RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Ukrainian naval drones target Crimean Bridge – MOD
Multiple attempted attacks by Ukrainian maritime drones on the strategic bridge which links the Crimean peninsula to the Russian mainland were foiled on Friday evening and early Saturday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed.
“On September 1, at about 11:15pm Moscow time, the Kiev regime attempted to launch a terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge using a semi-submersible unmanned boat,” the ministry said in a brief statement, adding that the hostile craft was “promptly detected and destroyed” in the Black Sea.
Three hours later, around 2:10am Saturday, another drone was destroyed in the area as it also attempted to strike the bridge, the Russian military said. A third incoming unmanned boat was reportedly neutralized at 2:20am.
All traffic on the Crimean Bridge was briefly stopped as a precaution on Friday evening, and restored after 3am.
The Crimean Peninsula, which is home to a key Russian naval base, has been a frequent target of Ukrainian drone and missile attacks. With its fleet reduced to a handful of patrol boats, Kiev has also resorted to attacks on Russian infrastructure and ships by remotely operated vessels.
In mid-July, a drone damaged a span of the Crimean Bridge, killing two civilians and injuring their 14-year-old daughter. In August, Kiev officially admitted to the attack and even provided CNN with never-before-seen footage showing a first-person view from the drone.
The Security Service of Ukraine also claimed responsibility for the truck bomb attack on the Crimean Bridge in October of last year, which killed three civilians and significantly damaged the structure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described the attacks on the Crimean Bridge as “brutal” and pointless from a military perspective, explaining that it is no longer used to transport combat equipment. Nevertheless, Ukraine’s defense chief, Aleksey Reznikov, has vowed to continue attacking the bridge and other targets on the peninsula.
** Battlegroup East strikes Ukrainian drone control center — Russian Defense Ministry
Artillery of the battlegroup East has struck a Ukrainian drone control center in the south of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Oleg Chekhov, a spokesman for the battlegroup, told TASS.
"Rocket and cannon artillery hit the command center of Ukrainian territorial defense units in the area to the west of Vremevka <...>, a strongpoint with a satellite communication station near Novodarovka and a control point of Ukrainian unmanned aviation north of Vladimirovka," he said.
The battlegroup's forward units also struck the enemy in order to prevent its offensive operations, and aircraft struck enemy personnel clusters in the areas of Staromayorskoye, Urozhaynoye, Novomikhailovka and north of Vladimirovka in the Donetsk People's Republic.
"In the course of counterbattery combat, a towed D-30 howitzer was destroyed in the area north of Novodonetskoye, and a mortar unit east of Urozhainoye, a Valkiria fixed-wing UAV was shot down by a Tor anti-aircraft missile system," Chekhov said.
WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukraine says troops breach Russian lines, heavier defences lie ahead
Ukraine said on Friday its troops had broken through Russia's first line of defences in several places, though they then encountered even more heavily fortified Russian positions.
Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Kyiv's troops, in a much-vaunted counteroffensive against Russian forces, were advancing in the Zaporizhzhia region. Washington also said on Friday that Kyiv had made notable progress on the southern front in the last 72 hours.
"There is an offensive in several directions and in certain areas. And in some places, in certain areas, this first line was broken through," Maliar told Ukrainian television.
She added, however, that Kyiv's troops who have been battling to advance through heavily mined areas for almost three months had now run into major defensive Russian fortifications.
"Our armed forces have to overcome a lot of obstacles in order to move forward," she said.
Heavy fighting swept the villages around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, captured in May by Russian forces after months of battles, Maliar said but added it was difficult to determine whether any advances had been made.
"In the course of a single day, positions between the two sides can change several times."
The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces in its evening report on Facebook said that Russian forces had made no headway in attempts to advance in five different sectors of the front -- from Kupiansk in the northeast to different parts of Donetsk region.
In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the United States had "noted over the last 72 hours or so some notable progress by Ukrainian armed forces ...in that southern line of advance coming out of the Zaporizhzhia area".
"They have achieved some success against that second line of Russian defences", Kirby said, adding it was up to Ukraine how to capitalize on that success.
Ukraine's counteroffensive has not yet recaptured any major settlements, though it has retaken more than a dozen small villages. Last week it captured the village of Robotyne, beyond which lies Russian-occupied high ground, huge anti-tank ditches and lines of concrete fortifications visible from space.
Russia already calls the Ukrainian push a failure; Kyiv says it has been advancing slowly on purpose to minimise losses, and that its task is more difficult because it lacks the air power that its Western allies take for granted.
Kyiv bristled this week over news reports quoting unidentified U.S. officials complaining about its slow progress. Some fear the West's staunch support could begin to falter as colder and wetter weather further hampers progress on the battlefield later this year.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is expected to attend the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York this month and take part in a U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine, Albania's U.N. Ambassador Ferit Hoxha told reporters on Friday.
In an interview in Kyiv on Friday, senior presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters that for now any negotiations with Russia would amount to a "capitulation" for both Ukraine and the democracies that support it.
He said Ukraine's Western allies, who have poured in billions of dollars of weaponry to help the counteroffensive, understood there could be no kind of "compromise" with Moscow in the war.
"At the moment, the partners understand that this war will no longer end in a compromise solution - that is, either we destroy Russia's capabilities by military means, and to do this we need the appropriate tools, or this war with such level of aggression will continue for some time."
** Drone strikes on Russian soil will increase, senior Ukraine official says
A senior Ukrainian official said on Friday that drone strikes on Russian soil were set to increase and that recent such attacks showed that the war in Ukraine was gradually shifting to Russia.
In an interview, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak also ruled out peace talks for now, saying any negotiations would amount to "capitulation" on the part of Ukraine and the democracies that support it.
Ukraine had ramped up its strikes on occupied areas, and attacks inside Russia itself would also increase, carried out by "agents" or "partisans", Podolyak said.
"As for Russia ... there is an increasing number of attacks by unidentified drones launched from the territory of the Russian Federation, and the number of these attacks will increase," Podolyak told Reuters.
"Because this is the stage of the war… when hostilities are gradually being transferred to the territory of the Russian Federation," he said in the interview in his office in the heavily-defended government district in Kyiv.
Drone attacks on Russia have sharply increased in scale and frequency in recent weeks, culminating this week with strikes that hit six Russian regions in one night and destroyed transport planes in a blaze at a military airfield.
Ukraine generally cheers such attacks while stopping short of openly claiming direct responsibility for them. Its Western allies forbid it from using weapons they donate to strike Russia, although they say Kyiv has the right to carry out such attacks on military targets with its own weapons.
As the attacks have increased in frequency, Kyiv has touted its progress in developing long-range strike weapons to give it an answer to Russia's longrunning campaign of air strikes on Ukrainian cities.
RT/Tass/Reuters
