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Stay on top of Russia-Ukraine war 08-21-2024 developments on the ground with KyivPost fact-based news, exclusive video footage, photos and updated war maps.
Latest on the Russo-Ukrainian War
Ukrainian civilians on Wednesday fled areas close to the front line as Russian troops steadily seized more territory across the eastern Donetsk region.
The Russian army has captured several towns and villages in recent days, even as Moscow scrambles to fight off a Ukrainian counterattack into its western Kursk region.
For one of the few time since Russia’s war against Ukraine began Kyiv’s forces are benefitting for air support as it advances into Russia and the positive results are evident.
The Ukrainian Air Force (UAF) is finally able to support Kyiv’s ground offensive in Kursk Oblast. On Aug. 16, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, the UAF Commander, said, “The Air Force's aviation actively participates in the hostilities on the Kursk front. Ukrainian pilots used high-precision strikes to target enemy strongholds, clusters of equipment, logistics centers, and hostile supply routes.”
On Aug. 13 t, videos appeared online showing a Ukrainian SU-27 dropping a US-made Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) glide bombs at a Russian command post and hangar in Tetkino, a few kilometers north of the front line in Kursk.
Gen. Ben Hodges says that Vladimir Putin "should be looking at the disaster he has on his hands in the Kursk Region of Russia and the total ineptitude of his military."
Issues of religious freedom invite disinformation and propaganda. Kyiv Post clears the air about how the new law will affect the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, on Tuesday Aug. 20, adopted a new law regarding the activities of religious organizations. Law No. 8371, passed by a majority of 265 votes, would, after ratification by President Volodymyr Zelensky, prohibit the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Ukraine and terminate the activities of religious structures affiliated with Moscow.
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The dismantling of the council tasked with overseeing defense of Russia’s border region might’ve contributed to its chaotic response following Ukraine’s incursion.
Col. Gen. Alexander Lapin reportedly dissolved an interagency council tasked with overseeing security in Russia’s Kursk region in springtime, months before Ukraine’s incursion into the region.
The council reportedly comprised military officers, as well as local and regional security officials.
Russia says it has captured a string of towns and villages in the Donetsk region in recent weeks.
Russia’s army said Wednesday its forces had captured another village in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where it is advancing even as Kyiv mounts a major counterattack into Russian territory.
In a daily briefing, the defense ministry said Russian troops had captured the village of Zhelanne, which lies between the cities of Donetsk and Pokrovsk, a section of the front line which is seeing some of the heaviest fighting of the 2.5-year conflict.
Russia’s 15th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade faces significant losses, with equipment failure and loss of interoperative coordination leading to chaos and more casualties in Donetsk, reports Atesh.
Russian troops are experiencing significant losses in the Pokrovsk sector of the Donetsk region, according to a report from the Atesh partisan movement via Telegram.
“An agent from Russia’s 15th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade reported that a large force has been allocated for the assaults,” the message read.
How the failed August 1991 attempted coup by hardliners in Moscow determined to preserve the Soviet Russian empire precipitated Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence.
What occurred and what was at stake
Ukraine’s General Staff confidently reported explosions at the targeted locations, while the extent of the resulting damage was still under investigation.
Ukrainian forces struck a Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile complex near Novoshakhtinsk in Russia’s Rostov region early on Wednesday, Aug. 21, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).
The attack was carried out by units of the Ukraine’s Naval Forces in coordination with other components of the Defense Forces. Explosions were recorded at the target sites, but the accuracy and extent of the damagewas still being investigated, according to the report.
The replacement came four months after Ukraine opened its embassy in the southern African nation as Ukraine strives to expand its geopolitical influence in the Global South.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday dismissed Liubov Abravitova from the post of Ukraine’s ambassador to Botswana, a southern African nation bordering Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, and appointed Oleksiy Syvak instead.
Zelensky’s office announced Syvak’s appointment in a presidential decree and Abravitova’s dismissal, whose work in Botswana was listed as being on a part-time basis, in another decree. It did not state the reason behind the replacement.
Thoughts on the symbolic and psychological significance of the Kursk Incursion that Ukraine and the West can use to their advantage in defeating Russia.
It’s been known for thousands of years that symbols imbued with historical and sentimental significance are a fundamental part of a shared identity of a group, be it a family, a tribe, a city-state, a nation-state or an empire. Symbols can be statues, momentous events such as battles, famous people, even entire cities and regions. The same symbol can cause one nation to beam with pride and another nation to erase any mention of that symbol.
Psychological shockwaves
Putin visited the school for the first time in almost 20 years to pay tribute to the victims, including the site of the destroyed school where Chechen militants took over 1,000 people hostage.
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday likened Ukraine's incursion into Russia to the 2004 Beslan school massacre, in which some 330 people died in a hostage siege.
Putin visited the school for the first time in almost 20 years, paying tribute to the victims at memorials, including a cemetery and the site of the destroyed school, where Chechen militants took more than 1,000 people hostage.
An intercepted call by the head of the administration of the Goncharovka settlement in the Sudzha district reveals how the leadership of the Kursk region deceived its residents.
The local administration in the Sudzha district deceived both the Russian leadership and local residents during the first days of Ukraine’s offensive into the Kursk region on, according to a Ukrainian Defense Forces phone interception.
In it Oleksandr Harkavenko, the head of the administration of the Goncharovka settlement said:
Nero “fiddled” while Rome burned – a review of the Russian president’s official website shows his week was focused on mundane routine rather than the fighting on Russian soil.
In the two weeks since Ukraine launched its Aug. 6 cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region the area occupied by Kyiv’s forces has continued to expand to more than 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) and a large number of Moscow’s troops are in danger of becoming encircled.
During an initial Aug. 7 meeting where Putin categorized Ukraine’s actions as a “large provocation,” he spent less than five minutes on the subject before moving on to other agenda items. Then on Aug. 12 during an emergency meeting, he demanded his forces should “squeeze the enemy out” of the region, accused the West of masterminding the invasion and promised that Ukraine’s forces would suffer a “worthy response.”
The man who was initially misidentified as a soldier later turned out to be a businessman with a stake in a series of funeral services in St. Petersburg catering to dead Russians, including soldiers.
In Russia, a man dressed in military uniform who berated men in the Kursk region for fleeing the hostilities amid Ukraine’s offensive was found to be a businessman engaged in funeral services.
Russian opposition news outlet Agentsvo later identified the man as 39-year-old St. Petersburg resident Kirill Suvorov (Vlasikov until 2020), whereas a journalist from Russian news outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda initially described him as a “military man” by mistake when he shared Suvorov’s rants on Kursk residents.
The Russian army has begun to set up pontoon crossings across the Seim River after Ukrainian troops, advancing from the south, struck fixed bridges in the area.
According to satellite images from Radio Liberty, the pontoon bridge built by the Russian army across the Seim River in Kursk has disappeared.
NASA FIRMS images from Aug. 19 show no sign of the pontoon bridge, and 500 meters (1,640 feet) from its previous location, smoke, likely from an explosion, is visible.
Footage posted by RIA Novosti news agency and Kadyrov showed Putin shaking hands with Kadyrov and other officials after alighting from his helicopter in the main city of Grozny.
Russian President Vladimir Putin flew into Chechnya on Tuesday and met its leader Ramzan Kadyrov on his first visit to the North Caucasus region since 2011.
Kadyrov, a key Kremlin ally, says he has deployed thousands of fighters to help the Kremlin with its Ukraine offensive.
Drone attacks on Moscow are rare, with Russia saying in May it had downed a drone outside the capital, forcing restrictions to be imposed at two major airports in the city for under an hour.
Russian air defences shot down 10 Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow, the city's mayor said early Wednesday.
"Moscow's layered defence against enemy UAVs that was created has allowed us to successfully repel all attacks," mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a Telegram post.
The defector known by the call sign “Silver” told a press conference organized by the HUR how he made his escape to join the Freedom of Russia Legion.
The press service of Ukraine’s Main Defense Intelligence directorate (HUR) held a press conference on Aug. 20 where a Russian soldier explained how he successfully defected.
The soldier, who had been a first-person view (FPV) drone pilot in an unidentified Storm Z assault unit, was identified only by his call-sign “Silver.”
Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.
Key Takeaways from the ISW:
Pentagon confirms Russian redeployments, announces next Ramstein meeting; Hungary snubs EU on Russian visa issue; HAMMER bomb hits Kursk target; Moscow summons US diplomat amid mercenary charges.
A Pentagon spokesperson on Tuesday said that the US Department of Defense (DoD) can confirm that Moscow is sending reinforcements to the Kursk region to defend against Ukraine’s two-week-old incursion into the Russian region.
At a regular DoD briefing, Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder declined to answer whether these reinforcements were arriving from the fronts in Eastern Ukraine or from Russia. Still, he noted that the Kremlin has “really struggled” with the surprise attack from the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).
