Wars 2022 02/24 Monitoring Russian and Ukraine War.

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/europe/313972/ukraine-launches-offensive-against-russia-near-key-town

Ukraine launches offensive against Russia near key town
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 16 September, 2026, 00:00

A policeman pushing out a fire in gas station damaged after a Russian drone strike in Kyiv on Tuesday, amid Russian attack in Ukraine. | AFP photo

A Ukrainian army unit has launched a counter-offensive against Russian forces near Lyman, an embattled town in Ukraine’s east that Moscow has been edging towards for months, the unit’s commander said Tuesday.

Russia has seized around three-quarters of the Donetsk region since invading in February 2022, with Lyman one of the few urban areas in the region still under Ukraine’s control.

Its capture could pave the way for Moscow to sweep further south and threaten the Ukrainian-held strongholds of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, according to military analysts.

The area has been the site of intense battles throughout the four-and-a-half-year war.

‘The 3rd Army Corps has launched an offensive operation called Vivaldi in this sector,’ the Commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps, Andriy Biletsky, said in a video on Telegram.

Ukrainian units have cleared Russian infiltrators from an area ‘about 75 square kilometres’, he added.

DeepState, a battlefield map linked to the Ukrainian army, showed Ukrainian troops had made a small pocket of gains north of the town.

There was no immediate public comment from Russia to Ukraine’s claims. Widespread drone use at the front has made large-scale troop movements almost impossible, preventing either side from gaining a clear advantage in the grinding conflict.

Russia’s advance in east Ukraine gained pace in August, but remained far slower than in previous years of its invasion, an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War showed earlier in September.​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/europe/314417/russians-vote-as-ukraine-war-drags-on-for-fifth-year

Russians vote as Ukraine war drags on for fifth year
Council of Europe body slams ‘fake’ Russia vote

Agence France-Presse . Moscow, Russia 19 September, 2026, 00:39

People vote in Russia’s parliamentary election at a polling station in Moscow on Friday. | AFP photo

Russians began voting Friday in a tightly controlled three-day election that is set to tighten president Vladimir Putin’s 26-year grip on power, in the country’s fifth year of war with Ukraine.

It is Russia’s first parliamentary election since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022, setting off a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands.

Only parties that support Putin and the Kremlin’s military campaign have been registered to run. Moscow has also organised voting in occupied Ukraine.

The European Union slammed the elections, saying ‘repression’ had been used to eradicate opponents, while a Council of Europe body denounced the vote as ‘fake’.

While few Russians doubt Putin’s United Russia party will cruise to victory again, the vote offers a gauge of public support for the war.

Voting for all 450 seats in the Duma, Russia’s lower house, runs until 1800 GMT on Sunday.

Putin has ruled Russia since 1999 and his party has dominated politics since the early 2000s.

Moscow has banned criticism of the Ukraine campaign, and elections under Putin rarely produce surprises.

Putin had called on Russians to vote to show they back Moscow’s troops and to deliver an ‘answer to those who want to weaken Russia’.

The Kremlin published footage of the 73-year-old president voting online — rare footage of the longtime leader using technology.

On Moscow’s streets, several voters said they wanted the war in Ukraine to end — but on Russia’s terms, backing Putin’s goals.

Rail worker Sergei Korenets, 41, said he will back United Russia, voting for ‘stability’ — echoing Putin’s main slogan.

Asked whether four-and-a-half years of war amounts to ‘stability’, Korenets said: ‘Of course, I want all this (the war) to end as quickly as possible.’

But he did not want change at home, he said, as ‘I am satisfied from the point of view of my financial situation’.

Despite sweeping Western sanctions, Russia’s economy has not collapsed and life in the capital remains relatively normal even as Moscow bombards Ukrainian cities daily.

United Russia faces only parties that broadly back Putin’s policies and the war: the Communist Party, the nationalist LDPR, A Just Russia and New People.

Yabloko, which called for an end to the fighting, was barred from running shortly before the vote. One of its main figures, Lev Shlosberg, was imprisoned for criticising the war.

Russia has since 2022 introduced Soviet-style censorship and jailed war critics.

‘I am fully for the special military operation,’ 55-year-old Lyubov said in Moscow, using the Kremlin’s term for its offensive.

‘NATO cannot be at our borders,’ she added, repeating one of Putin’s arguments for launching the war.

But she criticised some social policies, still upset by Putin raising the pension age several years back, saying she wanted a ‘return to the Soviet economic system.’

Older voters are among Putin’s strongest supporters, though many complain about living standards.

Some fear the post-election period in Russia will bring a new military mobilisation, similar to the 2022 call-up of 3,00,000 reservists. The deeply unpopular move triggered a mass exodus of draft-age men.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has accused the Kremlin of planning a fresh mobilisation drive, an allegation Putin has denied.

Ukrainian strikes have caused increased disruption this year, hitting as far as Siberia and the Urals.

Putin’s political opponents have mostly been driven into exile and his main opponent Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison in 2024.

Russia’s exiled opposition has urged anti-Kremlin Russians not to boycott the elections but instead vote ‘against Putin’s party’.

Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya called on anti-war Russians to cast their ballots at noon on Sunday.

Yabloko disagrees, arguing that it was better not to vote.

‘You are suggesting that we once again go, like sheep, dancing to their tune, and vote for those who have caused the deaths of people in Russia and Ukraine?’ party chairman Nikolay Rybakov said this week.

But one Moscow voter, Yekaterina, who has lived her whole life under Putin’s rule, saw no reason for political change and was undeterred by the war.

‘I still trust my president,’ the 26-year-old said.​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/europe/314934/russian-strike-kills-4-in-ukraine

Russian strike kills 4 in Ukraine
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 23 September, 2026, 00:00

Ukrainian firefighters extinguish a fire at a building of Zaporizhzhia National University following a Russian drone strike in Zaporizhzhia on Monday, amid the Russian attack of Ukraine. | AFP photo

Russian strikes killed at least four people in Dnipro in eastern Ukraine, local authorities said Tuesday, as president Volodymyr Zelensky was in New York to plead Ukraine’s case at the United Nations.

For months, Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in intensifying long-range strikes targeting a growing number of civilian sites, including factories, warehouses and energy and port infrastructure, as well as ships in the Black Sea.

Interpipe, which makes steel pipes and railway products, confirmed that four of its employees were killed in a ballistic missile strike.

‘The death toll has up to now risen to four, while seven others were injured,’ it said in a statement.

‘The hostile attack also damaged the facility’s key production equipment and infrastructure, bringing the manufacture of products to a halt.’

Specialists were assessing how long the facility will be out of action, it added.

Earlier, Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha said four districts in the city were targeted by ‘missiles, drones and artillery’.

Shelling hit warehouses and a business, which was severely damaged, he added.

Industrial sites were also targeted in Kryvyi Rig — Zelensky’s home city — and Pavlograd, both of which are in the region, according to the authorities there.

In the southern region of Mykolaiv, a Russian long-range drone killed a three-year-old child. Four other people were wounded in a neighbouring locality, one of them seriously.

Ukraine’s prime minister Sergiy Koretsky said 13 regions, as well as the capital, were attacked overnight and Tuesday morning.

‘The Russians are deliberately striking businesses, farms, warehouses, railways, energy facilities and residential buildings,’ he added.

Zelensky is expected to meet his US counterpart Donald Trump on Tuesday, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

‘There are concrete security proposals and de-escalation measures that could bring the end of the war closer. We are working to strengthen air defence and ensure sufficient financing for Ukraine,’ he wrote on X.

Washington has restarted its diplomatic mediation efforts aimed at stopping Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/europe/315070/russian-strikes-hit-railways-shipping-transport-in-ukraine

Russian strikes hit railways, shipping, transport in Ukraine
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 24 September, 2026, 00:00

Smoke rises above the city following an air attack in Kyiv on Wednesday, amid the Russian attack of Ukraine. | AFP photo

Ukraine on Wednesday accused Russia of increasing its targeting of civilian transport infrastructure after renewed attacks on petrol stations, shipping and railways left at least two dead.

The authorities in Kyiv said targets were hit in the capital and the surrounding area and a 42-year-old man wounded in a strike on a petrol station died in hospital.

A railway worker returning home after his shift was wounded after being hit by shrapnel.

Ukrainian Railways chief Oleksandr Pertsovsky said Kyiv’s rail network was ‘under fire’ and urged ‘maximum’ vigilance from passengers using the city’s central station.

Ukraine’s state-run railways have kept operating and been a lifeline since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

But Pertsovsky said earlier this month that strikes were worsening every week, after one attack hit a train used by diplomats near the Polish border.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of trying to ‘cripple the economy and destroy people’s lives’.

In Ukraine’s southern Black Sea port of Odesa, the captain of a cargo ship was killed in a Russian attack — part of a wave of strikes from both sides on commercial vessels designed to hit export revenues.

The head of the Odesa region, Oleg Kiper, said the Ukrainian captain was in charge of the vessel, which was sailing on the Black Sea under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda.

At least 226 civilian and commercial vessels have been hit on the Black Sea since the start of the conflict, Turkey’s IMEAK chamber of shipping said.

Seventy per cent — or 163 attacks — took place in the first eight months of this year.

Turkey, whose vessels are increasingly in the firing line, has sent a proposal to Russia and Ukraine to end strikes on civilian ships but the two foes have failed to act on it.

‘The recent attacks on commercial vessels in the Black Sea are unacceptable, regardless of who is responsible,’ Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.

Russia’s defence ministry said its latest attacks on the Kyiv region hit a warehouse and business linked to the production of drones for the Ukrainian armed forces and similar sites were hit in the Odesa area, as well as a vessel delivering military cargo.​