On Saturday, a new round of raids hit the Belgorod region in Western Russia, killing at least one person and injuring two. On Friday, Ukraine reportedly struck the base of Russia’s 3rd Motorized Rifle Division near Valuyki, just nine miles north of the Russia-Ukraine border. Russian officials did not acknowledge that a military target had been hit, but said one civilian had died and the local power grid experienced a temporary outage. Russia blamed the attacks on Ukraine, but Kyiv did not claim responsibility for hitting targets on Russian soil. Kyiv assured US officials that the weapons they donated would not be used to strike targets inside Russia. But Ukrainian forces are now so close to the border that they can hit targets using their own less advanced weapons. That Russian citizens are beginning to feel the immediate impact of the war is another new source of pressure on Putin, who returned home this weekend from a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan, where he faced a notable public rebuke from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and questions about the war from Chinese President Xi Jinping. In a stunning public rebuke, Modi told Putin that “today is not a time of war and I have spoken to you on the phone about that.” This followed Putin’s admission that he had heard “concerns and questions” about the war from the Chinese president. Torture, murder, kidnapping: Russian retreat from Izyum reveals horror Ukraine has made stunning advances in the Kharkiv region in the country’s northeast over the past two weeks. During its origins, it has also uncovered hundreds of mass graves and stories of Russian forces terrorizing residents in the liberated city of Izyum. Ukrainian officials cited the gains and evidence of torture and killings to reiterate calls for modern tanks and other heavily armored vehicles that NATO allies have been slow to send. Modi scolds Putin for war in Ukraine Valuyki and Krasny Khutor are among dozens of small settlements in Russia that the Russian military is using as staging grounds, putting them in the middle of Moscow’s faltering invasion and Kiev’s mounting counteroffensive. The local governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, has ordered the evacuation of hundreds of people and the closure of schools in border towns in recent months. But now the authorities in Belgorod are under increasing pressure from worried residents who are experiencing what many Ukrainians have experienced for months: nightly explosions, damaged homes and sometimes casualties. “I ask once again, where is our army, the one that is supposed to protect us?” Belgorod resident Tatyana Bogacheva wrote on Gladkov’s VKontakte social networking page. “We are at the border. we are being shot at, so we need an army and protection. Who will wake up the President?’ Russian forces are depleted after battlefield blunders and are scrambling to find personnel and operational equipment to hold their ground in northeastern Ukraine. A recent hasty retreat from Izyum and Balakliya as well as concerns among local Russians who fear the war is returning home appear to have prompted Moscow to bolster the border with new conscripts. Russian soldiers who had been recruited to serve in the Taman Division’s 1st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment as part of this year’s spring military service are reportedly being transferred from the Moscow region to “protect the state border.” The BBC Russian service, citing the families of the troops, said that many conscripts in the Taman Division had died at the start of the invasion and that those who survived returned to Russian territory. But instead of returning to headquarters in Naro-Fominsk near Moscow, they were posted to Valuyki. The new batch of conscripts is supposed to replace those due to be discharged in October, the BBC reported. According to Russian law, conscripts cannot be sent into combat unless they have at least four months of training. Putin has repeatedly denied that Russia is using conscripts in Ukraine. But the country’s defense ministry acknowledged as early as March that some had been mistakenly sent to fight. Russia’s problems along the border are drawing criticism from staunchly pro-Kremlin quarters inside Ukraine as well. “I wonder if the Russian leadership is going to react in some way to the continued bombing of Russian territory?” Igor Girkin, a hardline former separatist commander in Ukraine, lamented on his Telegram blog. “Or do I understand correctly that the Kremlin no longer considers the Belgorod region as Russian territory?” The war also appears to be weakening Russia’s ability to put out fires in the south, a region the Kremlin has long considered its backyard. This week, for example, Armenia asked for Russia’s help amid a new attack by Azerbaijan on its border towns, according to the country’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who formally appealed to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a regional security alliance. post-Soviet states, including Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. But the response so far has been slow and tepid, perhaps undermining Armenia’s confidence in Moscow as an ally and in the CSTO as a reliable security broker. Azerbaijan and Armenia exchange fire in Nagorno-Karabakh border zone Azerbaijan is not part of the CSTO, but is supported by Turkey, an essential mediator in the Ukraine war. Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of “provocations” in the border region, which Yerevan denies. More than 200 officers have been killed on both sides this week in what has turned into the deadliest confrontation since the six-week war over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2020. On Friday, in a face-to-face meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev said the border conflict had “stabilized” and a ceasefire had been in place for the past three days. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday that she plans to visit Armenia over the weekend.
War in Ukraine: What you need to know
The last: Grain shipments from Ukraine are being accelerated under the agreement reached by Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations in July. Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports had sent food prices skyrocketing and raised fears of more famine in the Middle East and Africa. At least 18 ships, including cargoes of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, have departed. The battle: The conflict on the ground continues as Russia uses its heavy artillery advantage to pound Ukrainian forces, which have at times managed to put up stiff resistance. In the south, Ukraine’s hopes rest on the liberation of the Russian-held Kherson region, and eventually Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014. Fears of disaster at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant remain as both sides accuse each other of bombing it. . The weapons: Western arms supplies are helping Ukraine slow Russian advances. US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Missile Systems (HIMARS) allow Ukrainian forces to strike further behind Russian lines against Russian artillery. Russia has used a range of weapons against Ukraine, some of which have drawn the attention and concern of analysts. Photos: Washington Post photographers have been on the ground since the start of the war — here are some of their strongest works. How you can help: Here are ways those in the US can help support the Ukrainian people as well as the donations people have made around the world. Read his full coverage Russia-Ukraine crisis. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video.
