment to support Ukraine against Russia as long as necessary, according to the French presidential palace.

Johnson and Macron spoke on the phone to discuss bilateral ties and regional issues.

US President Joe Biden has signed the ratification documents to accept Sweden and Finland into NATO, bringing the northern European countries closer to becoming members of the alliance.

Biden said the US was the 23rd country to formally approve the countries’ membership bids. The US Senate had overwhelmingly backed expanding NATO to include Finland and Sweden in a 95-1 vote last week.

All 30 NATO allies are expected to accept their applications.

The two countries began seeking NATO membership after the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.

“Putin thought he could break us apart … weaken our resolve. Instead, he’s getting exactly what he did not want. He wanted the Finlandisation of NATO, but he’s getting the NATOisation of Finland along with Sweden,” Biden said.

The head of Ukraine’s state nuclear power firm has warned of the “very high” risks of shelling at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the Russian-occupied south and said it was vital Kyiv regains control over the facility in time for winter.

Energoatom’s chief, Petro Kotin, told the Reuters news agency that last week’s Russian shelling had damaged three lines that connect the Zaporizhzhia plant to the Ukrainian grid and that Russia wanted to connect the facility to its grid.

Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of shelling the site of the vast nuclear power station – Europe’s biggest – that lies in Russian-controlled territory.

Russia has banned imports of agriculture products from 31 of 34 regions of Moldova starting from August 15, according to its agriculture safety watchdog.

Russia has a history of using bans on food imports in trade disputes with other countries. Moldova buys natural gas from Russia and asked Russian gas giant Gazprom earlier in August if it could delay its payment for this month.

The watchdog had to impose the restrictions “due to repeated detection of dangerous quarantine objects in Moldovan products entering Russia”, it added in a statement.

KEEP READING:

• Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 167
• Russia suspends inspections of strategic arms under US treaty
• US announces fresh military and financial aid for Ukraine

One person has been killed and five others injured by a blast at a military airbase at Saky in the Russian-controlled Crimean Peninsula, according to Crimean authorities.

The Moscow defence ministry said earlier that the explosion had been a detonation of aviation ammunition, not the result of any attack.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Russian oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline to the Czech Republic should restart within several days, according to the country’s pipeline operation that did not give further details on the outlook.

“According to our information, supplies should be restarted within several days,” the company said.

Russia’s defence ministry has said that explosions at a Russian military airbase in Crimea were caused by a detonation of aviation ammunition and that there had been no casualties, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

It said there had been no attack and no military equipment had been damaged, after loud explosions and black smoke rising from the direction of a Russian military airbase at Novofedorivka on the annexed Crimean peninsula were reported.

Videos purportedly captured at the scene, some of them posted on social media and shot from nearby tourist beaches, showed a plume of smoke. The videos could not immediately be verified.

France has said that a ban on Russian nationals entering military installations was applied too rigidly when two Russian visitors were turned away at the Chateau de Vincennes, a medieval fortress and tourist attraction on the edge of Paris.

After media coverage and social media comments on the issue, the defence ministry told the AFP news agency that the guards had in fact “indiscriminately applied a rule established in February concerning all military installations”.

“This rule cannot be applied in the same way for strategic sites and for sites accessible to the public, such as museums,” a spokesman said.

Russian oil flows through Slovakia have been halted by Ukraine’s UkrTransNafta after a payment for transit made by Russia’s Transneft was returned to the company, according to Slovakia pipeline operator Transpetrol.

“At the moment, transit of oil by the Druzhba pipeline through the territory of Slovakia is halted,” the company, which operates the Slovakia section of the pipeline which continues west to the Czech Republic, said in an emailed response to the Reuters news agency questions.

The French military has banned Russian nationals from visiting the Chateau de Vincennes, a medieval fortress and tourist attraction on the edge of Paris, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, officials have said.

Once the residence of French kings and among Europe’s best-preserved monuments of its kind, the castle is, for the most part, open to the public, including for tours, concerts, theatre plays and other events.

It also houses part of the French armed forces’ historical archives, to which access is restricted.

Each year some 150,000 people visit the chateau, paying 9.50 euros ($9.70) per adult admission.

KEEP READING:

• Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 167
• Russia suspends inspections of strategic arms under US treaty
• US announces fresh military and financial aid for Ukraine

An Iranian satellite launched by Russia blasted off from Kazakhstan and reached orbit amid controversy that Moscow might use it to boost its surveillance of military targets in Ukraine.

As Russia’s international isolation grows following Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is seeking to pivot Russia towards the Middle East, Asia and Africa and find new clients for the country’s embattled space programme.

Russian space chief Yury Borisov hailed the launch of the Khayyam satellite as “an important milestone in Russian-Iranian bilateral cooperation, opening the way to the implementation of new and even larger projects”.

Iran’s Telecommunications Minister Issa Zarepour, who also attended the launch, called it “historic” and “a turning point for the start of a new interaction in the field of space between our two countries”.

Read more here.

Russia’s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad is bumping up against quotas imposed by the European Union for sanctioned goods that it can import across Lithuania from mainland Russia or Belarus, the region’s governor has said.

Kaliningrad Governor Anton Alikhanov estimated that the limits permit Russia to ship about 500,000 tonnes of sanctioned goods in total in both directions each year.

But he said some quotas had already been reached, making it impossible, for instance, for Kaliningrad to import cement from Belarus – which used to account for about 200,000 tonnes a year.

Moscow says trade with its outlying territory should not be subject to limits.

“Today, we have already exhausted the limits set by Europeans for the transportation of goods by rail: for instance, certain kinds of iron, steel, oil products, fertilisers, antifreeze and timber,” Russian news agencies quoted Alikhanov as saying at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

The flow of natural gas from Russia to Latvia resumed on August 5, a week after it was halted by Russian exporter Gazprom, data from transmission system operator Conexus Baltic Grid (CBG) has shown.

Gazprom on July 30 said it had stopped sending gas to Latvia after accusing the Baltic country of violating supply conditions.

On Monday, the flow from Russia to Latvia measured 43,393 megawatt hours (MWh) per day, according to CBG.

Russia’s defence ministry said that Russian forces had destroyed an ammunition depot storing US-made HIMARS missiles and M777 howitzers near Uman in Ukraine, the RIA Novosti news agency has reported.

Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield reports.

More than 10.5 million people have crossed the border from Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on February 24, the United Nations Refugee agency UNHCR has said on its website.

The Kremlin has dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call for a travel ban on all Russians as irrational, saying that Europe would ultimately have to decide if it wanted to pay the bills for Zelenskyy’s “whims”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was no chance Russians could be isolated from the rest of the world.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Zelenskyy had called on Western leaders to stop allowing Russians to travel to their countries as punishment for President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send troops into Ukraine.

KEEP READING:

• Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 167
• Russia suspends inspections of strategic arms under US treaty
• US announces fresh military and financial aid for Ukraine
• Russian weapons in Ukraine ‘powered’ by Western parts: Report

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 167th day, we take a look at the main developments.

Read more here.

Anti-aircraft defences around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant will be strengthened following days of reported shelling on the site, the RIA Novosti news agency has quoted a Russian-installed separatist official as saying.

Yevgeny Balitsky, head of the Russian-backed administration in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhia region also said the nuclear station, Europe’s largest, was working normally and damaged power lines have been restored.

Both Kyiv and Moscow have blamed each other for attacks on the power station, located in Russian-controlled territory, over recent days.