Day 520 of the Invasion of Ukraine: African leaders press Putin for Grain Deal and Peace Plan

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Day 520 of the invasion of Ukraine. Summary of key events in the last 24 hours:

• African leaders press Putin for grain deal and Ukraine peace plan
• Britain's Ministry of Defense sent emails to Russian ally instead of US
• US intelligence: China is helping Russia circumvent Western sanctions
• Zelensky: We are looking for air defense systems to protect Odesa and our entire south
• Russia reported a thwarted Ukrainian drone attack in the Moscow region
• The Armed Forces of Ukraine reached the anti-tank lines of the Russians
• Kim Jong Un and Shoigu at night parade in Pyongyang with drones and nuclear missiles

African leaders press Putin for grain deal and Ukraine peace plan

African leaders pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday to make progress on their peace plan to end the war in Ukraine and renew a deal on Ukrainian grain exports that Moscow scrapped last week, Reuters reported.

While not directly critical of Russia, their remarks on the second day of the summit with Putin reminded of the depth of anxiety in Africa about the effects of the war, particularly as it relates to food prices.

"This war must end. And it can only end on the basis of justice and reason," African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat told Putin and African leaders in St. Petersburg.

"Disruptions to energy and grain supplies must end immediately. The grain deal must be extended for the benefit of all peoples of the world, especially Africans."

"The African (peace) initiative deserves the greatest attention, it should not be underestimated," said the President of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso.

"Once again, we urgently call for the restoration of peace in Europe," he added through a translator.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has called on Russia to revive the Black Sea grain deal, which until Moscow refused to renew it last week, allowed Ukraine to export grain from its seaports despite the war.

Sisi, whose country is a key buyer of grain along the Black Sea route, told the summit it was "essential to reach an agreement" to revive the deal.

Senegalese President Macky Sall called for "de-escalation to help create calm", while South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said he hoped "constructive engagement and negotiations" could end the conflict.

The calls forced Putin to repeatedly defend Russia's position and blame Ukraine and the West.

In response to Mahamat, he said that Russia was "grateful to our African friends for their attention to this problem", but it was Kyiv that refused to negotiate with him.

Putin emphasized, as he has done in the past, that rising world food prices were the result of Western policy mistakes that preceded the war in Ukraine.

According to him, Russia withdrew from the Black Sea agreement last week because the grain was not delivered to the poorest countries and the West did not keep its side of the deal.

Since withdrawing from the accord, Russia has repeatedly bombed Ukrainian ports and grain warehouses, prompting accusations from Ukraine and the West that it is using food as a weapon of war, and global grain prices have risen again. Putin used the meeting in St Petersburg to try to give new impetus to Russia's ties with Africa, pledging to increase trade and investment there as part of a drive to counter what he sees as a hegemonic US-dominated world order .

On Thursday, he promised free supplies of Russian grain over the next few months to six of the countries participating in the meeting.

In his remarks on Friday, he said Moscow respects the African peace proposal for Ukraine and is carefully studying it.

Putin took the plan coolly when a group of African presidents presented it to him last month, responding with a series of Russian complaints against Ukraine and the West.

Russia has long said it is open to talks, but they must take into account "new realities" in a place where it controls almost a fifth of Ukraine's territory after 17 months of war and has claimed four Ukrainian regions as its own.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the idea of a ceasefire now, which would leave Russia in control of those territories and give its forces time to regroup.

Britain's Ministry of Defense sent emails to Russian ally instead of US

Britain's Ministry of Defense has admitted it mistakenly sent emails to Mali instead of its American counterparts because of a typo in the domain that comes after "dog" in the email address: "ml" instead of "mil," the BBC reported.

Earlier in July, the same admission came from the Pentagon. Then it emerged that because of the missing letter in the address, millions of US military emails were sent to an African country with close ties to Russia. They did not include classified messages, but did contain medical information, financial data, maps of US military sites, information about planned official travel and some diplomatic messages.

Now the British Ministry of Defense has announced that it has launched an investigation into a similar situation, although it is about a much smaller number of emails.

"We launched an investigation after a small number of emails were mistakenly redirected to the wrong email domain. We are confident that they did not contain information that could compromise operational security or technical data," a department spokesman said.

The US Department of Defense domain name is ".mil". But when sending e-mails, users misspell ".ml" in the address, and this domain belongs to Mali, an African country that is one of Russia's few allies in the world and where mercenaries of Yevgeny Prigozhin's private army "Wagner" operate.

The Malian authorities began to maintain particularly close ties with Russia after a military coup was carried out in the country in 2020 and Prigozhin's mercenaries began to operate there.

Mali is also one of only six African countries to which Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday promised free supplies of grain after the collapse of the Black Sea Corridor deal for exports from Ukraine.

Russian naval forces have blockaded Ukrainian Black Sea ports since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Russia seized 20 million tons of grain destined for export, leading to food shortages in the Middle East and Africa.

Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Mali's defense minister, as well as the country's air force commander and deputy chief of staff, would be sanctioned for coordinating with Wagner mercenaries in the West African country.

US intelligence: China is helping Russia circumvent Western sanctions

China is helping Russia circumvent Western sanctions by supplying Moscow with military technology as well as dual-use technology, according to an unclassified US intelligence report cited by Reuters. The document was released by the House Intelligence Committee.

"Customs data cited in the report show that Chinese state-owned defense companies supply navigation equipment, system jamming devices and spare parts for fighter jets to Russian defense companies that are part of the sanctions list."

China has repeatedly denied sending military equipment to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

In addition, the two countries have increased the share of bilateral trade negotiated and settled in the Chinese yuan currency. And the financial institutions of both countries are expanding the use of local payment systems.

The report states that China has increased imports of Russian energy products, including oil and gas, diverted from Europe.

Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who met in the US with President Joe Biden, said she plans to visit China on one of her next diplomatic trips.

Further relations with Beijing were listed as a major topic in the talks between Meloni and Biden in Washington.

Meloni is expected to not renew Italian participation in China's Belt and Road Initiative at the beginning of next year.

In 2019, Italy joined the famous global infrastructure program of China.

Zelensky: We are looking for air defense systems to protect Odesa and our entire south

Ukrainian forces continue their counteroffensive in the south. The military reports that a strategic village has been captured by the Russians. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky toured the southern and eastern regions, including the city of Dnipro and the port of Odesa, where he discussed damage to port facilities from Russian airstrikes.

Zelensky published a video on Telegram in which fighters announced the liberation of the village of Staromayorske in the Donetsk region. The village is south of a group of small settlements that Ukraine retook during a counteroffensive against Russian forces that began in early June. Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukrainian attacks in the southern part of the country had intensified.

During his visit to Odesa, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky inspected the destruction of the Orthodox Church caused by massive Russian bombing of the city's civilian infrastructure and historic center. From the hall of the damaged temple, he emphasized the importance of Odesa being protected by air:

"We are looking for air defense systems to protect Odesa and our entire south. I am grateful to everyone around the world who has already joined this effort."

Russia has launched powerful strikes on Odesa, one of Ukraine's main ports, after pulling out of a grain export deal across the Black Sea. For the last 10 days, targeted Russian strikes have destroyed nearly 30 port facilities and 5 civilian vessels, announced the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Oleksandr Kubrakov.

At the same time, in an attempt to emphasize its separation from Russia, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, founded in 2018, decided to switch to the modern religious calendar. The New Julian calendar, which applies to fixed holidays such as Christmas and corresponds to the Gregorian calendar until 2800, is to be introduced in Ukraine for the new church year starting on September 1.

Russia reported a thwarted Ukrainian drone attack in the Moscow region

Russia foiled a Ukrainian drone attack in the Moscow region. This was reported by AFP, referring to a statement by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

It is clear from it that the drone was destroyed by means of anti-aircraft defense.

The Russian Ministry notes that there were no casualties and no material damage.

The agency recalls that the Russian capital and the Moscow region, which are located more than 500 km from Russia's border with Ukraine, have already been subject to drone attacks, one of which hit the Kremlin in May.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine reached the anti-tank lines of the Russians

The forces of the Ukrainian army have reached for the first time the reinforced with concrete pyramids - “dragon's teeth”, which are anti-tank enclosures of the Russian positions in the Zaporozhian direction, according to geolocalized photos and videos from the battlefield.

Military correspondents reporting on the location of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (VSU) vanguard point to the breakthrough of these lines as a significant success in the nearly two-month-long current phase of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. On Thursday, in addition, the VSU liberated another town in the western part of the Russian-occupied Donetsk region - Staromayorske.

"For the first time since the start of the offensive, Ukrainian forces reached the main Russian defensive lines near the village of Verbove in the Zaporizhzhia region. In the video below, a Ukrainian BMP tests the prepared fortifications,” writes MilitaryLand.net on the nearly minute-long clip, which identifies the location as a position near the village of Verbove. Skeptics among subscribers pushed the doubt that the machine could be without a crew and the Russians themselves were testing their positions, but subsequently other evidence appeared that the VSU were already there.

????Ukrainian forces, for the first time since the beginning of the offensive, reached the Russian main defense lines near Verbove settlement in #Zaporizhzhia Oblast. On the video below, Ukrainian BMP tests the prepared fortifications.#UkraineRussiaWar pic.twitter.com/HyK7JpcUQD

— MilitaryLand.net (@Militarylandnet) July 27, 2023

Similar information is confirmed in the profile of WarMonitor, which monitors the events in Ukraine. According to reports there, Ukrainian troops have already broken through the key defense lines and passed the minefields, reaching the “dragon's teeth”, deployed by the Russians.

Another publication geolocates the Ukrainian presence at a point with coordinates 47.448186° 35.929463°, which corresponds to similar reports from the above sources. Military-savvy users tempered enthusiasm for the Ukrainian success with the warning that the line reached was put in place to stop the VSU in the low-lying Verbove region, where Ukrainian forces could be fired upon by Russian ridge fortifications in the adjacent terrain. The Ukrainian offensive has reached the clear advance route to Verbove, but the high ground is about a meter from the geolocated current VSU position, so the assault will be forthcoming.

Since Thursday evening, there have also been reports that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have liberated the town of Staromayorske in the western part of the Donetsk region. Information about the success of the Kyiv army, among other sources, was confirmed by President Volodymyr Zelensky himself. “Our South, our guys! Glory to Ukraine," Zelensky wrote to a video of Ukrainian fighters in position in Staromayorsk.

Our South!
Our guys!
Glory to Ukraine!

???????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/GUg83fXEk0

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 27, 2023

This position has also been confirmed by the spokesman of the General Staff of VSU Andriy Kovalev. On the sidelines of the Russia-Africa forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed increased Ukrainian activity on the front in recent days, but ignored the start of a key stage of the counteroffensive, which the New York Times reported on the same day with the comment that the Ukrainians had not achieved any progress in their offensive. Russian sources write that after the breakthrough of the VSU near Staromayorske, the village of Urozhaine, which is currently in the hands of the Russian army, was under the threat of being encircled from three sides.

"Politico": The US will deliver Abrams tanks to Ukraine in September

American Abrams tanks are likely to arrive on the Ukrainian battlefield in September, writes the American publication Politico, citing six people familiar with the planning, Ukrinform reports.

The plan is to send several Abrams tanks to Germany in August, where they will undergo final repairs. Once this process is complete, the first batch of Abrams will be shipped to Ukraine next month.

The US is sending older M1A1 models instead of the more modern A2 version, which would take a year to transfer to Ukraine.

A defense ministry official and another source familiar with Kiev's position said the tanks could arrive in Ukraine as early as August, but that timetable may be too optimistic.

These tanks are not new; moreover, the older machines will arrive in Ukraine without their most sensitive technology, including in some cases secret depleted uranium armor.

The initial batch will include six to eight tanks. The US plans to send a total of 31 tanks, the size of a Ukrainian battalion.

Before Ukrainian forces can start using the tanks, they must complete an approximately 10-week course with 31 training tanks at the Grafenwoehr Army Base in Germany.

The US is working with its European allies to establish maintenance facilities where heavy repairs can be carried out, particularly for battle-damaged Abrams tanks and other heavy armored vehicles donated to Ukraine.

Kim Jong Un and Shoigu at night parade in Pyongyang with drones and nuclear missiles

Nuclear missiles and new combat drones were among the weapons on display at a major military parade in Pyongyang, which was watched from a balcony overlooking the North Korean capital's central square by leader Kim Jong Un, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and a top Chinese official Li Hongzhong, reported the North Korean state media, quoted by BTA.

The parade was for the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, celebrated in North Korea as "Victory Day". The Chinese and Russian delegations are the first high-ranking guests in the country since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

The appearance of the two delegations at an event displaying the North's nuclear missiles, banned by the UN Security Council with the backing of China and Russia, contrasted with previous years when Beijing and Moscow took steps to distance themselves from their neighbor’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

The parade featured North Korea's latest Hwasong-17 and Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles, state news agency KCNA reported. The Hwasong-17 and Hwasong-18 are believed to have the range to hit targets anywhere in the United States.

The event also included the flyover of new combat and spy drones, KCNA informed.

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