August 1, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

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

A Polish border guard patrols a metal wall on the border between Poland and Belarus, near Kuznice, Poland, on June 30, 2022.

Poland will increase the number of soldiers along its border with Belarus after two Belarusian helicopters allegedly violated the Polish airspace on Tuesday, according to the defense ministry. 

In a statement Tuesday, the ministry said the Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak convened a meeting of Poland’s Committee on National Security and Defence Affairs after reports that the Polish airspace was violated earlier on Tuesday. 

Poland has informed NATO of the incident and moved to summon the Belarusian chargé d’affaires to the Polish foreign ministry to “explain the incident,” according to the statement. 

“As a reminder, Russia and Belarus have recently stepped up hybrid actions against Poland,” the defense ministry stressed.

Poland has been on high alert in recent weeks following the move of soldiers from the mercenary group Wagner to Belarus. 

Last weekend, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned that the situation along the Belarusian border is “becoming even more dangerous,” warning Wagner fighters are moving closer. 

More context: More than 100 troops from the mercenary group Wagner are moving toward a thin strip of land between Poland and Lithuania, Poland’s prime minister said over the weekend and warned they could pose as migrants to cross the border. Morawiecki said Saturday that his government had received information that the Wagner mercenaries were not far from Grodno, a city in western Belarus close to the land, which is also known as the Suwalki gap or corridor.

Though just 60 miles long, the corridor is strategically important to NATO, the EU, Russia and Belarus. The border region connects the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to Belarus and it is the only overland link between the Baltic states and the rest of the EU.

A strike on the city of Yasynuvata on Tuesday left two civilians dead and another seven people wounded, including a teenage girl, according to Denis Pushilin, the head of Russian-occupied Donetsk.

“Two civilians were killed today as a result of the shelling of Yasynuvata […] There were seven wounded, among them a teenage girl born in 2010,” said Pushilin in a message on his official Telegram channel.

Yasnyuvata is a city located just to the northeast of Donetsk city — near the front lines between Russian and Ukrainian forces.  

The Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, said a drone was shot down in the Kara-Koba area of the occupied Crimean city amid reports of an explosion.

“According to preliminary data, an UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) was shot down in the Kara-Koba area. An explosion occurred on the ground, grass and bushes caught fire,” Razvozhaev wrote on his Telegram account Tuesday. “Fire brigades are already at the scene and have started putting out the fire.”

Residents of the city reported hearing a loud explosion on Tuesday afternoon, which shook windows and set off car alarms. Some also said they could see a cloud of smoke rising from the city center. 

Both Ukraine and Russia reported cross-border attacks Tuesday. Moscow said Kyiv again attempted a drone strike in Moscow, targeting the exact same building that was hit on Sunday. Kyiv accused Russia of shelling a medical facility in the southern port city of Kherson, killing a doctor and wounding a nurse.

Portugese Air Force and Romanian Air Force F-16 jets sit on the tarmac of Siauliai airport in Lithuania during the NATO exercise as part of the NATO Air Policing mission on July 4.

The US is still waiting for European officials to submit a final plan for training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets, which the US will have to authorize before the program can actually begin, officials familiar with the matter told CNN.

The training is supposed to start this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European officials have said publicly. But two months after President Joe Biden announced US support for training Ukrainian pilots on F-16s, there remain a number of critical details to work out.

It is also still unclear which countries will commit F-16s to the training program—and to Ukraine itself once the program is finished. Transferring the planes to Ukraine will require separate US approval. 

US defense officials told CNN that the US is still deciding whether to send American pilots to help train the Ukrainians, but that no decisions will be made until a final training plan is authorized.

Some background: The training program is being supported by a coalition of 11 NATO countries and requires official US approval because the F16 is an American technology.

The course itself is expected to be conducted in Denmark and Romania, with help from the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and the UK, officials have said. But the details, including the dates, locations, and length of the syllabus “are still being worked out,” National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said during a briefing last week.

Read more here.

CNN’s Oren Liebermann contributed to this report.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko speaks in Minsk, Belarus, in February.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday denied Poland’s claims that about 100 of the Wagner mercenaries, who are in the country, have moved closer to the Polish border, according to a statement published by his office.   

“I suddenly hear the other day that Poland has freaked out that allegedly some unit as large as 100 people is moving here. No PMC Wagner units 100 people strong have moved here. And if they have, they did it only in order to pass on combat experience to the brigades, which are stationed in Brest and Grodno,” Lukashenko said during a working visit to Kamenets District, in the southwestern Brest region, according to the statement.  

Last month, the Belarusian defense ministry said the country’s forces will hold joint military exercises with Wagner fighters near its border with the NATO member. Wagner fighters have arrived in Belarus following a short-lived mutiny by the private military group in June.

“I need to train my own military personnel, because an army that doesn’t fight is half an army,” Lukashenko added according to the statement. “So they [Wagner] are here to pass on their experience.”

The longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Wagner fighters “want to go nowhere” and that they stay “near Osipovichi in the center of Belarus.”

Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of shelling a medical facility in Kherson, killing a young doctor and wounding a nurse. 

The attack occurred at 11:10 a.m. local time on Tuesday, according to the head of the Kherson City Military Administration Roman Mrochko. “One of the healthcare facilities was hit, killing a young doctor who had been working for only a few days, and wounding a nurse who is now fighting for her life!” he said on Telegram Tuesday

The doctor, who has yet to be identified, had just finished his internship and had just had his first day on the job, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health.

On Monday, Russian shelling of the city of Kherson killed at least four people and injured 17 others, said Andriy Yermak, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

Local officials said Russia had intensified shelling on the city to provide cover for rotating troops.

CNN’s Maria Kostenko contributed reporting to this post.

Members of security services investigate a damaged building in Moscow after a drone attack on Tuesday.

Russia says Ukraine again attempted a drone strike in Moscow, targeting the exact same building that was hit on Sunday.

Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have suggested that these attacks are meant to shatter any remaining sense of calm in the Russian capital.

“Moscow is rapidly getting used to a full-fledged war,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky.

Here’s what else you need to know:

Here’s a look at the latest map of control in Ukraine:

Emergency personnel work near a damaged building in Moscow after a drone strike on Tuesday.

Russia has repeatedly accused Ukraine of conducting drone attacks within its territory in recent months.

Though Kyiv denied involvement in what appeared to be an attempted drone strike on the Kremlin on May 3, the Ukrainian military has reportedly been behind several attacks on the Russian capital since then.

Their drones have attempted to hit targets in and around Moscow three times in the last week as well as on multiple occasions since the end of May.

These incidents have caused some damage but few – if any – casualties. Ukrainian officials say the goal is to bring the unease and fear of war to Moscow, as the Kremlin has done to Kyiv.

Hours after the attempted drone strike in Moscow on Sunday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said that war was “returning to Russia.” One of his key advisers said Tuesday that the increasing drone strike in Moscow are a sign that the the Russian capital is becoming “used to a full-fledged war.”

Moscow isn’t the only Russian city that’s allegedly been targeted by Ukraine’s fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles.

A look back at some of the suspected attacks:

The war in Ukraine has highlighted how drones can be used on the battlefield to try and gain a strategic advantage, according to James Rogers, a drone advisor to the UN, NATO and UK Parliament.

He breaks down the different types of drones that Russia and Ukraine are using – from consumer quadcopters that can be bought off the internet to the Iranian Shahed 136 that can cause devastation from nearly a thousand miles away. 

Watch the full video here:

Security forces inspect the scene of a drone attack on August 1, after a building in Moscow was targeted for the second time in two days.

The Kremlin believes there’s “an obvious threat” after the latest drone strike on Moscow, presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a call with journalists on Tuesday. 

Peskov’s remarks came after a drone struck the same Moscow building that was hit on Sunday, according to the city’s mayor. It comes after three drones were brought down by Russian air defenses on Sunday. 

Russia says Ukraine launched three drones toward Moscow on Tuesday, in what the country’s Ministry of Defense has labeled a “terrorist attack.”

According to the ministry, the three drones were brought down. 

“Two Ukrainian UAVs were destroyed in the air by air defence facilities over the territory of Odintsovo and Narofominsk districts of Moscow region,” it said.

A third drone was intercepted and lost control before crashing into a complex of non-residential buildings in Moscow City, the statement added. It hit the very same building that was struck in Ukrainian drone strikes on Sunday.

Some background: The Moscow City area is mostly a financial district of the city but the building that was hit – for the second night in a row - houses some government offices.

Among the offices at the building are the delegations of the Ministry of Economy, the Scientific and Technical Library of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Digital Development, their subordinate structures and a local body of the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology (Rosstandart).

Employees at the Ministry of Digital Development have been working remotely since the first drone attack on Sunday, Russian state media reported.

What Ukraine is saying: Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the drone strikes on Moscow are a sign the Russian capital is becoming “used to a full-fledged war.”

“More unidentified drones, more collapse, more civil conflicts, more war,” he added.

This post has been updated.

The Russian Navy's Vasily Bykov patrol ship is pictured in 2020, as it takes part in a Navy Day parade rehearsal, in Kronshtadt, Russia.

Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian naval drone attack on two of its patrol vessels in the Black Sea, according to a statement posted on the Russian Defense Ministry’s Telegram channel on Tuesday.

The statement added that the three Ukrainian naval drones “were destroyed by fire from the regular weapons of the Russian ships,” while the Russian ships “continue to carry out their assigned tasks.”

The Vasily Bykov is one of the two Russian vessels that participated in the attack on Snake Island on 24 February 2022.

CNN cannot verify these claims.

Russian military chief of staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov is seen in a screengrab taken from video that was released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, on Monday, July 10.

Russian military chief of staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov visited the front lines in the Zaporizhzhia region, the country’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.

In a Telegram post, the ministry said Gerasimov inspected the command post of the troop grouping in the Zaporozhye direction, using the Russian spelling for Zaporizhzhia.

It was not immediately clear when exactly Gerasimov was at the command post. CNN could not independently verify his whereabouts in the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine.

The Defense Ministry added that Gerasimov “drew attention to the timely identification of the enemy, the launching of preventive strikes against it and the conduct of counter-battery warfare” during the inspection.

Some context: Gerasimov was thrust into the position of leading Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine in January this year.

The decision put Gerasimov, who was been chief of the General Staff for more than a decade, closer to direct supervision of Putin’s campaign and with more responsibility for it.

Images from drone footage show the extensive damage to Staromaiorske, Ukraine.

The four roads of Staromaiorske appear almost ground to dust in the drone footage. It’s a tiny village, but as the latest gain of Ukraine’s renewed counteroffensive in the direction of Mariupol, Staromaiorske’s symbolism far outweighs its size.

Its fate represents a larger problem for Ukraine as it pushes forward. After the bitter battles of Ukraine’s advances, barely a wall is left standing from which Kyiv’s forces can defend the recaptured ground, making their hard-earned progress vulnerable to Russia’s blunt artillery.

This is exactly what happened Monday, when persistent shelling was said to have pummelled the village’s ruins. At one point, Russian officials even claimed to have kicked Ukrainian forces back out of the village, which Ukraine staunchly denied.

For the troops who fought for Staromaiorske, a mixture of Ukraine’s AREY territorial defense forces from Krivyh Rih and the 35th Marines, the fight was the latest of many, where grueling losses have marred every hundred yards regained.

A soldier from the AREY forces, call sign Krivbas, sped towards the front as he described the main peril of the 10-day Staromaiorske attack, at the end of which Russian forces suddenly fled the ruins.

He said the Russians have tried to recapture the village twice with small groups of troops since it fell last week.

Ukraine’s position is made harder still given Russian forces are on the eastern side of the river, able to use its natural boundary from which they can fire artillery. These latest advances remain small in scope, but came after Pentagon officials suggested Ukraine had stepped up a gear in its months-long counteroffensive and was finally committing reserves to the fight.

Hopes are high for a faster pace of advance, but have been dampened by the very real threat of Russian airpower and Ukrainian exhaustion, troops in frontline villages told CNN.

Read the full story here.

Members of security services investigate a damaged office building in the Moscow City following a reported Ukrainian drone attack in Moscow, Russia, on August 1, 2023.

A drone has struck the same building in Moscow that was hit on Sunday, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Tuesday.

Some background:  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that war is “gradually returning” to Russia after the Kremlin accused Kyiv of targeting Moscow with drones.

The Russian Defense Ministry said three drones were intercepted Sunday, but a business and shopping development in the west of the capital was hit. The fifth and sixth floors of a 50-story building were damaged, and no casualties were reported, state news agency TASS reported.

Videos showed debris as well as emergency services at the scene.

A firefighter works at a site of an apartment building heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, on July 31, 2023.

A day after Volodymyr Zelensky said war was “returning to Russia” with an attempted drone strike on Moscow, the Kremlin launched a deadly airstrike against the Ukrainian president’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih on Monday.

At least six people were killed, including a 5-year-old girl, and dozens of others were wounded when a pair of ballistic missiles struck a school building and residential tower in the central Ukrainian city.

Zelensky said more than 350 people were involved in the rescue operation. Emergency services personnel were still searching for survivors under the rubble as of Monday afternoon.

Residents said there were no air raid sirens before the missiles struck and took out significant portions of two buildings. Some said they had little time to scramble for cover.

Balaba said all the windows in their apartment had been shattered and damage lay everywhere.

It’s unclear why Russia targeted Kryvyi Rih. Ukrainian officials said there were no military targets nearby. The head of the local defense council, Oleksandr Vilkul called the bombardment a “terrorist attack.”

Russia carried out a similar attack on the city in June, killing 11 people.

The Russian Defense Ministry has not commented on the situation in Kryvyi Rih. Moscow has repeatedly denied targeting civilian infrastructure, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

On Monday, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the Kremlin would intensify its attacks in response to Kyiv’s attempted drone strikes against Moscow the previous day that damaged a business and shopping development in the west of the capital.

Read the full story here.

A view of a site of an apartment building heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, on July 31, 2023.

The White House is criticizing senior Russian defense official Dmitry Medvedev’s comments suggesting Russia may resort to nuclear weapons if Ukraine is successful in its counteroffensive.

A National Security Council spokesperson called the rhetoric “reckless and irresponsible” on Monday. So far, the US has not seen any indications Russia is preparing to turn to nuclear weapons, the spokesperson added. 

“We continue to monitor this closely, but we have not seen any reason to adjust our own nuclear posture nor any indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” they added.

Some context: Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, made the comments in a Telegram post. They are the latest in a series of nuclear threats made by Moscow since launching its war against Ukraine. 

“Just imagine that the offensive… in tandem with NATO, succeeded and ended up with part of our land being taken away. Then we would have to use nuclear weapons by virtue of the stipulations of the Russian Presidential Decree,” Medvedev said in the post. 

“There simply wouldn’t be any other solution,” he added. “Our enemies should pray to our fighters that they do not allow the world to go up in nuclear flames.”

US President Joe Biden said earlier this month that he does not believe Russia would deploy nuclear weapons. 

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House on December 12, 2022 in Washington, DC.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is expected to attend peace talks on the war in Ukraine next week in Saudi Arabia, US officials said. 

Ukraine is taking the lead on the effort which is expected to be attended by Western countries and developing nations. Russia is not expected to attend the talks. 

Ukraine’s goal is that the talks work to identify shared principles for ending the war and that there is a peace summit later this year with global leaders signing up to support those principles, US officials said. 

The talks hosted in Saudi Arabia are the second in a series of meetings organized by the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak. The first talks took place earlier this year in Copenhagen.

Saudi Arabia was picked for the talks in part because of the country’s relationship with China, one US official explained. While China is not expected to attend the talks, US officials have publicly encouraged China in recent months to play a constructive role in resolving the Ukraine war though there has been no signal of China taking any proactive steps towards a peaceful end.