Moscow warns US over diplomatic ‘point of no return’ – as it happened

Across Europe, beaches and cities are filled with tourists. Among them, perhaps keeping their voices low, is a sprinkling of Russians. But if some politicians have their way, this may be the last summer Russian tourists can spend on a Mediterranean beach.

Countries including Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and the Czech Republic have called for the EU to limit or block short-term Schengen visas for Russians, in protest at their country’s invasion of Ukraine.

After six months of war, the proposal echoes widespread frustration with a Russian public that seems either unable or unwilling to mount a meaningful resistance to the war being waged in their name. The situation has been aggravated by high-profile incidents including a Russian woman harassing two Ukrainian refugees in Europe.

“Stop issuing tourist visas to Russians,” Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas wrote on Twitter last week. “Visiting #Europe is a privilege, not a human right.”

Ukraine’s defence intelligence agency warned of fresh “provocations” at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as both sides again accused the other of shelling Europe’s largest nuclear facility, Reuters reports.

Ukraine’s military command said “fierce fighting” continued in Pisky, an eastern village which Russia had earlier in the day said it had full control over.

“The occupiers are trying to break through the defense of our troops in the directions of Oleksandropol, Krasnohorivka, Avdiivka, Maryinka, and Pisky,” Ukraine’s general staff said in its nightly briefing note on Facebook.

“Fierce fighting continues,” it added, Reuters reports.

Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of Melitopol, posted on Telegram that “an explosion was heard in the northeastern part” of the city.

“We’re waiting for good news about Russian losses,” he added.

The city, which is east of the Dnipro river and north east of the Crimean peninsula, has been occupied since March.

Russian troops and Kremlin-backed rebels are seeking to seize Ukrainian-held areas north and west of the city of Donetsk to expand the separatists’ self-proclaimed republic, the Associated Press reports.

But the Ukrainian military said on Saturday that its forces had prevented an overnight advance toward the smaller cities of Avdiivka and Bakhmut.

The Ukrainian governor of the Luhansk province, which is part of the fight over the Donbas region and was overrun by Russian forces last month, claimed that Ukrainian troops still held a small area.

Writing on Telegram, Luhansk governor Serhii Haidai said the defending troops remained holed up inside an oil refinery on the edge of Lysychansk, a city that Moscow claimed to have captured, and also control areas near a village.

“The enemy is burning the ground at the entrances to the Luhansk region because it cannot overcome [Ukrainian resistance along] these few kilometers,” Haidai said.

“It is difficult to count how many thousands of shells this territory of the free Luhansk region has withstood over the past month and a half,” he added.

The Ukrainian army’s Operational Command South posted a series of updates on its Facebook page on Saturday, saying that over night the Nikopol and Kryvorizky districts in the south of the Dnipropetrovsk region were shelled by Russian rocket salvo fire systems.

In the city of Nikopol, the update said, 11 high-rise buildings, 13 private buildings and a kindergarten were “mutilated”, while a gas pipeline and power line had been hit and currently “disabled”. Nobody was injured.

The update added:

In Kherson Oblast, in addition to physical and moral pressure, an information war continues on the occupied territory. Propaganda channels daily inform about the preparation and holding of the “referendum” and accession to Russia.

The update said another ship had arrived in a Black Sea port for loading with the help of the UN World Food Program, and would later leave for Ethiopia with 23,000 tons of grain.

My colleagues Luke Harding and Christopher Cherry wrote this report earlier about the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which is now on the frontline between Russian-occupied and Ukrainian-controlled territory.

Russia is readying itself for a prolonged war in Ukraine, according to the US-based analysts Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

A new budget is reportedly available that would boost industrial spending by $10bn and support war efforts.

The ISW reports the The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) as saying that the Military-Industrial Commission of the Russian Federation, chaired by Russian president Vladimir Putin, is preparing to change the state defense order programme by early September to increase expenditures by 600-700 billion rubles (approximately $10bn).

Russian media outlet Ura reported that Russian defense minister Sergey Shoigu likely visited the Uralvagonzavod factory, the largest tank manufacturer in Russia and the producer of Russia’s T-72 main battle tanks, on 12 August, the ISW said.

The number of fatalities after a Russian missile strike on Kramatorsk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, has grown to three, the Kyiv Post reports, citing a report by Ukrinform giving the Kramatorsk mayor, Oleksandr Honcharenko, as the source.

According to him, 13 more people were injured and 20 houses were damaged in the attack on 12 August.

On 11 August, the Russian army hit the Donetsk region 37 times, the Kyiv Post reported, targeting a residential area and a coke and chemical plant. Civilians were reportedly killed and injured.

Ukraine has urged those disgruntled by Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s call to western countries to ban Russian tourists to “direct their complaints to the Kremlin”.

The Ukrainian president this week insisted a travel ban against Russian citizens would be more effective than sanctions, and warned Europe must not be “transformed into a supermarket” for anyone to enter.

“Russians who are upset with the prospect of being banned from tourist travel to Europe can direct their complaints to the Kremlin and over 70% of their compatriots who support the war,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said.

“No one proposes to ban those few Russians who may need an asylum or humanitarian entry.”

The US has said it is concerned by reports of British, Swedish and Croatian nationals being charged by “illegitimate authorities” in eastern Ukraine.

“Russia and its proxies have an obligation to respect international humanitarian law, including the right and protections afforded to prisoners of war,” the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said.

The US and Russia are discussing a prisoner exchange that would involve trading a notorious Russian arms trafficker for American basketball star Brittney Griner, a Russian diplomat said on Saturday.

It marked the first time that Russia said that the talks concerned exchanging Viktor Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death,” for two-time Olympian Griner, AFP reports.

“The discussions on the very sensitive topic of an exchange are proceeding via the channels chosen by our presidents,” Alexander Datchiev, the head the North America department at the Russian foreign ministry, was quoted as saying by the Russian state news agency TASS.

“Silent diplomacy continues and should bear fruit if Washington, of course, is careful not to fall into propaganda,” he said.

Griner, 31, who was was in Russia to play for the professional Yekaterinburg team during her off-season from the Phoenix Mercury, was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in February for possessing vape cartridges with a small amount of cannabis oil.

She was given a nine-year prison sentence on drug smuggling charges in early August.

Bout, also dubbed the Bill Gates of Arms Dealing, was extradited to the US from Thailand in 2010, after a sting operation by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) two years earlier.

In 2012 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison after a New York jury found him guilty of conspiring to kill American citizens and US officials, delivering anti-aircraft missiles and aiding a terrorist organisation.

Russia has repeatedly attempted to negotiate his release via a prisoner swap.

Bout inspired the 2005 arms smuggling movie “Lord of War” starring Nicolas Cage and was dubbed the “Merchant of Death” by former British minister Peter Hain for supplying weapons to Angola and Liberia.

Russian forces have taken full control of Pisky, a village on the outskirts in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Interfax cited the Russian defence ministry as saying on Saturday.

Russian and pro-Russian forces had reported that they had taken full control of Pisky more than a week ago.

The ministry also said that Russian forces had destroyed a US-supplied HIMARS rocket system near the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk and a depot with ammunition for the system, Interfax reported.

Ukrainian president Zelenskiy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Saturday the war could only end with the return of the Crimea peninsula and the punishment of the Russian leaders who ordered the military invasion, saying on Twitter:

The Kyiv Independent reports that the Ukrainian military has shot down a Russian fighter jet, as well as four Russian drones.

Ukraine’s health minister has accused Russian authorities of committing a crime against humanity by blocking access to affordable medicines in areas its forces have occupied since invading the country in February.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Viktor Liashko said Russian authorities repeatedly have blocked efforts to provide state-subsidised drugs to people in occupied cities, towns and villages.

Speaking at the health ministry in Kyiv late on Friday, Liashko said:

Throughout the entire six months of war, Russia has not [allowed] proper humanitarian corridors so we could provide our own medicines to the patients that need them.

We believe that these actions are being taken with intent by Russia, and we consider them to be crimes against humanity and war crimes that will be documented and will be recognised.

When roads and bridges have been damaged in areas now controlled by the Ukrainian forces […] it is difficult to get someone who had a heart attack or a stroke to the hospital.

Sometimes, we can’t make it in time, the ambulance can’t get there in time. That’s why war causes many more casualties [than those killed in the fighting].

The Ukrainian government has a programme that provides medications to people with cancer and chronic health conditions.

The destruction of hospitals and infrastructure along with the displacement of an estimated 7 million people inside the country also have interfered with other forms of treatment, according to United Nations and Ukrainian officials.

The war has caused severe disruptions to the country’s state-run health service, which was undergoing major reforms, largely in response to the coronavirus pandemic, when the invasion began in February.

The World Health Organization said it recorded 445 attacks on hospitals and other health care facilities as of 11 August that directly resulted in 86 deaths and 105 injuries.

But Liashko said the real number of casualties because of damages to the countries health and road infrastructure “cannot be calculated.”

Two more ships left from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports on Saturday, Turkey’s defence ministry said, bringing the total number of ships that have departed the country under a UN-brokered deal to 16.

Barbados-flagged Fulmar S left Ukraine’s Chornomorsk port, carrying 12,000 tonnes of corn to Turkey’s southern Iskenderun province, it said.

The Marshall Island-flagged Thoe departed from the same port and headed to Turkey’s Tekirdag, carrying 3,000 tonnes of sunflower seeds.

The statement added that another ship would depart from Turkey on Saturday to Ukraine to buy grains, Reuters reports.

The Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, has again complained that the lack of comprehensive Schengen zone travel restrictions for Russians puts an “unfair” burden on countries neighbouring Russia, dpa reports.

Baltic states Estonia and Latvia have already tightened entry rules, with Finland mulling similar proposals. But Germany and the EU Commission reject a blanket freeze of Russian tourist visas.

Kallas said:

Europe has banned air travel from Russia to Europe. This means that the only way Russians can get to Europe is through only three countries - Finland, Estonia and Latvia.

So it’s not really fair that all other Schengen countries issue these visas, but the three of us actually carry the burden.

Kallas said the Kremlin’s hostile reactions to debates about travel restrictions showed that an entry ban for Russian nationals could be an effective instrument to complement other sanctions.

Earlier this week, Kallas tweeted:

In response, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev compared Kallas to a “Nazi”.

A day earlier, the Finnish prime minister, Sanna Marin, said in a TV interview that “it is not right that while Russia is waging an aggressive, brutal war of aggression in Europe, Russians can live a normal life, travel in Europe, be tourists.”

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday reiterated his call on EU states to ban visas for Russian nationals to prevent the bloc from becoming a “supermarket” open to anyone with the means to enter.

Here is the British defence ministry’s daily update about the war in Ukraine in full:

The two primary road bridges giving access to the pocket of Russian-occupied territory on the west bank of the Dnipro in Ukraine’s Kherson region are now probably out of use for the purposes of substantial military resupply, British military intelligence said on Saturday.

Even if Russia managed to make significant repairs to the bridges, they would remain a key vulnerability, Reuters reported the UK’s Ministry of Defence as saying.

It said in an intelligence update:

Ground resupply for the several thousand Russian troops on the west bank is almost certainly reliant on just two pontoon ferry crossing points.

With their supply chain constrained, the size of any stockpiles Russia has managed to establish on the west bank is likely to be a key factor in the force’s endurance, according to the update.