Here is how things stand on Wednesday, September 3 :
Fighting
- Russian drone attacks and shelling killed three people and injured five others in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Governor Serhiy Lysak wrote on Telegram.
- Two people were killed in Russian attacks on the Polohivskyi district, as Russian forces launched 578 attacks on 18 settlements in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
- Separate Russian attacks also killed one person in Kherson, one person in the Kyiv region and one person in Donetsk, local officials reported, according to the Kyiv Independent news outlet.
- A Ukrainian drone injured three people in the village of Proletarsky, in Russia’s Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
- Russian forces seized the Ukrainian settlement of Fedorivka in the Donetsk region, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing the Russian Ministry of Defence.
- Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry Rodion Miroshnik told TASS that Ukrainian attacks over the past week on Russia killed 12 people and injured almost 100.
- Russia’s Defence Ministry said that its forces shot down 158 Ukrainian drones in a 24-hour period, according to TASS.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia is engaged in a new troop build-up along certain sectors of the front line. “[Putin] refuses to be forced into peace,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
- Ukraine will never agree to legalise the Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops is the only way to guarantee safety there, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Politics and diplomacy
- Russian President Vladimir Putin said the United States was listening to Russia’s justifications for the invasion of Ukraine and claimed that Moscow and Washington had reached a “mutual understanding” about the war.
- US President Donald Trump said in an interview: “I am very disappointed in President Putin, I can say that, and we will be doing something to help people live.”
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that Putin and Zelenskyy “are not yet ready” for a leaders’ meeting to further discuss ending the war.
- Putin told Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, at talks in China that Russia has “never objected” to Ukraine’s membership of the European Union. “As for NATO, this is another issue… Our position here is well known: we consider this unacceptable for ourselves,” Putin said.
Energy
- Kremlin-owned gas giant Gazprom said Russia and China have agreed to advance a new pipeline to bring gas from Eastern Siberia to China. The deal comes as the EU has said it plans to phase out buying Russian gas by 2027, amid Russia’s war on Ukraine.
- Supplies of Russian gas to Slovakia via the TurkStream pipeline are gradually increasing towards 4 billion cubic metres, Fico said on Tuesday after meeting with Putin.
