Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Russian forces had tried to oust Ukrainian troops from positions in Russia’s Kursk border region, but that Kyiv’s forces were holding their lines. “Russia tried to push back our positions, but we are holding the designated lines,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday that its forces had recaptured two villages in the border Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops launched a mass incursion in August. Zelenskyy has acknowledged that the Ukrainian advance into Kursk was intended to draw Russian troops away from frontline positions in eastern Ukraine.
Prosecutors in Donetsk region on Saturday said two people were killed in Russian strikes on villages near Kurakhove. The general staff of Ukraine’s military, in a late evening report, reported 47 clashes in the area around Kurakhove and 27 more in the Pokrovsk sector to the north-west. It follows Russia’s defence ministry on Friday announcing the capture of Ostrivske, a village on a reservoir near the town of Kurakhove, a key Russian target in its advance through the Donetsk region. Ukraine has not acknowledged the loss of the village, but military bloggers have reported Russian advances in the area.
Ukrainian military recruitment officers have raided restaurants, bars and a concert hall in Kyiv, checking military registration documents and detaining men who are not in compliance. Local media reported Saturday that officers intercepted men leaving a concert by Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy and some were forcibly detained. It is unusual for such raids to take place in the capital, and reflects Ukraine’s dire need for fresh recruits. Raids also reportedly took place in clubs and restaurants in other cities. All Ukrainian men aged 25-60 are eligible for conscription, and men aged 18-60 are not allowed to leave the country.
The Kremlin said on Saturday that the Democrat party presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s description of Vladimir Putin as a “murderous dictator” exposed how politicians in Washington sought to impose their views on the world. Peskov’s comments appeared to be in response to Harris’s criticism of a report in a newly released book by US journalist Bob Woodward that Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, while in office, had sent Covid tests to Russia at the height of the pandemic. In a radio interview, she described Putin as a “murderous dictator”.
Leaders of the group of atomic bomb survivors awarded the Nobel Peace Prize warned on Saturday that the risk of nuclear war was rising, renewing their call to abolish nuclear weapons. “The international situation is getting progressively worse, and now wars are being waged as countries threaten the use of nuclear weapons,” said Shigemitsu Tanaka, a survivor of the 1945 US bombing of Nagasaki and co-head of the Nihon Hidankyo group. Vladimir Putin signalled last month that Moscow would consider responding with nuclear weapons if the US and its allies allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with long-range western missiles.
Ukraine’s military said on Saturday that it struck a Russian-controlled oil terminal in the partially occupied Luhansk region that provides fuel for Russia’s war effort. Russian state media reported that the terminal close to the city of Rovenky had come under attack from a Ukrainian drone and said there were no casualties and that the fire had been extinguished, but did not comment on the extent of any damage.
Russian emergency services said they had brought a massive fire under control at the Feodosia oil terminal in Russian-annexed Crimea, which had burned for six days after being struck by Ukraine, state news agency Ria Novosti reported.
Russia’s defence ministry said 47 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted and destroyed by its air defence systems overnight into Saturday: 17 over the Krasnodar region, 16 over the Sea of Azov, 12 over the Kursk region and two over the Belgorod region, all of which border Ukraine. Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Saturday that one person had been killed and 14 wounded in Ukrainian shelling and drone attacks over the previous 24 hours.
In Ukraine, the country’s air force said air defences had shot down 24 of 28 drones launched overnight against Ukraine. Zaporizhzhia regional governor Ivan Fedorov said two women were wounded on Saturday in Russian attacks on the capital of the southern Ukrainian region, also called Zaporizhzhia.