August 24, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has moved here.

Damage seen from a reported strike in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast region of Ukraine. Note that CNN could not independently verify this image. 

President Volodymyr Zelensky says the death toll has risen to 22 people in Wednesday’s attack on the Chaplyne train station in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. 

The attack occurred on the Chaplyne train station and at least 50 people were injured. Earlier in the day, Zelensky said he expects the number of injured to increase.

Zelensky speaking to the UN Security Council earlier on Wednesday, August 24.

The US will provide Ukraine VAMPIRE counter-unmanned aerial system, or counter-drone system that uses “small missiles essentially to shoot missiles out of the sky,” Department of Defense undersecretary for policy Dr. Colin Kahl told reporters on Wednesday. The VAPIRE counter-UAS systems are included in the latest $3 billion US security assistance package for Ukraine announced Wednesday. 

The US continues to “train Ukrainian forces on all systems” that the US and NATO allies are providing, Kahl said. This training has been happening on a “rolling basis,” he added.

For training on systems included in the latest package of security assistance, the US believes there is “time to train the Ukrainians on whatever system they are not familiar with,” Kahl added.

Because the latest security assistance comes from Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funding — meaning it will be sourced and produced by industry partners and not directly from DoD stockpiles of weapons — it could take “months to get on contract and one, two, three years in some instances to arrive in Ukraine,” Kahl said. 

An 11-year-old was among those killed in Wednesday’s attack on the Chaplyne train station in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukrainian Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said on Twitter.

He wrote, “Just recently, 15 people, including an 11-year-old child, were killed during a rocket attack on the Chaplyne railway station. About 50 more were wounded. What else is needed for the world to recognize this ersatz country as a terrorist? We will not forget. We will not forgive.”

The regional office of the State Emergency Service in the Dnipropetrovsk region tells CNN rescuers are still working on the scene.

See the Ukrainian parliament speaker’s tweet:

A Ukrainian Premier League (UPL) football match in Lviv was halted four times on Wednesday as a result of multiple air raid sirens at Skif Stadium in Lviv, according to the UPL. The match, between Rukh Lviv and Metalist Kharkiv, was the only league fixture impacted by the sirens on Wednesday.

In an email to CNN, the UPL stated “Safe and security measures is the main priority for us, so both teams had to go to the shelter every time, according to the available safety protocols. The overall time of the match was indeed 4 and half hour(s).”

Social media accounts posted videos showing the events at the stadium, including what reportedly happened when the first siren went off, and of the players returning to the pitch after one of the stoppages.

Metalist Kharkiv won the match 2-1.

Read more about the league’s restart and its protocol surrounding air raid sirens here. 

Russia has conducted “missile strikes across Ukrainian territory” on Wednesday, according to Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov.

“The aggressor … proved the expectations that we had and is conducting today missile strikes across the Ukrainian territory,” Sak told CNN’s Sara Sidner on “Amanpour.”

He said that Ukraine had “been receiving warnings about the possibility of massive missile strikes” on Ukraine’s Independence Day for nearly a week.

Wednesday marks six months since Russia’s invasion and 31 years since Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union.

Sak added that Ukraine had been prepared for strikes because it had been living in an “atmosphere of missile terror for six months.”

Sak said that an 11-year-old child in the Dnipro region had been killed and that residential homes had also been destroyed.

“The number of strikes, the number of regions of Ukraine which are targeted, the number of air raid sirens…this is abnormal, even by our standards,” he said.

After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February, its currency — the ruble — crashed, with Moscow scrambling to prevent financial meltdown.

Tough sanctions: The United States, European Union and other Western allies imposed sanctions on much of the country’s banking system, including freezing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of reserves Moscow had been stockpiling for years to shield the economy.

In response, Russia’s central bank introduced policies to prevent investors and companies from selling the currency and other measures that force them to buy it. Russia has also demanded that European countries make energy payments in rubles, cutting off gas supplies to customers who refused to do so.

But the ruble has stabilized in recent months. Despite the early impact of the sanctions, they have largely failed to cripple Russia’s economy, as surging energy prices have padded the country’s coffers.

Meanwhile, Russia’s currency soared to a seven-year high against the US dollar, thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to support the ruble.

And although the country defaulted on its foreign debt in June, global markets barely reacted —  the move had been widely expected, and the market had been bracing itself.

US President Joe Biden will speak Thursday with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to update him on US arms shipments and congratulate him on Ukrainian Independence Day, according to the White House.

John Kirby, the communications coordinator at the National Security Council, said the US would continue to “rally the free world” and “galvanize allies and partners” to support Ukraine as the Russian invasion hits the six-month mark. 

He said the phone call between Biden and Zelensky would reaffirm those commitments.

“The President’s looking forward to that,” Kirby said, while saying there were no travel plans to discuss for Biden to visit Kyiv. He said if a “trip makes sense,” it would come under consideration.

Biden today announced a nearly $3 billion security assistance package to Ukraine.

Warning of a potential next step in the Russian invasion, Kirby said the US has information showing Russia is preparing to hold “sham referenda” in regions of Ukraine, potentially within days.

He said an announcement could come before the end of the week. The potential regions where a referenda could occur include Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, along with Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

He said the US expects Russia to manipulate the results of the votes and falsely claim the Ukrainian people want to join Russia.

“It will be critical to call out and counter this disinformation in real time,” he said.

He said the US information shows Russian officials are concerned there would be low voter turnout in the upcoming votes.

The threat of nuclear calamity has hung for months over Russia’s half-year war in Ukraine.

Those fears were renewed in the last two weeks after shelling intensified around the massive Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which has been under Russian control since March.

Attacks at the complex, which have ramped up as fighting flares in Ukraine’s south, have sparked concerns about the specter of nuclear disaster, leading the United Nations’ watchdog and world leaders to demand that a mission be allowed to visit the site and assess the damage.

There’s been a barrage of accusations made by each side about security and military action at and around the plant. The lack of independent access to the plant makes it impossible to verify what is happening there. Over the past month, a number of rockets and shells have landed on the territory of the plant, according to satellite imagery analyzed by CNN.

So just how real is the risk that the fighting poses?

Nuclear experts are keen to defuse some of the more alarmist warnings, explaining that the main threat is closest to the plant itself and doesn’t justify Europe-wide alerts. Experts are particularly wary of any comparisons to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, a repeat of which is incredibly unlikely, they said.

Russia’s invasion triggered fears about nuclear safety at the start of the war

In late February and March, the Russian occupation of Chernobyl in northern Ukraine triggered fears that safety standards inside the exclusion zone could be compromised.

During the first week of the war, the plant and its surrounding territory fell into the hands of Russian troops. They withdrew on March 31, according to Ukraine’s nuclear operator.

Ukraine’s government said that Russian forces had looted and destroyed a lab close to the abandoned nuclear plant, which was used to monitor radioactive waste.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed its government on Wednesday to pay 10,000 rubles ($613) to families with children in the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, according to the Kremlin.

According to the Kremlin’s readout, the payments will be administered to families with children aged 6 to 18 living in Zaporizhizhia, Kharkiv and Kherson regions, as well as the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic.

The money amounts are scheduled to be paid by Sept. 15 to families whose children go to school in the Russian-occupied territories. 

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that Ukraine’s health system has managed to survive, despite Russia’s invasion.

The head of the WHO went on to say that “though shaken, the health system has not collapsed. WHO continues to support the Ministry of Health of Ukraine to restore disrupted services, displaced health workers, and destroyed infrastructure, which is essential not only for the health of Ukraine’s people but for the country’s resilience and recovery. But no system can deliver optimum health to its people under the stress of war, which is why we continue to call on the Russian Federation to end this war.” 

Six months into Russia’s invasion, the WHO said it has helped deliver more than “1,300 metric tonnes of critical medical supplies to Ukraine in coordination with the Ministry of Health and partners, with more on the way.”

The agency said this includes “power generators, ambulances, and oxygen supplies for medical facilities; supplies for trauma and emergency surgeries; and medicines to help treat noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). However, attacks on health continue unabated, with 473 WHO-verified attacks recorded this past half-year, resulting in at least 98 deaths and 134 injuries.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appears on screen during the UN Security Council meeting on August 24 at UN headquarters in New York.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the UN Security Council virtually Wednesday, urging that the organization’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), take permanent control of the situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant as soon as possible. He also called on Russia to completely withdraw from the plant.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres also said he is “gravely concerned” by the situation at Zaporizhzhia.

“The warning lights are flashing. Any actions that might endanger the physical integrity, safety or security of the nuclear plant are simply unacceptable. Any further escalation of the situation could lead to self destruction,” Guterres said while speaking at the UN Security Council.

The UN secretariat is in close contact with the IAEA to support any mission to the power plant from Kyiv provided both Russia and Ukraine agree.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has claimed the lives of 133 Ukrainian athletes and coaches, the Ukraine Ministry of Youth and Sports announced on Tuesday.

CNN is not able to independently confirm the number of deaths of Ukrainian athletes and coaches.

Ukraine’s Independence Day this year marks six months exactly since Russia invaded and began a bloody war which continues to rage across the country.

The website “Sports Angels” details the lives of each sportsperson killed during the war — some on combat missions, some in their homes destroyed by shelling.

Among those killed is Ivan Bidnyak age 36 who died while fighting in the Kherson region. He represented Ukraine at the World Championships and was the first Ukrainian to compete in shooting at the London 2012 Olympics. Eleven-year-old gymnast Kateryna Diachenko was reportedly killed when a shell hit her house in Mariupol on March 10 along with her father, mother and brother.

CNN’s Ben Morse contributed reporting to this story.

Police detain Yekaterinburg ex-mayor Yevgeny Roizman, center, in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on August 24.

Prominent opposition leader Yevgeny Roizman was detained by Russian police Wednesday for allegedly “discrediting” the Russian army, the country’s state-run media reported.

A criminal case has been opened against Roizman based on a video posted on his YouTube channel, according to TASS news agency, citing a law enforcement source.

Roizman — who is also the former mayor of Yekaterinburg, a city east of the Ural mountains — has been detained for 48 hours, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. He is due to be taken to Moscow for further investigation, a source told RIA Novosti.

A video shared by the pro-Kremlin Mash Telegram channel showed police officers in flak vests and black balaclavas, storming Roizman’s apartment on Wednesday morning. Another video showed Roizman leaving his apartment with police when asked by bystanders he said he was arrested for using the word “invasion.”

“We already know everything about our country. This is nothing new,” Roizman said in a video while leaving his apartment.

According to Russian state media, the searches took place at three addresses: at his home, in Roizman’s foundation — where he regularly hosted meetings with local residents — and in his private museum, the Nevyansk Icon Museum.

Earlier this year, Roizman was fined three times for “discrediting” the Russian Armed Forces on social media. 

In May, Roizman was fined another 85,000 rubles ($1,412) for a comment on Twitter in which he used profanities in response to a statement from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.  

Some background: Following the arrest of Ilya Yashin, Roizman remained the last prominent Russian opposition public figure openly speaking out against the war in Ukraine. Roizman was well-known for calling out Russian officials on Twitter and remaining in Russia despite the widespread crackdown on the opposition.  

Last month, Roizman tweeted a photo of himself alongside Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin with the caption: “I am the only one still free.”  

Roizman came to prominence as a mayor of Yekaterinburg from 2013-2018 and for his anti-Kremlin stance. Roizman’s popularity and his opposition views resulted in authorities abolishing direct mayoral elections in Yekaterinburg in 2018.

Despite the loss of public office, Roizman continued to be one of the most influential voices in Russian opposition and was a close friend of jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny. 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, center, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, right, walk at Kyiv's "Maidan" Independence Square on Ukraine's Independence Day on August 24.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a $66 million (54 million pounds) aid package for Ukraine during a surprise visit to Kyiv on Wednesday, telling the country that it “can and will win” the war against Russia. 

The UK called the package “a step up in the Ukrainian’s current capability, improving their long-range surveillance and defensive targeting ability,” according to a Downing Street news release. 

Here’s what is in the package: It comprises of 2,000 state-of-the-art drones and loitering munitions which will “enable Ukraine to better track and target invading Russian forces,” the news release said. 

It also contains 850 hand-launched Black Hornet micro-drones, which are “specifically designed for use in towns and villages, and are deployed to detect approaching enemy forces,” according to the news release. 

Johnson said he came to Ukraine “to deliver the message that the United Kingdom is with you and will be with you for the days and months ahead, and you can and will win.”

According to Downing Street, during the visit, Johnson and Zelensky held talks “on the challenges of the winter ahead for the country,” during which the prime minister reiterated the “UK’s all-encompassing and unwavering support for the Ukrainian people, from humanitarian aid to supporting the investigation of war crimes and rebuilding the country’s economy.” 

Correction: An earlier version of this post included the wrong number of drones provided in the aid package. There were 2,000 drones.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded British Prime Minister Boris Johnson the Order of Liberty during a ceremony in Kyiv on Wednesday.

The award is “reflecting the work that Boris has been doing for our country and all of Europe,” Zelenksy said while giving it to Johnson.

The British prime minister made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Wednesday as the country marks its Independence Day.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine, on August 24.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in Kyiv to mark Ukraine’s Independence Day, Downing Street said via Twitter Wednesday.

Today marks 31 years since Ukraine voted for independence from the Soviet Union. It is also the six-month anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

Johnson has been one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine as it tries to defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked assault, and the trip on Wednesday was his third visit to the Ukrainian capital since the war started in late February.

He became one of the first foreign leaders to make the precarious trip to the Ukrainian capital in late April, then returned on another surprise visit in June.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on his Telegram channel: “I am happy to meet Boris Johnson, a great friend of Ukraine, on Independence Day.” 

Ukrainian servicemen fire a French self-propelled 155 mm/52-calibre Caesar gun towards Russian positions near the front line in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on June 15.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine reaches the six-month mark, officials across Europe are worried that the Western consensus to supply arms to Ukraine could fall apart amid the real possibility of economic recession.

The continent is now facing a bleak winter of rising food prices, limited energy to heat homes, and a growing fuel crisis.

Western officials and diplomats spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe sensitive conservations among governments.

War fatigue: On top of the economic and military costs, there is also serious concern that war fatigue could influence foreign governments’ contributions as the conflict stagnates.

“Back in February, it was easy to jump on the anti-Putin bandwagon. Now the war is in the boring strategic stage. There are fewer daily gains and losses and there are fewer photo opportunities,” according to a NATO diplomat.

Of course, this won’t be as straightforward as countries simply withdrawing their support. But it might involve countries changing the parameters of exactly what outcome they support.

Shifting end game: Some Western European countries, most notably Germany and France, have said publicly that dialogue will have to exist between the West and Moscow.

“Do we all still have the same view of the end game? Is it just getting back to the borders of before Russia invaded? Or is it back to pre-2014, before Russia annexed Crimea? And will we deal with Putin after the war or will he need to stand down?” a European diplomat said.

Read the full analysis here.

Leaders from around the globe marked this year’s Ukrainian Independence Day and pledged continued support amid Russia’s invasion via messages on Twitter:

US President Joe Biden

President of the European Council Charles Michel

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

US Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers a speech in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, US, on February 4.

US President Joe Biden marked Ukraine’s Independence Day Wednesday by reiterating the United States’ commitment to Ukraine — six months after Russia began its invasion — with a new $2.98 billion investment in security assistance.

Because this package falls under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), it will not be drawn from existing US inventories. Instead, it will come from contracts with arms manufacturers, according to a US official. 

Last week, the US announced a $775 million package that included HIMARS and 105mm howitzer ammo, anti-armor missiles, mine-clearing capabilities and more. That package came through Presidential Drawdown Authority, which means it will be pulled directly from US stocks.

Biden also congratulated the people of Ukraine on 31 years of independence, noting that the country has “inspired the world,” and added that the US “looks forward to continuing to celebrate Ukraine as a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous state for decades to come.”

CNN’s Oren Liebermann and Ellie Kaufman contributed to this report.