Municipal deputies from Moscow and St. Petersburg call for Putin’s resignation
Ukraine claims shooting down Iranian drone used by Russia
From CNN’s Yulia Kesaieva and Mostafa Salem
Ukraine’s military claimed Tuesday for the first time that its forces had shot down an Iranian-supplied drone used by Russia on the battlefield in the country’s east.
“With a great deal of conceit, it can be claimed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine for the first time destroyed an Iranian attack drone near Kupyansk,” the Ukrainian military’s Strategic Communication Directorate said in a statement on Telegram, published alongside images of the wrecked drone allegedly downed near a city in the Kharkiv district.
“Analysis of the appearance of the wing elements of the drone allows us to say with certainty that the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed an Iranian UAV for the first time. It is a long-range kamikaze UAV Shahed-136,” the statement added.
CNN is unable to independently verify the Ukrainian claims.
Background: The news comes after 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 that Russians were believed to have been training on the drones for several weeks. Later in the month, Iran’s armed forces launched drills with over 100 locally-manufactured combat and reconnaissance drones to exhibit its “power,” state media reported.
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.
“Massive shelling” has targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent days, minister says
From CNN’s Yulia Kesaieva
Russia on Sunday carried out some of the “most massive shelling” of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since the start of the war, according to the country’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko.
Large parts of eastern Ukraine, including the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, were left without electricity following the strikes, Ukrainian officials said.
“These attacks are nothing more than Russian attempts to take revenge on the civilian population after the success of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the battlefield,” Halushchenko said Tuesday during a meeting with Bridget Brink, the US ambassador to Ukraine.
The two discussed the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant following an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) two weeks ago.
The IAEA called for the “immediate establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the plant.
According to a statement released after the meeting, Halushchenko told Brink that the only way to ensure nuclear safety was to return the plant to Ukrainian control.
‘Everybody was running away.’ Ukrainians in Kharkiv villages describe Russia’s retreat
From CNN’s Saskya Vandoorne, Melissa Bell, Olga Voitovych, Victoria Butenko and William Bonnett
Ukraine has claimed major territorial gains since the beginning of the month, much of that progress believed to be in the Kharkiv region.
This has given an impression that Ukraine is effortlessly pushing Russian forces back from territory they’ve controlled for more than six months. The truth, inevitably for a war zone, is far less clear-cut.
CNN was given exclusive access to Kupiansk, just a day after pictures emerged showing soldiers hoisting the Ukrainian flag on the roof of the town’s municipal building.
Far from being a town under full Ukrainian control, CNN found one still being bitterly fought for.
Further west, some villages have seen calm entirely restored, such as in the Kharkiv region’s Zaliznychne, liberated last week, as the eastern counteroffensive picked up speed. There, the fight appears to have been far less painful.
“I didn’t even expect it would be so fast,” says 66-year-old Oleksandr Verbytsky, who witnessed the Russians retreating. “I went to the store and when I came back, everybody was running away. The Russians drove through the cemetery to get away. Can you imagine?”
Read the full story here.
Ukrainian officials say Kharkiv is without electricity due to “insidious shelling” by Russian forces
From CNN’s Olga Voitovych and Yulia Kesaieva
The entire region of Kharkiv is without electricity, the Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Kyrylo Tymoshenko said Tuesday, citing “insidious shelling by Russian [forces]” as the cause.
“It has just been reported that Kharkiv and the region are without electricity. The backup line that supplied the settlements failed. Now all forces are directed to eliminate the problem. These are the consequences of insidious shelling by the Russians the day before (Monday),” Tymoshenko said on Telegram.
Local authorities in Derhachi, north-east of the city of Kharkiv, also reported electricity outages across its city center and nearby towns.
Analysis: The rot runs deep in the Russian war machine. Ukraine is exposing it for all to see
From CNN’s Brad Lendon
For Russia, the numbers are catastrophic.
From Wednesday to Sunday, Vladimir Putin’s military forces saw at least 338 pieces of important military hardware — from fighter jets to tanks to trucks — destroyed, damaged or captured, according to numbers from the open source intelligence website Oryx, as Ukraine’s forces have bolted through Russian-held territory in an offensive that has stunned the Russians in its speed and breadth.
Ukraine’s top military commander claimed on Sunday that more than 3,000 square kilometers (1,158 square miles) of territory had been retaken by his country’s forces since the beginning of September. And for more perspective, just “since Wednesday, Ukraine has recaptured territory at least twice the size of Greater London,” the British Defense Ministry said Monday.
Ukrainian reports say Putin’s troops are fleeing east to the Russian border in whatever transport they can find, even taking cars from the civilian population in the areas they had captured since the start of the war in February.
In their wake they leave hundreds of pieces of the Russian war machine, which since Putin’s so-called “special military operation” commenced, has not come close to living up to its pre-war billing as one of the world’s great powers.
These Russian losses are the accumulation of a multitude of existing problems that are now colliding head-on with a Ukrainian military that has been patient, methodical and infused with billions of dollars of the Western military equipment that Russia cannot match.
Read more here:
US Secretary of State calls recent gains by Ukrainians in northeast region “encouraging”
From CNN’s Ellie Kaufman
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the recent progress Ukrainian forces have made in the northeastern region of their country, taking back land captured by Russians, was “encouraging,” but added “this is early days still.”
“So, I think it would be wrong to predict exactly where this will go, and when it will get there and how it will get there, but clearly we’ve seen significant progress by the Ukrainians particularly in the northeast,” Blinken said at a press conference in Mexico City on Monday.
Blinken attributed this progress to both “support” the US and other allies have provided, “but first and foremost, it’s a product of the extraordinary courage and resilience of the Ukrainian armed forces and the Ukrainian people.”
“Ukraine does not belong to Russia, it belongs to the Ukrainian people, and that’s the single biggest difference maker, as I’ve said, that I think we’re seeing play out now. Having said all of that, it is too early to tell exactly where this is all going,” he added.
Blinken cautioned that Russia still maintains forces and weapons in Ukraine that they continue to use “indiscriminately,” but said he was encouraged by the recent developments.
“The brutalization of the country continues by the Russian aggressor, and unfortunately the prospect of this continues to go on, but I think it’s encouraging to see the progress that Ukraine has made,” he said.
President Zelensky says 6,000 square kilometers of Ukraine liberated since the beginning of September
From CNN’s Tim Lister
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces have recaptured 6,000 square kilometers (approximately 2,316 square miles) of land in the east and south of the country since the beginning of the month as he appealed for greater international pressure to isolate Russia.
According to analysts, that would amount to nearly 10% of the territory lost to the Russian offensive since it began in February.
In his daily video message, Zelensky also asked: “Why can [Russia] wage war so cruelly and cynically? There is only one reason — insufficient pressure on Russia. The response to the terror of this state is insufficient.”
One answer, he said, was to “increase aid to Ukraine, and above all speed up the provision of air defense systems.”
“There is still no official recognition of Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. Citizens of the terrorist state can still go to Europe to rest and go shopping, they can still get European visas, and no one knows whether there are executioners or murderers among them who have just returned from the occupied territory of Ukraine,” Zelensky said.
Some European countries have enacted bans on tourist visas for Russians; most have not.
Zelensky said Russia was to blame for “energy terror. Residents of many countries around the world are suffering due to the painful increase in prices for energy resources — for electricity, for heat. Russia does it deliberately. It deliberately destabilizes the gas market in Europe.”
He added:
“Yesterday and today, the Russian army struck the Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians found themselves in the dark — without electricity. Houses, hospitals, schools, communal infrastructure… Russian missiles hit precisely those objects that have absolutely nothing to do with the infrastructure of the Armed Forces of our country.”
The President described the attacks on Ukrainian electricity supplies as “a sign of the desperation of those who invented this war. This is how they react to the defeat of Russian forces in the Kharkiv region.”
Ukraine’s nuclear operator says power units at Zaporizhzhia plant remain in cooling mode
From CNN’s Julia Kesaieva in Kyiv
The president of Ukraine’s state nuclear company — Energoatom — told CNN that the power units at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant remain in a cooling state while work continues to restore power lines from the plant.
Speaking to CNN via Skype, Petro Kotin, said all seven lines connecting to the plant were damaged, and it had switched to what he called the “island mode” — where the plant supplied electricity solely for itself.
“We tried to prolong the operation of one of our power units for as long as possible, even in the conditions when it was operating in island mode. It worked for us for three days,” he told CNN.
Kotin said just one of the six power units remained working, and was supplying the needs of the plant — the electricity necessary for the pumps that cool the nuclear material. The reactors “are full of nuclear material, fuel and also there are six pools that are located near the reactors at each power unit. They need to be constantly cooled,” he said.
“The hazard is that if there is no power supply, the pumps will stop and there will be no cooling, and in about one and a half to two hours you will have a meltdown of this fuel that is in the reactor,” he added.
Kotin reiterated that when there is no external power supply, the diesel generators could kick in. “As of today the diesel generators can work there for ten days.”
“We are also doing our best to secure additional supplies. But we understand that it is very difficult to bring anything in there. The railway is damaged, so it can only be done by vehicles,” he said.
“If there is now a loss of external power, then we will have only one option. The diesel generators,” he added.
Kotin said representatives of the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), remained at the plant. “They have meetings with the plant management twice a day, so they have all the current information on the plant’s operation,” he said.
As for the IAEA proposal for a safety zone around the plant, Kotin said: “We don’t fully understand what this safety zone means exactly.”
He repeated the Ukrainian government’s line that the plant should be returned to Ukrainian control and the power plant itself and zone around it should be demilitarized.
Municipal deputies from Moscow and St. Petersburg call for Putin’s resignation
From CNN’s Uliana Pavlova
Deputies from 18 municipal districts in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kolpino have called for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s resignation, according to a petition with a list of signatures posted on Twitter on Monday.
“We, the municipal deputies of Russia, believe that the actions of its president Vladimir Putin are detrimental to Russia’s and its citizens’ future. We demand Vladimir Putin’s resignation from the post of the President of the Russian Federation,” said the petition posted by Ksenia Thorstrom, a local deputy of the Semenovsky District in Saint Petersburg.
The petition follows Russia’s first regional and municipal elections since the start of the war, which brought a sweeping victory for pro-Kremlin candidates.
“The petition’s text is concise and does not “discredit” anyone. If you are mundep [municipal deputy] and want to join, you are welcome,” Thorstrom said in a Twitter post.
The council of one Moscow district (Lomonosovsky) also demanded Putin’s resignation, saying: “Your views and your model of government are hopelessly outdated and hinder the development of Russia and its human potential.”
Last week, the deputies of the Smolninskoye municipality of St. Petersburg called on the State Duma of the Russian Federation to bring charges of treason against Vladimir Putin. Several of them now face charges for discrediting the Russian army, according to a Twitter post from one of the local officials, Nikita Yuferev.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-09-13-22/index.html
