Latest developments:

Ukrainian soldiers recaptured the southeastern village of Staromaiorske in Donetsk region. the recapture is part of Ukraine's ongoing counteroffensive push through the Russian-occupied southeast.
U.S. Abrams tanks are now likely to arrive in Ukraine in September.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited a historic Odesa cathedral that was damaged by a recent Russian airstrike.

 

Ukrainian soldiers have recaptured the southeastern village of Staromaiorske from Russian forces, a video published Thursday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed, as Ukraine continues its counteroffensive push through the Russian-occupied southeast.

“The 35th brigade and the ‘Ariy’ territorial defense unit have fulfilled their task and liberated the village of Staromaiorske. Glory to Ukraine!” a soldier said in a video that was not immediately geolocated, according to Reuters.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar declared Staromaiorske liberated, saying, “Our defenders are now continuing to clear the settlement.”

Staromaiorske is located in the region of Donetsk, south of a group of small settlements that Ukraine recaptured during a counteroffensive it began in June.

Zelenskyy has recognized that the counteroffensive against Russian forces, who hold parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, has been slower than he wanted. But Wednesday, he lauded “very good results” from the front.

Russian forces have established an expansive network of minefields and trenches in the south to deter the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Ukrainian attacks in the strategically significant south had escalated, but he told Russian television that the Ukrainians had made no progress.

The recapture of Staromaiorske is part of Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive push through the Russian-occupied southeast. The strategy has focused on retaking villages as Ukrainian forces move southward.

Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military analyst, said the new focus on the southward push was Staromlynivka, a village less than three miles away.

“It really serves as a stronghold for the Russian occupiers, the peak of the second defensive line in this location,” he said in an interview with the RBC UA media outlet.

For months, Ukraine has been running low on ammunition it needs in its lengthy fight against Russia.

But now, U.S. Abrams tanks are likely to arrive in Ukraine in September, Politico reported Thursday, citing six officials familiar with the plan.

Previously, Pentagon officials said the tanks would arrive on Ukrainian battlefields sometime in the fall. The United States is planning on sending 31 tanks in total.

A batch of tanks will go to Germany in August, where they will undergo final refurbishments before getting shipped to Ukraine. In June, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he hoped the tanks would arrive in time for the ongoing counteroffensive.

This development comes a couple of weeks after the United States announced it would send controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine.

In a joint statement Thursday evening, U.S. President Joe Biden and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni affirmed their commitment to continue providing political, military, financial and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

Also on Thursday, Zelenskyy visited the historic Transfiguration Cathedral, which was damaged by a recent Russian airstrike on the southern port city of Odesa. The cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Ukrainian culture has been a target since Russia invaded the country in February 2022. Since the war began, at least 274 Ukrainian cultural sites have been damaged, including 117 religious sites, according to UNESCO.

Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Sweden’s prime minister said Thursday that police have received several permit applications for the burning of religious texts in the country next week, and that he fears this may escalate tensions further with the Muslim world.

In his first public comments since the start of the Quran burning crisis that has severely strained Stockholm’s ties with Muslim nations, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told Swedish news agency TT he was “extremely concerned” about a new wave of desecrations. 

“It’s the police that make those decisions, not me. If they [permits] are granted, we face a number of days with the obvious risk of serious things happening,” Kristersson told TT.

A recent string of public Quran desecrations by a handful of anti-Islam activists in Sweden — and more recently in neighboring Denmark — has sparked angry demonstrations in Muslim countries.

Sweden does not have a law specifically prohibiting the burning or desecration of the Quran or other religious texts. The right to hold public demonstrations is valued and protected by the Swedish Constitution. Police generally give permission based on whether they believe a public gathering can be held without major disruptions or risks to public safety.

The Swedish Security Service said Wednesday that Sweden’s image among Muslim nations and its security situation have deteriorated after the recent Quran burnings, and that it could face threats from “within the violent Islamist milieu.”

Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom and security service representatives appeared before the Swedish Parliament’s foreign affairs committee Thursday to discuss the Quran burning crisis, at the request of the opposition Social Democratic Party.

After the meeting, Billstrom told TT that the situation was serious but that there was no “quick fix” to cool down the anti-Swedish mood in the Muslim world.

“Our primary and most important task is to protect Swedish interests and the safety of Swedes both here and abroad,” Billstrom was quoted by TT. “We should take the developments that are now underway very seriously; everyone in our country should do so.”

Kristersson said his government has created a new task force among security agencies to come up with measures to combat terrorism and violent extremism.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has called an emergency remote meeting of members’ foreign ministers on July 31 at the ministerial level to discuss the Quran burnings in Sweden and Denmark. 
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KIRKENES, Norway — In a place far above the Arctic Circle, a group of Russian journalists are working with Norwegians to break through the strict state controls that have gripped the media in their homeland.

At the Barents Observer, an online newspaper that has become a leading provider of news from the Far North over the past two decades, the two local journalists are now in the minority.

Based in the town of Kirkenes, close to the Russian border, the news outlet opened its doors to reporters who fled Russia after a clampdown on the press followed the invasion of Ukraine.

Denis Zagore left the Russian city of Murmansk in September, he said.

“When the war started, in my podcasts for Barents Observer, I said ‘dictator Putin,’ I said, ‘not SMO’ (special military operation) or something like that,” Zagore told AFP. “I started to understand it could be unsafe if I continued to do it in Murmansk,” which lies 220 kilometers (137 miles) over the border.

“If you (want to) say Putin is a dictator and war is war, it’s more safe here,” he said.

Blocked in Russia

The Barents Observer now has three Russian reporters and a Russian trainee and has started publishing more articles in Russian than English.

“We were already blocked in Russia and have been in tremendous trouble with the Russian censorship agency,” editor Thomas Nilsen said. “So we said, OK, they want to make more trouble for journalists, then we can make more trouble for them.

“We don’t care about Russian censorship laws. We are here for the freedom of speech and free journalism,” Nilsen said.

Blocked since 2019, the publication is using a multitude of tricks to circumvent Russia’s attempts to limit access. Mirror sites hosted on different addresses, access via VPN services, podcast formats and a presence on YouTube mean tens of thousands of views are maintained, Nilsen said.

Coverage includes general interest news like setbacks facing a marine park in Murmansk or invasions by pink salmon, as well as stories directly linked to the conflict in Ukraine.

“We have a lot of viewers, especially among young people in Russia, that get access and get information about what’s happening with the war, with the repression in Russia, about who ends up in jail and so on,” Nilsen said, “news articles that they don’t get in their local or regional media at home.”

A Putin spider 

Russia has fallen to 164th place — out of 180 — in the annual Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, which Norway has topped for several years.

In early July, Elena Milashina, a Russian journalist with independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was badly beaten in Chechnya.

Foreign media are also on the receiving end. Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal correspondent, has been in prison since March facing espionage charges.

“Every day we were sitting in our office and didn’t know what was going to happen,” said Elizaveta Vereykina, who worked for the BBC in Moscow before joining the Barents Observer. “Would the police suddenly storm into our office and take us?

“It’s hard to live in a society that absolutely despises everything about you,” she said.

The number of Russian journalists in exile has grown in places such as Tbilisi, Yerevan, Vilnius, Riga and Kirkenes.

Trainee Olesya Krivtsova is waiting for a work permit before she can begin contributing.

She has a tattoo on her right leg: an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the shape of a spider with the Orwellian inscription “Big Brother is watching you.”

On the other ankle, she once wore an electronic bracelet. Reported by university friends in Arkhangelsk for criticizing the war on social networks, Krivtsova was placed under house arrest pending a trial for justifying terrorism and discrediting the Russian army — charges punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

“In the end, I realized the injustice of what was happening, so I left,” she said.

After ridding herself of the ankle bracelet, she traveled via Belarus and Lithuania before reaching Kirkenes.

“She said, ‘I want to change Russia and I want to do it through journalism,’” said Nilsen. “We said, ‘OK, welcome.'”
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Wildfires reached the outskirts of Athens on Thursday as strong gusts of wind caused flare-ups around Greece, disrupting highway traffic and rail services.

The fires have raged across parts of the country during three successive Mediterranean heat waves over two weeks, leaving five people dead, including two firefighting pilots, and triggering a huge evacuation of tourists over the weekend on the island of Rhodes.

Water-dropping helicopters and a ground crew scrambled early Thursday to a blaze in Kifissia, just north of Athens, which was quickly put out.

Near the central city of Volos, a wildfire burned on two fronts, forcing a section of Greece’s busiest highway to close for several hours, while national rail services passing through the area were delayed.

Firefighters also battled flames on Rhodes for a 10th successive day, while flare-ups were reported on the island of Evia.

Wildfire carbon emissions for July in Greece were the highest by a huge margin — totaling over 1 metric megaton and doubling the previous record — since records started 20 years ago, according to the European Union agency that analyzes satellite data, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

“Unfortunately, it is not all that surprising, given the extreme conditions in the region,” said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the agency. “The observed intensity and estimated emissions show how unusual the scale of the fires have been for July relative to the last 20 years of data.”

In Athens, senior members of the armed forces paid tribute to the two pilots killed in a firefighting plane crash this week, at a ceremony held at the Defense Ministry.

Cpt. Christos Moulas and Lt. Pericles Stephanidis died during a low-altitude water drop on the island of Evia.

Defense Minister Nikos Dendias said the operators had shown “self-denial in the line of duty.”

“Greece today is in mourning. Their memories will live on,” Dendias said.

Funeral services for the two airmen will be held in northern Greece later Thursday and on the island of Crete on Friday.

 
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says Ukrainian forces have been deliberate in their counteroffensive against Russia and have been “conserving manpower and equipment.”
Russia’s Federal Security Service said it found traces of explosives on a vessel en route from Turkey to Russia that had previously visited a Ukrainian port.

 

A Ukrainian official said Thursday that Russian forces carried out an overnight missile strike on the Odesa region in southern Ukraine, killing at least one person.

Oleh Kiper, the regional governor, said the attack damaged a small security building, equipment at a cargo terminal and two cars.

Kiper said the attack involved missiles fired from a submarine in the Black Sea.

Ukraine’s air force said it shot down one of two missiles Russia fired targeting Odesa, while air defense also downed eight drones that Russia launched overnight.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media that he visited the city of Dnipro, in southeastern Ukraine, to meet with military commanders and discuss issues regarding supplies and strengthening air defenses.

UN meetings

Russian bombardments are taking a heavy toll on Ukrainian cultural sites as well as grain supplies that Kyiv had been shipping to impoverished countries.

The mounting damage was spelled out Wednesday at unusual back-to-back U.N. Security Council meetings on Ukraine.

According to UNESCO, since the war began in February 2022, at least 274 Ukrainian cultural sites have been damaged, including 117 religious sites.

“Religious sites should be places of worship, not places of war,” Nihal Saad, director of the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, told the council in her briefing.

But Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy permanent U.N. ambassador, said Zelenskyy’s government was conducting a “campaign” to destroy orthodoxy in Ukraine.

He dismissed condemnations of Russia’s missile strike Sunday on the Transfiguration Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the southern city of Odesa, and suggested it was Ukraine’s fault.

“If the Russian missile truly struck the cathedral, as the Zelenskyy regime claims, then there would be nothing left of the cathedral at all,” Polyansky told the Security Council. “But it was damaged and not completely destroyed.”

At the second hearing, requested by Kyiv, Khaled Khiari, assistant secretary-general for the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, told the council that Russian strikes on grain facilities are “a calamitous turn for Ukrainians and the world.” Moscow withdrew last week from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which protected Ukrainian shipments to other countries.

“Port cities that allow for the export of grain, such as Odesa, Reni and Izmail, are a lifeline for many,” Khiari said. “Now, they are the latest casualties in this senseless, brutal war.”

Officials say that strikes on Odesa have damaged infrastructure important for future grain exports. A strike on the port of Chornomorsk last week destroyed 60,000 metric tons of grain, enough to feed 270,000 people for one year, the Word Food Program said.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russia’s attacks have global consequences for the world’s food supply, especially in parts of the world struggling with hunger and malnutrition.

“Russia is hell-bent on preventing Ukrainian grain from reaching global markets, which is why it unilaterally suspended its participation in Black Sea Grain Initiative,” she said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was continuing to try to find a way to restart the deal.

Russia has altered its naval activity in the Black Sea, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday, adding that there is a possibility Russian forces are preparing “to enforce a blockade of Ukraine” after withdrawing from the year-old grain shipment deal.

The Defense Ministry said in its daily update that the Russian corvette Sergey Kotov had deployed to the Black Sea to patrol a shipping lane between the Bosporus and Odesa.

“There is a realistic possibility that it will form part of a task group to intercept commercial vessels Russia believes are heading to Ukraine,” the British ministry said.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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PORT MORESBY, PAPUA NEW GUINEA – U.S. defense officials watching Ukraine’s slow-moving counteroffensive against Russia are not yet ready to sound any alarms, despite the lack of a major breakthrough.

There had been hope that an influx of U.S. and Western tanks and armored vehicles, as well as new supplies of ammunition, artillery and missile systems might allow Kyiv’s forces to punch through Russian lines.

Speaking during a visit to Papua New Guinea on Thursday, though, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Ukraine still has time.

“They still have a lot of options available to them,” Austin told a news conference with Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape.

“They’ve been very deliberate. They’ve been conserving manpower and equipment,” he added. “I think you can expect them to continue to press.”

Ukrainian officials have blamed Russian defenses, specifically minefields laid down by Russian forces as they dug in over the winter, for stalling their advances.

Top U.S. military officials acknowledge the Russian minefields are a problem. However, current and former officials, as well as some analysts, have expressed concerns that Ukrainian commanders have fallen back on old, Soviet-style tactics instead of embracing U.S. doctrines that could speed Kyiv’s advance.

Austin cautioned, however, that some of the expectations for Ukraine’s counteroffensive may have been too optimistic.

“We said throughout that this would be a tough fight and that this would be a long fight,” he said. “We’ve seen a great bit of that play out.”

Austin would not comment on details of Ukraine’s counteroffensive or on media reports quoting U.S. officials as saying that the counteroffensive is now in full swing with additional Ukrainian forces being thrown into the fight.

Still, he held out hope that Ukraine may see increasing victories in coming weeks.

“They have a lot of combat power,” Austin said. “Ukraine is well-trained and well-prepared to be successful.”
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