‘Morale and discipline issues’ hitting Russian troops, says MoD

Russian forces are suffering from “morale and discipline issues” in addition to combat fatigue and high casualties, the UK Ministry of Defence says.

A main grievance from troops probably continued to be around pay, including the high chance that “sizeable combat bonuses” were not being paid, the latest British intelligence update said.

At least some “outright corruption” among commanders was probably involved, as well as an “inefficient military bureaucracy”, it said.

The Russian military has consistently failed to provide basic entitlements to troops deployed in Ukraine, including appropriate uniform, arms and rations as well as pay. This has almost certainly contributed to the continued fragile morale of much of the force.

Key events

A video showing Russian multiple-launch rocket systems firing from the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been published by the Insider.

The footage, taken overnight on Friday into early Saturday morning, shows the missile launchers close to a power unit.

It appears to confirm that Moscow is using the station for offensive military strikes across the Dnipro river, as has previously been alleged by Ukraine.

A video obtained by The Insider of Russian rocket systems firing from the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

An artist who painted a mural of a Russian and Ukrainian soldier embracing in Melbourne, Australia, has said he will remove it after a backlash.

Peter Seaton said the three storey mural was intended as a message of peace but after outcry from Ukrainians, he pledged to paint over it by Monday, according to a report by WA Today

Ukraine’s Ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, had said the work was “utterly offensive to all Ukrainians” and called for its removal.

The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations’ Stefan Romaniw had compared the painting to a rapist hugging a victim.

Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelensky, has just been speaking on the first episode of Laura Kuenssberg’s new Sunday show.

She said that all Ukrainians are afraid “but you can’t be so scared as to not do anything. You can’t be passive.”

When asked what she would say to British people facing painful choices caused by soaring energy costs, Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “I understand the situation is very tough. But let me recall that at the time of the Covid-19 epidemic, and it’s still with us, when there were price hikes, Ukraine was affected as well.

“The prices are going up in Ukraine as well. But in addition our people get killed. So when you start counting pennies on your bank account or in your pocket, we do the same and count our casualties,” she said.

China’s top legislator, Li Zhanshu, will attend the seventh Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok this week, the official Xinhua news agency has reported, becoming the most senior Chinese official to visit Russia since the Ukraine war began.

Reuters reported that Li, chairman of the National People’s Congress standing committee, will pay official visits to Russia, Mongolia, Nepal and South Korea from Wednesday to 17 September, according to Xinhua. He would attend the four-day forum – set to begin on Monday – during his stay in Russia, it said on Sunday.

Li, who is ranked No. 3 in the Chinese Communist party, is due to retire from his party position at a party congress next month, but will keep his parliamentary position until March.

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China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin announced a “no limit” strategic partnership in February, weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Li Zhanshu alongside Xi Jinping in China’s national legislature
Li Zhanshu (left) alongside Xi Jinping (centre) in China’s national legislature. Photograph: Leo Ramirez/AFP/Getty Images

Ukraine’s armed forces have given their latest official estimate of Russian losses in the war so far.

They say 49,500 Russian troops have lost their lives since February but these figures are not possible to verify.

The Kyiv Independent has made a useful graphic here.

Ukrainian Evgeniy Maloletka has won the Visa d’Or, one of photojournalism’s most prestigious prizes, for his work during the Russian siege of Mariupol.

Maloletka, 35, was visibly moved as he dedicated his prize to the Ukrainian people at a ceremony in Perpignan in southern France on Saturday, Agence France-Presse reported.

Maloletka works for Associated Press and was among the first journalists to enter Mariupol on 23 February, an hour before the first Russian bombs fell. He was also one of the last to leave, on 15 March, by which time the southern Ukrainian city been almost entirely destroyed by Russian shelling.

Those 20 days he spent there were like one long, unending day, “becoming worse and worse”, he said.

His pictures showed the full horrors of the conflict and the Russian bombardment: children killed during the siege, heavily pregnant women lying among the ruins of bombed-out buildings, hastily improvised common graves.

The other two photographers nominated were Daniel Berehulak, an Australian of Ukrainian origin, and Marcus Yam.

The war in Ukraine has been a dominant theme at the International Festival of Photojournalism, which opened on 27 August.

A woman walks past a burning apartment building after March shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, in one of Evgeniy Maloletka’s photos
A woman walks past a burning apartment building after March shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, in one of Evgeniy Maloletka’s photos. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmygal, is set to visit Germany on Sunday – the first high-level Ukrainian official to visit the country in months.

The trip is a sign of eased tensions after a rocky patch between Kyiv and Berlin, Agence France-Presse reports.

The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has repeatedly vowed Germany’s strong support for Ukraine in its battle against Russia’s invasion. But in the immediate weeks after Russian troops marched on Ukraine, Kyiv criticised German aid as too little and too late.

A visit by Scholz to Kyiv in June and the arrival of weapons from Germany have since led to a change in tone.

Shmygal told German media ahead of his trip, in a transcript published by his press office:

Germany has made huge progress in its support of Ukraine with weapons.

But the prime minister said Kyiv needed more from Berlin, including “modern combat tanks” such as the Leopard 2.

Scholz is to welcome Shmygal with military honours in the Sunday afternoon. Shmygal will to start his day with talks in the morning with the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose offer to travel to Kyiv in April was rebuffed, sparking a row.

‘Morale and discipline issues’ hitting Russian troops, says MoD

Russian forces are suffering from “morale and discipline issues” in addition to combat fatigue and high casualties, the UK Ministry of Defence says.

A main grievance from troops probably continued to be around pay, including the high chance that “sizeable combat bonuses” were not being paid, the latest British intelligence update said.

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At least some “outright corruption” among commanders was probably involved, as well as an “inefficient military bureaucracy”, it said.

The Russian military has consistently failed to provide basic entitlements to troops deployed in Ukraine, including appropriate uniform, arms and rations as well as pay. This has almost certainly contributed to the continued fragile morale of much of the force.

Summary

Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s ongoing live coverage of the war in Ukraine, now it its 193rd day. Here are latest developments as it passes 9.30am in Kyiv.

  • The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been disconnected from its last remaining main power line to the grid and is relying on a reserve line, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. Previously, there had been reports the plant in south-eastern Ukraine had been knocked offline in the early hours of Saturday amid sustained shelling that destroyed a key power line, according to local Russian-backed authorities.

  • Sweden has said it would provide liquidity guarantees to Nordic and Baltic energy companies worth “billions of dollars” in an effort to prevent a financial crisis sparked by Europe’s energy crunch.

  • The Russian energy company Gazprom has said Siemens Energy is ready to help repair broken equipment for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, but claimed there was nowhere available for them to carry out the work.

  • The European Union expects Russia to respect existing energy contracts but is prepared to meet the challenge if it fails to do so, the economic commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni, said.

  • Gazprom’s announcement that the Nord Stream pipeline 1 would not restart came after G7 finance ministers said they planned to implement a price cap on Russian oil to reduce “Russia’s ability to fund its war of aggression”.

  • Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has told Vladimir Putin that his country can play a facilitator role regarding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, according to his office.

  • An eight-year-old child has died after Russian shelling in the southern Ukrainian region of Mykolaiv on Sunday morning, according to the head of the regional council, Hanna Zamazeyeva. Two other children were among those injured in Russian shelling in the city of Mykolaiv and Bereznehuvate, she said in an update on Telegram.

  • Russian troops launched overnight rocket attacks on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, according to the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko.

  • The leader of Chechnya has reportedly said he plans to take an “indefinite and long” break from his post. In a video posted to his Telegram, Ramzan Kadyrov, 45, reportedly said he believed the “time has come” for him to leave.

  • The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has accused the west of playing a “chess game with death” in its support of Ukraine and accused western countries of trying to take advantage of the conflict to push Russia to “a new round of disintegration”.

  • Ukrainian forces have “likely achieved a degree of tactical surprise” with the ongoing counter-offensive, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said. In its daily intelligence briefing, it said Ukraine had done so by taking advantage of “poor logistics, administration and leadership” in Russia’s military.

  • Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, has said in a BBC interview that while the economic impact of the war in Ukraine is tough on its allies, Britons “count pennies” while Ukrainians “count casualties”.

  • Russians paid their final respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, in a ceremony held in Moscow without much fanfare and with President Vladimir Putin notably absent. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, travelled to Moscow to pay his respects.




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