Day 548 of the Invasion of Ukraine: Drone Attacks on Crimea, Blue and Yellow flag over Robotyne

Ukraine | August 25, 2023, Friday // 11:00|  views

@novinite.com

Day 548 of the invasion of Ukraine. Summary of key events in the last 24 hours:

  • Air alert across southern Ukraine, mass drone attacks in Crimea
  • Two airports in Moscow are closed, local residents report explosions during the night
  • The Armed Forces of Ukraine advance to the Russians' second line of defense at Robotyne
  • The Pentagon has no information to support claims that Prigozhin's plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile
  • Putin on Prigozhin’s death: He was a talented businessman. We are waiting for the investigators
  • First suspect in the crash with Prigozhin: His personal pilot Artyom Stepanov had access to the Embraer
  • ISW: Putin has made it clear that private armies cannot be independent
  • Kadyrov: I asked Prigozhin to leave personal ambitions
  • US sanctions on individuals involved in the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia


Air alert across southern Ukraine, mass drone attacks in Crimea

An air alert was declared overnight across southern Ukraine. The Air Force warned that the alarm in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions is related to the activity of Russian tactical aviation. Authorities on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula have reported mass drone attacks.

Multiple explosions in the occupied Crimean peninsula were reported by local media and residents. According to them, the explosions occurred in Simferopol, in the area of Cape Meganom and Cape Tarkhankut in the southwestern part of the peninsula.

The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed the attack with 42 unmanned aerial vehicles.

Yesterday, after the Ukrainian landing in Crimea, the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said that Ukraine's efforts to regain Crimea will not be limited to airstrikes. "There will be a ground operation", stressed Budanov.

In Moscow, the two major airports "Vnukovo" and "Domodedovo" temporarily suspended flights early this morning, the Russian aviation authorities announced. Residents of Tula and Kaluga regions reported on social networks about explosions they heard during the night.

Reuters quoted the Ministry of Defense as saying that Ukraine attempted to attack civilian targets on its territory with a modified S-200 missile. Kaluga Oblast borders the Moscow Oblast, which has been the subject of drone attacks in recent times.

Earlier, the commander of the Ukrainian army, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, told American representatives that the counteroffensive was on the verge of a breakthrough.

As the Wall Street Journal writes, the general did not provide any details. Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that the United States will begin training Ukrainian F-16 pilots and technicians in October.

Last week, Denmark and the Netherlands said they were ready to provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine once the pilots were trained. The parties also prepared preparatory programs. And yesterday, Norway also announced that it will provide its F-16s to Kyiv.

Two airports in Moscow are closed, local residents report explosions during the night

Flights at the two major airports "Vnukovo" and "Domodedovo" in Moscow were suspended early this morning. Some of the planes were directed to the waiting area, according to a statement by the Russian aviation authorities, cited by Reuters and BTA.

Residents of Tulsa and Kaluga regions reported explosions at night, the Russian online media "Baza" informed.

The Russian military said early this morning that Ukraine tried to attack civilian targets on its territory with a modified S-200 missile, Reuters reported. The missile was destroyed by air defense systems over the Kaluga region, which borders Moscow, Russia's defense ministry said.

The Russian Ministry of Defense reported 42 unmanned aerial vehicles launched over the annexed Crimean Peninsula.

There is no further comment from Ukraine, nor confirmation of this information from an independent source, Reuters emphasizes.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine advance to the Russians' second line of defense at Robotyne

Ukrainian forces advanced closer to Russia's second defense line in the Robotyne in western Zaporizhzhia region on August 24, further expanding their penetration of Russian defense lines in the area, it said in its latest theater status report in Ukraine The Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Geolocated footage released on August 24 shows that Ukrainian forces have advanced further towards Russian defensive lines west of Vrbove (18 km southeast of Orikhiv) and in the southern part of Robotyne (10 km south of Orikhiv).

Russian military correspondents indicate that the Russian army maintains few, if any, positions in the southern part of Robotyne and that fighting continues to the east of the settlement. They are also concerned about the Ukrainian breakthrough of Russian defense lines in the western Zaporizhzhia region and consider this a critical moment on the battlefield. The thesis of Russian military reporters is that the army should hold its ground for at least another month and a half to try to make gains in another area of the front line and try to turn the situation on the battlefield in favor of Russian forces. Ukrainian commander-in-chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi responded to criticism of the Ukrainian counteroffensive by saying it was not a counterinsurgency movement but the Battle of Kursk, referring to the weeks-long World War II battle that eventually allowed the Soviet Army to regain the initiative in the battlefield and take control of significant parts of territory.

The spokeswoman for Ukraine's Southern Operational Command, Captain First Rank Natalia Humeniuk, said that Russian forces are conducting an additional lateral redeployment from Kherson Oblast to the front line in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, suggesting that Ukrainian forces have further degraded the state of Russian defense lines in the area. On August 23, Humeniuk reported that the Russians were transferring parts of the Kherson direction to Zaporizhzhia due to the large number of wounded among the forces defending themselves in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Humeniuk’s statement supports ISW's previous assessment that Russia's lack of operational reserves will force the Russian command to further redeploy as Ukrainian counteroffensive operations continue to degrade Russian force protections in several sectors of the front. Russian lateral redeployment is likely to weaken Russian defensive lines as a whole, as these redeployments offer Ukrainian forces additional opportunities to exploit. This will likely require Ukrainian forces to continue their efforts in several sectors of the front, which either pin Russian forces to a specific area or present the Russian command with dilemmas as to which axes to reinforce. A Ukrainian offensive focused exclusively on one axis would allow Russian forces to laterally redeploy forces from elsewhere in Ukraine without worrying about the consequences of weakening other sectors of the front, as ISW has previously observed.

Meanwhile, ISW is paying attention to ongoing Ukrainian attacks behind enemy lines in Russian-occupied territories. Ukrainian forces conducted a limited raid on the west coast of occupied Crimea on August 24. Ukraine's Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) released footage and announced that Ukrainian forces had carried out landings near Olenivka and Mayak (both 116 km northeast of Sevastopol). GUR also announced that Ukrainian forces engaged the Russians and raised a Ukrainian flag before leaving the coast. Most Russian sources dismissed the landing as minor, but popular military correspondents expressed their concern about the vulnerability of Russian defenses in the western Black Sea coast and western Crimea.

The Pentagon has no information to support claims that Prigozhin's plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile

The United States Department of Defense has no information to support claims that the plane of Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder called such claims in the media "inaccurate.”

The Russian Investigative Committee has launched an investigation into the plane crash near Moscow. There is still no official version of the reasons for the plane crash. Regarding the investigation into the incident, Russian President Vladimir Putin said:

"It will be carried out in full and to the end. We will see what the investigators will say as soon as possible. Expertises are now being conducted - technical and genetic. Therefore, some time is needed”.

Putin called the crash a "tragedy" and expressed his condolences to the relatives of the dead, who had contributed significantly to "the fight against the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine."

Yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky categorically denied that his country had a role in what happened and hinted that the responsibility lies with the Kremlin.

Putin on Prigozhin’s death: He was a talented businessman. We are waiting for the investigators

Russian President Vladimir Putin broke his silence and sent condolences to the family of the founder of the private military company "Wagner" Yevgeny Prigozhin a day after the plane crash. It has already become clear that he is one of the eight who died in the crash of his private plane on Wednesday, TASS and Reuters reported.

This is Putin's first reaction after the death of Prigozhin and confirmation of his death.

The Russian businessman, close to the president, played a key role in the military campaign in neighboring Ukraine before leading a failed brief uprising against the government in June.

"Prigozhin was a talented businessman," Putin said.

In an impromptu televised interview, Putin explained that he learned of the plane crash on Thursday morning. He noted that he had known the Wagner founder since the 1990s and spoke of him in the past tense.

“I have known Prigozhin for a long time, since the beginning of the 1990s. He was a man with a complicated fate and had serious mistakes in his life, but he achieved the necessary results - both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause, as in recent months”, says the Russian president, quoted by RBC.

It is not clear what exactly the leader of the "musicians" was asked for, but Putin is probably referring to the participation of Wagnerites in the war with Ukraine.

"We are waiting for what the investigators who are investigating the plane crash will say," Putin emphasized, clarifying that the expertise will take time.

According to him, "to the best of his knowledge" Prigozhin only returned from Africa yesterday. Wagner's leader recently appeared on a Telegram channel in the middle of the desert and is believed to have been in West Africa, where the group has been trying to expand its reach.

First suspect in the crash with Prigozhin: His personal pilot Artyom Stepanov had access to the Embraer

The first suspect in the case of the plane crash with Yevgeny Prigozhin and two of his key commanders, Dmitry Utkin "Wagner" and Valery Chekalov, is the personal pilot of the businessman Artyom Stepanov, the “ВЧК-ОГПУ” Telegram channel reports without citing sources. Suspicions about the pilot are also expressed by media outside the Russian mainstream.

According to the information that appeared, Stepanov had access to the plane on which Yevgeny Prigozhin boarded on Wednesday, and immediately before the accident he supposedly left for Kamchatka, and now he is not picking up his phone. His brother claims that Valery has been on a hike for the third day and has not been contacted. Stepanov was also searched by the law enforcement authorities, but so far unsuccessfully. Some Russian channels claim that the pilot has already contacted the authorities and explained that he will be in Moscow in a few days to testify.

According to the scant information about him, the first pilot was a former founder and minority shareholder of "MNT Aero", the company that owns the crashed plane, and is currently its general director. The name of Artyom Stepanov appears among the persons sanctioned by the US because of his connections with Prigozhin - the US Treasury considers him to be Yevgeny Prigozhin's personal pilot. Stepanov sued the Americans and claimed that he met with the head of "Wagner" only once, for an hour and 30 minutes. Those 1 hour and 30 minutes turned his life upside down, because after the announcement of the sanctions, friends and acquaintances refused to communicate with him, he could not take a loan or get a mortgage, and he could not do business with his international partners.

Meanwhile, another Telegram channel - “Shot”, commented that according to one of the versions on which the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation is working, the cause of the crash was an activated explosive device embedded in the chassis compartment.

According to preliminary data, the explosion in the air took place in the area of the chassis. As a result, the wing broke off, which hit the stabilizer, because of which the business jet began to rapidly gain altitude, and then fell into a drill. From the explosive depressurization, everyone on board instantly lost consciousness, and for this reason the pilots did not report an emergency. In any case, without a wing and a stabilizer, the rescue of the aircraft was impossible. It was because of the explosion in the sky that the tail of the plane fell five kilometers from its fuselage, explains Shot.

The version of an explosion on board is supported by many aviation experts, such an assumption was also expressed by the Bulgarian Minister of Defense Todor Tagarev in the morning block of bTV, who argued that if hit by a missile, the remains of the plane would have looked differently.

ISW: Putin has made it clear that private armies cannot be independent

The assassination of the Wagner leadership, almost certainly linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is a clear signal that the Kremlin will be openly hostile to anyone seeking independence for its own parallel military structures.

This is what the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes in its new report.

It also notes that the experience with "Wagner" and its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin will shape the model by which the Kremlin will look at any other similar experience; his killing would be a "constant threat" to anyone with similar plans.

Other highlights from the summary:

Wagner will probably not exist as a quasi-independent parallel military structure, and killing the leadership undermines Wagner's efforts to reverse the campaign to subdue the Russian Ministry of Defense; Putin made it clear that Prigozhin's long-standing loyalty to him did not correct the "serious mistake" of the June 23 rebellion; the Wagner command board continues to remain silent and not release a statement after the plane was shot down, but this may be due to confusion within the ranks or express instructions from the Russian authorities; Putin may have avoided making Prigozhin a martyr, but Utkin's assassination would probably upset the Wagner ranks, but the president probably acted more with the idea of beheading Wagner than the consequences of Utkin's death.

Kadyrov: I asked Prigozhin to leave personal ambitions

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov published on "Telegram" a eulogy of Yevgeny Prigozhin, explaining that the two had been friends "for a long time", that he was "very connected" to the businessman and "often" had to solve the most difficult problems with him.

Kadyrov also calls Prigozhin "an important person of a national scale" with an "iron character" and a "desire to achieve his goal here and now."

At the same time, the Chechen leader, who increasingly clashed with Prigozhin during the war in Ukraine, wrote:

“Lately he either did not see or did not want to see the full picture of what was happening in the country. I begged him to put aside personal ambitions in favor of matters of paramount state importance. Everything else could be decided after that. But that was Prigozhin, with his iron character and his desire to get his own here and now”.

“Undoubtedly”, Kadyrov continues, “he contributed a lot to the war in Ukraine (he used the Russian term ‘special military operation’) and this credit cannot be taken away from him. His death is a great loss to the entire country”.

US sanctions on individuals involved in the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia

The United States Department of State announced that sanctions were imposed on 13 individuals and entities related to the forcible deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. According to the Ukrainian authorities, the number of these children is over 19,500.

Among those sanctioned are the International Children's Center "Artek" in Crimea annexed by Russia and its director, the mother of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, employees of the regional administrations in Belgorod, Kaluga and Rostov-on-Don.

The State Department's announcement stated that at Artek, Ukrainian children were placed in "patriotic retraining" programs and prevented from returning to their parents.

Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, accused the West of lying about the deported children because Russia was actually rescuing them.

Novinite is still the only Bulgarian media that publishes a summary of events and highlights related to the conflict, every single day. Our coverage began on day one - 24.02.2022 and will not stop until the war has concluded. Despite the pressure, our independent media will continue to provide its readers with accurate and up-to-date information. Thank you for your support! #stayinformed

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!


Tags: Prigozhin, wagner, Ukraine, Russia

Back  

» Related Articles:

Search

Search