Zelenskiy fires regional military recruitment chiefs in anti-corruption drive; Russia gains ground around north-east town of Kupiansk

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced the dismissal of all the heads of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment centres in the latest drive to root out corruption after officials were accused of taking bribes from those seeking to avoid the frontlines. Ukraine’s president described the taking of cash from people who wanted to avoid conscription while others suffered as a form of treachery.

Russia on Friday said it had improved its fighting positions around the north-east Ukraine town of Kupiansk, where its advance has prompted Ukrainian officials to urge residents to evacuate. Kupiansk and the surrounding areas of the north-east Kharkiv region were recaptured by Kyiv’s forces in September but Moscow has since pushed back.

Russian forces fired four Kinzhal hypersonic missiles on western Ukraine early Friday, targeting an airfield but killing an eight-year-old boy who lived nearby, Ukraine said. Of the missiles fired from southern and central Russia, one was shot down over the Kyiv region by air defences, but the rest struck close to an airfield in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region, the Ukrainian air force said.

The US has imposed new sanctions on four “prominent members of Russia’s financial elite”, the US treasury department said in a statement on Friday. All four have served on the supervisory board of the Alfa Group Consortium, one of Russia’s largest financial and investment conglomerates.

The European Union has delivered 223,800 shells to Ukraine under the first part of a plan to provide a million artillery rounds to aid Kyiv’s fight against Russia, a spokesperson said on Friday.

At least 499 children have been killed and 1,097 injured so far in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office said on Friday. The office, tasked with tallying Russia’s war crimes, counted at least 81 new crimes registered this week, bringing the total to 102,849.

Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko said he had ordered “contact” with Poland and that he was ready to talk amid rising border tensions between the Nato member and the Moscow ally. “We need to talk to the Poles. I ordered the prime minister to contact them,” Lukashenko said on Friday, according to state news agency Belta.

Russian media has reported that the Kremlin is considering closing some or all Moscow airports as Kyiv continues its drone attacks on the Russian capital.

Repairs to the Chonhar Bridge that links Crimea to Kherson will take at least a month, the Russian-imposed acting governor of the occupied portion of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, was quoted as saying. The bridge was damaged in a Ukrainian strike on 6 August.

Russian authorities have taken Ukrainian teenagers from occupied territories of the country to a military education camp in Russia, where they received military training, Ukraine’s Centre of National Resistance said. The camp opened in the town of Penza on 1 August, it said.

Ukrainian border guards have stopped a number of Ukrainian men attempting to leave the country, apparently to avoid conscription in the war. The State Border Guard Service said that in Odesa, guards found two Ukrainian men of military age hiding in a vehicle after paying two Moldovans $4,500 each to get them to Moldova. In Zakarpattia province in Ukraine’s west, border guards stopped a vehicle in which four men had paid smugglers $4,000 each to cross into Romania.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister, vowed that any Taurus cruise missile supplied to Kyiv would be used only within Ukrainian borders. This has been a point of contention between Kyiv and its western allies – Kyiv has been asking for Taurus missiles, which can travel more than 500km (300 miles), but nations such as Germany have balked at the request over concerns about the long range.

One missile strike was destroyed but probability of airstrikes remains high, says general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces

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Daniel Boffey is in Ukraine for the Guardian:

There have been four major explosions in the last few minutes in Kyiv. The blasts could be heard across the Ukrainian capital.

Air defence foils strike on Kyiv; Russia claims to have downed Ukrainian drone over Moscow after airport temporarily closed

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Air defence appears to have prevented Russian strikes on Kyiv on Friday morning, with falling debris striking the city but no casualties reported. Mayor Vitali Klitschko posted to Telegram to state: “In addition to the debris of the rocket that fell on the territory of one of the capital’s children’s hospitals, two more crash sites were found in the Obolon district of Kyiv. The roof of a private house was damaged on Bogatyrska Street. Also in Obolon, a wreck was discovered in an open area in one of the summer cooperatives. There are no casualties.”

Sergey Sobyanin, mayor of Moscow, has reported that nobody has been injured after a drone was downed over the city. He posted to Telegram to say: “An attempt was made to fly a drone over the city. As a result of the air defence work, it was eliminated. No one was hurt when debris fell in the area of ​​Karamyshevskaya embankment. There are no serious damages. Emergency services are on site.”

Vnukovo airport in Moscow was temporarily closed due to a drone in the region’s airspace.

Two people – a woman and a 44-year-old man – were injured when artillery fire hit the city of Kherson. Another man was injured in the region in a drone strike on Beryslav.

Ukrainian forces have recaptured the heights over Bakhmut and are successfully encircling Russian troops in the city, the deputy defence minister in Kyiv has said. In an interview with the Guardian, Hanna Maliar said Russian soldiers could no longer move around Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region and progress was being made in outflanking enemy forces after months of deadly battles.

A Russian missile struck a hotel in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday evening, leaving one dead and 16 injured, Ukrainian officials said.

Zaporizhzhia governor Yuriy Malashko said the 16 injured included four children. UN staff used the hotel when they worked in the town, said Denise Brown, the humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine. It was the second strike on Zaporizhzhia in as many days. Two young women and a man were killed and nine other people were wounded in a Russian missile attack on Wednesday.

Tass reports that Ukrainian forces have hit the occupied city of Horlivka in Donetsk with four cluster munitions. There were no details of any casualties.

Russian authorities appear to have completely ruled out any Ukrainian involvement in the major explosion at the Zagorsk optical and mechanical plant in Sergiev Posad, near Moscow. Interfax reports that a criminal case has been initiated on violation of industrial safety requirements, and the technical director of the Piro-Ross company, which owned the warehouse where the explosion occurred, was detained. Eight people are still reported to be missing, with 84 wounded. One person is known to have died.

The White House is asking Congress for an additional $24bn in Ukraine aid, senior administration officials revealed on Thursday. The US has so far given Ukraine more than $113bn in aid since Russia invaded in February 2021, making it Ukraine’s biggest funder in its defense against Russia.