Key events
Some kindergartens will shut for a week in the Russian city of Belgorod near Ukraine’s border while several schools will hold online classes after a Kyiv attack destroyed a childcare facility on Monday, the region’s governor said.
“It’s a bad morning for the Belgorod region,” the governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said in a post on social network VKontakte the day classes were set to resume after the summer vacation.
“A kindergarten in the city of Belgorod has been almost completely destroyed.”
After the attack, authorities decided that several schools in the city’s large district of Kharkovskaya Gora would hold classes online, while kindergartens would be shut for a week, Gladkov said.
Faisal Ali
An Islamic Cultural Center in Kyiv’s Nyvky district was hit in the overnight Russian missile and drones strikes, badly damaging a mosque inside the facility.
Refat Chubarov, a leader of the Crimean Tartar community in Ukraine said the building would need repairs in a post on Facebook.
President Zelenskiy also wrote a post on X about the strike saying Russia “has no regard for spiritual or human values, and no respect for any religion or faith.”
This is one of Ukraine’s Islamic Cultural Centers in a Kyiv mosque, which was severely damaged in the Russian missile strike on our capital this morning.
Russia has no regard for spiritual or human values, and no respect for any religion or faith. They continue their destruction… pic.twitter.com/jczSRl675c
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 2, 2024
A boiler house at a water plant in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district was partially destroyed by a Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian capital early on Monday, mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app.
The West is openly persecuting Russian journalists, president Vladimir Putin said in remarks published on Monday, days after Moscow banned dozens of US journalists from entering the country.
“In order to hide from inconvenient facts, from truthful information, the West, which considers itself the standard of freedom, has launched an open persecution against Russian correspondents,” Putin told the Mongolian newspaper Onoodor on the eve of his visit to the country, according to a transcript provided on the Kremlin’s website.
His remarks come after Moscow said on Wednesday it was banning entry to Russia for 92 US citizens, including journalists, lawyers, and the heads of what it said were key military-industrial firms, over what it described as Washington’s Russophobic stance, Reuters reported.
They also follow years of the Kremlin’s suppression of independent media and Moscow’s swift blocking of dissenting voices in Russian-language media outlets at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Putin said that in Russia, media are free.
“The only requirement for them is compliance with Russian legislation,” he said. “Foreign correspondents accredited in our country should understand this.”
The Finnish government wants to ban Russians from buying property in Finland, the Nordic country’s defence minister Antti Hakkanen said on Monday.
“Today we’re sending out for consultations a proposal that aims to ban property transactions that have a Russian background,” Hakkanen told a press conference.
The ban would however come with exemptions, Hakkanen added, saying dual citizens and Russians with permanent residence in Finland could still buy property in the Nordic country.
Ukrainian forces destroyed 22 out of 35 missiles and 20 out of 23 attack drones launched by Russia on Monday morning, Ukraine’s Air Force said.
It said on the Telegram messenger that it had destroyed nine ballistic missiles and 13 cruise missiles in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Poltava, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Opening summary
Good morning and welcome to the live blog covering the Russia-Ukraine war. It’s 10am in Ukraine and I’m Tom Ambrose.
Russia pounded Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv with missiles early on Monday, while falling debris from the downed weapons injured at least two people, sparking fires and damaging homes and infrastructure, officials said.
Reuters reports that Ukraine’s air defence units destroyed more than 10 cruise missiles and nearly 10 ballistic missiles, the city’s military administration said on the Telegram messaging app.
Air raid alerts went out across Ukraine for nearly two hours before the air force declared the skies clear at 3.30am GMT.
Neighbouring Nato member Poland activated Polish and allied aircraft to keep its airspace safe during the attacks. A boiler house at a Kyiv water plant was partially damaged as was the entrance to a metro station doubling as a bomb shelter in the Svyatoshynksyi district, Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram, though the station still operates. The attack injured at least two people, Klitschko said.
In other news:
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Russia will make changes to its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons in response to what it regards as western escalation in the war in Ukraine, state media quoted deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Sunday. The existing nuclear doctrine says Russia may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state. Some hawks among Russia’s military analysts have urged Putin to lower the threshold to “sober up” Russia’s enemies in the west.
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Polish and allied aircraft were activated early on Monday to ensure the safety of Polish airspace after Russia launched airstrikes on Ukraine, the Operational Command of the Polish armed forces said. “In the south-eastern part of the country there may be an increased noise level related to the commencement of operations in our airspace by Polish and allied aircraft,” the command said on X. South-east Poland borders Ukraine.
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Ukraine carried out one of its biggest ever drone attacks on Russia overnight to Sunday, with videos showing a series of explosions and fires at power stations and refineries including in Moscow. Russia’s defence ministry played down the overnight strikes. It said it had intercepted and destroyed 158 unmanned enemy aerial vehicles. These were shot down over 15 regions, it claimed.
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Footage posted on Telegram channels suggested some of the long-range Ukrainian drones damaged targets deep inside Russia. At least one struck an oil refinery in the Kapotnya district in south-east Moscow. More drones hit a thermal power station in the Tver region, north of Moscow. There was an explosion at the Konakovo station, one of the biggest in Russia. An orange fireball engulfed several transformers.
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In eastern Ukraine, where the heaviest fighting of the war is concentrated, Russian forces continued to advance towards Pokrovsk, which is a vital military hub and transport link to towns and cities farther north. Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its forces had captured two more settlements in Donetsk region and were “continuing to advance deep into the enemy defences”. One of them, Ptyche, is just 21km (13 miles) southeast of Pokrovsk.
At least three people were killed and nine wounded in Russian shelling of Kurakhove, a town about 35 km south of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian officials said. -
At least 47 people, including five children, were injured on Sunday after Russian missiles struck a shopping mall and events complex in Ukraine‘s northeastern city of Kharkiv, officials said. The attack prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to renew calls on allies to allow Kyiv to fire western-supplied missiles deeper into enemy territory and reduce the military threat posed by Russia.
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A Ukrainian helicopter on a military training flight crashed on Sunday, killing its two-member crew, the air force’s university said. The Kharkiv Air Force University in a post on Facebook said investigators and officials from Ukraine’s defence ministry were working to determine the cause of the crash. No further details were immediately available.
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Ukrainian forces shelled Russia’s southern Belgorod region on Sunday, injuring 11 people, including two children who were seriously hurt, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Gladkov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the two boys were undergoing surgery after sustaining serious injuries, including one with extensive wounds on both legs.