September 24, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

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

The Ukrainian military on Sunday released additional footage from the battle for the village of Andriivka, a small hamlet immediately south of the city of Bakhmut, which Kyiv’s forces say they reclaimed on September 15.

Liberating Andriivka was considered a key step in the fight for Bakhmut, Maksym Zhorin, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Third Separate Assault Brigade, said at the time.

Meanwhile, Russian shelling killed three people and wounded at least nine others Sunday in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Ukrainian officials said.

In Kherson city, Russians dropped “two aerial bombs,” Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the region’s military administration, said in a Telegram post. 

One strike hit an industrial area and the other hit civilian infrastructure, an official said.

Here are some of the other latest developments from the war in Ukraine:

Trains with Ukrainian grain stored in wagons are covered with white tarpaulin on the second and third tracks in Dorohusk station at the Polish-Ukrainian border on September 20, 2023.

Poland has prepared transit corridors that will allow Ukrainian grain shipments to move through its territory and reach the countries most in need, President Andrzej Duda said Sunday.

The comments are notable because the Polish government has joined Hungary and Slovakia in extending a ban on cheap Ukrainian grain imports, which they say have undercut local farmers. Speaking Sunday, Duda said Poland will still help shipments reach their final destination, however.

During a speech at a Ukraine recovery summit on Friday, Duda said the grain dispute with Ukraine will not have a serious impact on the relations between the two countries, as they have a “historic dimension,” according to state news agency PAP. 

Some context: Kyiv and Warsaw have publicly feuded this week over the grain issue and the question of supplying weapons.

During a speech at a Ukraine recovery summit on Friday, Duda said the grain dispute with Ukraine will not have a serious impact on the relations between the two countries, as they have a “historic dimension,” according to state news agency PAP. 

In remarks on Thursday, Duda also tried to clarify statements by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who had said that Poland will stop weapons deliveries to Ukraine, after President Volodymyr Zelensky said at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that “some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater.”

After a week of tense back and forth between Kyiv and Warsaw, Morawiecki shot back at Zelensky on Friday, saying he should never “insult Poles again.” 

Police officers and firefighters work at a site of warehouses damaged during a Russian military strike in Kherson, Ukraine, on September 19, 2023.

Russian forces continue to attack Ukraine’s Kherson region on Sunday, leaving two people dead and at least nine wounded, according to an update from Ukrainian authorities. 

One strike hit an industrial area and the other hit civilian infrastructure, an official said.

A 49-year-old woman working as a security guard was among those wounded in the bombings, Prokudin said. 

A total of six people have been wounded in the city of Kherson in Sunday’s attacks, Roman Mrochko, the head of the Kherson city military administration, said in a Telegram post.

More have been wounded elsewhere in the region: Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said earlier Sunday that two people had been killed and three were injured in attacks near the city of Beryslav. 

Ukrainian servicemen walk through a charred forest at the frontline a few kilometers from Andriivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on September 16, 2023.

The Ukrainian military on Sunday released additional footage from the battle for the village of Andriivka, a small hamlet immediately south of the city of Bakhmut, which Kyiv’s forces say they reclaimed on September 15.

Liberating Andriivka was considered a key step in the fight for Bakhmut, Maksym Zhorin, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Third Separate Assault Brigade, said at the time.

The new video, released by Zhorin’s brigade after it fought for control of the village, shows fighters advancing through “a forest belt scorched by the fighting.”

The fighters were engaged “in close combat and clearing out enemy dugouts and holes,” the brigade said. When soldiers entered the streets of Andriivka, they found the village had been “wiped out.”

More background: Zhorin’s brigade says it has been working to hold on to Andriivka and consolidate its gains there since initially recapturing the village. It released its first video from the battlefield last week, showing that little remained of the town.

The decimated village and nearby Bakhmut are located in the northeast portion of Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Bakhmut has been hotly contested for months, even after the Wagner private military group claimed it had seized control of the city and handed it over to Russia’s forces. Ukraine, Russia and Wagner have all suffered heavy losses in the ongoing battle for the city.

CNN’s Mariya Knight contributed to this report.

Denis Pushilin, Head of the Donetsk People's Republic, DNR, during a press conference at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2022 on June 16, 2022.

A curfew and a communications censorship took effect Sunday in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, according to Russian state media.

Curfew: The curfew will last from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. local time on weekdays, starting on Monday, according to a decree signed by the region’s Russia-backed leader, Denis Pushilin, state news agency TASS reported. 

Some officials and public employees will be exempt from the order, including repair workers and those overseeing the supplies of food and other essential items. Police, security personnel and people with special passes will also have permission to move during the curfew hours. 

Pushilin signed the decree on September 18, but it went into effect on Sunday when it was published, according to TASS.

Censorship: An additional decree imposes a military censorship on mail, internet communications and phone conversations, according to TASS. 

Under the order, the Russian Federal Security Service and the DPR’s so-called “Information Ministry” will develop and enforce censorship measures, according to TASS.

Local officials characterized the move as an effort to combat enemy saboteurs and reconnaissance officers, according to state news agency RIA Novosti.

Key context: War broke out in 2014 after Russian-backed rebels seized government buildings in towns and cities across eastern Ukraine. Intense fighting left portions of the Ukrainian Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the hands of Russian-backed separatists.

The separatist-controlled areas became known as the Luhansk and the Donetsk People’s Republics. The Ukrainian government in Kyiv asserts the two regions are, in effect, temporarily Russian-occupied. They have not been recognized by any governments other than Russia and its close allies Syria and North Korea.

The Ukrainian government has steadfastly refused to talk directly with the leaders of either self-proclaimed government, and has set its sights on reclaiming control of the territories in its fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

CNN’s Rob Picheta contributed to this report.

Russian attacks killed two people and wounded at least seven others in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Sunday, according to an update from Ukrainian authorities.

Moscow’s forces launched airstrikes this morning at a “number of settlements” in Kherson’s Beryslav district, which borders the Dnipro River in southeastern Ukraine, according to a statement from Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office. Officials said earlier Sunday that the attack left at least two people dead.

Around 12 p.m. local time (5 a.m. ET), Russian forces launched another attack on the region with artillery, the prosecutor’s office said in an update.

Four civilians were injured in the second attack, and two of them were hospitalized, officials said. Private houses, apartments and a kindergarten were damaged.

Authorities have launched an investigation into the attacks, the prosecutor’s office said.

Britain's newly appointed Defense Secretary Grant Shapps leaves Number 10 Downing Street in London on August 31, 2023.

The United Kingdom will continue to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Ukraine regardless of the results of next year’s US election, the country’s newly appointed defense secretary, Grant Shapps, said on Sunday.

Republicans have been divided in their support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with recent polling to suggest that the majority of Republicans agree that the US should be doing less to help Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

A CNN poll in August found now a majority of Americans are opposed to authorizing more funding for Ukraine — and among Republicans, the number opposed soars to 71%.

Shapps was asked Sunday what the UK would do if a Republican president was elected and decided to pull US support for Ukraine. He said London’s support to Kyiv was “watertight,” and called the question “speculative.”

“That’s a while down the line before we see what happens in the Republican election, but we will carry on standing shoulder to shoulder with our friends in Ukraine,” Shapps said in an interview on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Three people have been killed in the latest Russian strikes on the southern Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, local authorities said Sunday.

A 53-year-old man died as a result of an artillery strike on Zaporizhzhia, according to Yurii Malashko, the head of the region’s military administration.

Russia fired at 25 locations across Zaporizhzhia, Malashko said, damaging houses and infrastructure.

Meanwhile, in Kherson region, two civilians have died as a result of Russian shelling over the past day, according to the Kherson city military administration. 

Damage was recorded in Kherson and five other settlements in the region, it said. 

Elsewhere in southern Ukraine: Russia launched several artillery attacks on Nikopol region, wounding a 25-year-old man, who has been hospitalized with shrapnel wounds and is in serious condition, Serhii Lysak, head of Dnipropetrovsk region military administration, said on Telegram Sunday. 

A department store building and a kindergarten were damaged in Nikopol, Lysak said. 

In northeastern Ukraine: A 67-year-old was wounded in Russian attacks on Kharkiv, Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv region military administration, said Sunday. 

Russia also attacked the Sumy region overnight, firing three times at two communities, the regional military administration said. There were no reports of injuries.  

Pope Francis on Saturday told journalists that the withholding of weapons to Ukraine is turning the Ukrainian people into “martyrs.”

The Pope made the comments during a news conference on a flight back to Rome’s Fiumicino airport following a two-day trip to Marseille. 

Pope Francis also spoke of the “paradox” of countries supplying Ukraine with weapons before taking them away, which was keeping Ukrainians a “martyred people.”

“Those who traffic in arms never have to pay the consequences of their choices, but leave them to be paid by martyred peoples, such as the Ukrainian people,” he said. 

Some context: The pontiff was possibly referring to the recent decision by Poland to stop providing weapons to Ukraine, amid a growing dispute between the two countries over a temporary ban on Ukrainian grain imports. 

When asked for clarification, Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said the Pope was not taking a stand on whether countries should continue to send weapons to Ukraine or stop sending them, according to Reuters. 

Rather, his comments were a “reflection on the consequences of the arms industry: the Pope, with a paradox, was saying that those who traffic in weapons never pay the consequences of their choices but leave them to be paid by people, like the Ukrainians, who have been martyred,” Bruni said.

A satellite image shows smoke billowing from the Russian Black Sea Navy HQ after a missile strike in Sevastopol on Friday.

Ukraine launched one of its most ambitious attacks yet on Crimea Friday, targeting Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol. The Crimean peninsula was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, and Ukraine has vowed to reclaim it. Here’s what we know:

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov addresses the UN General Assembly in New York City on Saturday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blamed the collapse of the Black Sea grain deal on what he described as broken promises by Ukraine and the United Nations, in remarks made after his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Saturday.

He also said that the United States and other allies of Ukraine are “directly at war” with Moscow, and told a news conference that Ukraine’s blueprint for peace is not “feasible” or “realistic.”

Read more on Lavrov’s comments at the UN General Assembly here.

The general leading Ukraine’s fight along the southern front line spoke this week about his focus in the fiercely contested Zaporizhzhia region.

Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavsky believes Ukraine’s big breakthrough — the biggest of its ongoing counteroffensive — is yet to come, he told CNN’s senior international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen during an exclusive interview Friday.

Rather than the “Surovikin line,” which is a defensive line built on the orders of former Gen. Sergey Surovikin, Tarnavsky says the bigger issues are the “crossroads, tree lines and minefields between the tree lines.” 

“(There’s) a combination of small, harmful enemy defense groups that currently are planted very precisely and competently,” he said. “But the actions of our fighters force them to slowly pull back when they face our assault squads.”

Positive about the ultimate outcome, the general conceded that for the counteroffensive to be a success, Ukrainian forces need to at least reach Tokmak. 

Tarnavsky said Friday that his forces had made a breakthrough near the village of Verbove, located northeast of Tokmak in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region.

Three more ships passed through humanitarian corridors in the Black Sea to load at Ukrainian ports this week, US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget A. Brink said Saturday.

Some context: Russia pulled out of a UN and Turkish brokered deal in July that had allowed Ukraine to export grain via Black Sea shipments. Moscow warned that any ships headed to Ukraine would be treated as potentially carrying weapons. 

Last month, the Ukrainian navy issued an order declaring “temporary corridors” for merchant ships sailing to and from Ukrainian ports, though it admitted there was still a threat of encountering mines or attacks by Russia along all routes.