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The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EDT.
11:10 p.m.: Albania said it was investigating why two Russians and a Ukrainian had tried to enter a military factory and police detained four Czech nationals also close to another military plant, Reuters reported.
The defense ministry said late on Saturday that two of its soldiers had been slightly injured while detaining a 24-year-old man from Russia who had entered the grounds of the Gramsh military factory and was trying to take photos. He resisted arrest and used spray against the soldiers.
Two others, a 33-year-old Russian woman and a Ukrainian man, aged 25, were arrested nearby.
Defense Minister Niko Peleshi said it was too early to be sure about the motive but referred to geopolitics, apparently indicating a possible link to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has been criticized by the Albanian government.
9:45 p.m.: NBC News reported that eccentric former NBA star Dennis Rodman is planning a trip to Russia in an effort to seek the release of imprisoned WNBA player Brittney Griner, according to Agence France-Presse.
NBC quoted Rodman as saying that he was hoping to fly to Russia this week in an attempt to help basketball superstar Griner, who was sentenced to nine years in jail by a Moscow court earlier this month on a drug charge.
"I got permission to go to Russia to help that girl," Rodman told NBC. "I'm trying to go this week."
No further details were provided by Rodman, who was speaking at a restaurant in Washington where he was attending a sports apparel convention, according to NBC.
8:30 p.m.:
7:17 p.m.: Russia has deployed hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) missiles three times over the course of what Moscow calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said, according to Reuters.
The Kinzhal missiles are part of an array of new hypersonic weapons President Vladimir Putin presented in 2018 in a bellicose speech in which he said they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a U.S.-built missile shield.
Shoigu, speaking on state television, said the missiles had proved effective in hitting high-value targets on all three occasions, hailing them as without compare and as almost impossible to take down when in flight.
"We have deployed it three times during the special military operation," Shoigu said in an interview broadcast on Rossiya 1. "And three times it showed brilliant characteristics."
6:18 p.m.: Russia might take the provocative step of putting Ukrainian soldiers on trial as Kyiv marks 31 years of independence for the war-ravaged country next week, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned, according to Agence France-Presse.
Zelenskyy cited media reports that Russia was preparing to put Ukrainian fighters captured during the siege of Mariupol on a public trial to coincide with the independence anniversary Wednesday.
Ukraine's Independence Day, August 24, will also mark six months since Russia invaded the former Soviet republic, in a devastating war that has cost thousands of lives.
"If this despicable court takes place, if our people are brought into these settings in violation of all agreements, all international rules, there will be abuse," Zelenskyy warned in an evening address, AFP reported. "This will be the line beyond which no negotiations are possible."
5:15 p.m.: Russian forces targeted multiple locations in southern Ukraine with artillery and rocket fire as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Moscow could do something particularly "cruel" in the coming days as Kyiv marks 31 years of independence, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
"Russia could try to do something particularly disgusting, particularly cruel," Zelenskyy said in his nightly address late Sunday.
"One of the key objectives of the enemy is to humiliate us," and "to sow despondency, fear, and conflict" but "we have to be strong enough to resist all provocation" and "make the occupiers pay for their terror," he said.
Ukraine's Independence Day on August 24 will also mark six months since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of its neighbor.
4:27 p.m.: Ukrainian emergency services held a nuclear disaster drill in the country's Zaporizhzhya region on August 17 after repeated shelling at the site of Europe's largest nuclear power plant. Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in early March, shortly after their invasion of the country began. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this report.
3:30 p.m.:
2:45 p.m.: The governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine, Valentyn Reznichenko, said that a 59-year-old woman was killed as a result of Russian shelling of the Zelenodolsk community south of Kryvyi Rih, The Kyiv Independent reports. Six other civilians, including a 9-year-old boy, were injured. All the wounded were hospitalized, and one person is in critical condition.
1:45 p.m.: The direct losses to the Ukrainian economy caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine have already reached about $113.5 billion, according to the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) as cited in The Kyiv Independent.
Maksym Nefyodov, head of reform support projects at KSE, said that the team is collecting satellite images to analyze the destruction caused by the Russian military and using those in the “Russia will pay” project to assess needs for future recovery.
1 p.m.: President Joe Biden spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom Sunday. The White House said the leaders affirmed their continued support for Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russian aggression.
They also discussed the situation at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, including the need to avoid military operations near the plant and the importance of an IAEA visit as soon as feasible to ascertain the state of safety systems.
12:45 p.m.: According to the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces, the Russian command has closed the sky in certain sections of the Lipetsk, Voronezh, and Belgorod regions from Aug. 22 until Aug. 25, The Kyiv Independent reports. All three Russian regions are close to Ukraine's Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts.
The Ukrainian military also reports that its forces repelled Russian offensives in Kharkiv and Donetsk oblasts. Russian forces conducted airstrikes north and west of occupied Donetsk, near Mariinka, Vodyane, Krasnohorivka, Novomykhailivka, and in southern Ukraine, north of Mykolaiv, the General Staff said. In the east, Russia had partial success in the direction of Pisky, and in the south, in the Vasylki-Blahodtne direction east of Mykolaiv.
12:30 p.m.: Volodymyr Kovalenko, the mayor of Nova Kakhovka, a city in the central Kakhovka Raion region of Kherson, said Russian forces have kidnapped the directors of two secondary schools in that city after complaints from a Russian-appointed school director, The Kyiv Independent reported.
As The Washington Post reported in July, Russia offered hundreds of teachers strong incentives to go to occupied Ukraine and “correct” Ukrainian education.
11:45 a.m.: The Kyiv Independent reported that according to Nikopol Mayor Yevhen Yevtushenko, Russian troops at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant shelled a cemetery in Marhanets, just across the Dnipro River on Sunday. The online news site linked to a video on Telegram, showing the damage.
11:20 a.m.: Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said that Russian proxies have forcibly conscripted 430 mine workers in Russian-occupied Dovzhansk, The Kyiv Independent reports. A Russian state-run TV channel said only women and the elderly are working at the mine now.
10:45 a.m.: Czech nationals have been sending exactly 1,968 crowns ($80) to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia and to commemorate the 1968 invasion of then-Czechoslovakia by Soviet-led troops, the Ukrainian embassy in Prague said on Sunday.
10:15 a.m.: Ukraine's Defense Ministry's Intelligence Directorate said that in one Russian region the formation of a tank battalion, which started in early July, has been put on hold after only 30 people signed contracts to serve in the battalion out of the 180 needed, The Kyiv Independent reports.
9:45 a.m.: AFP reports that the regional head of Ukraine's intelligence services in Kirovohrad Oblast has been found dead at his home in central Ukraine, the prosecutor general's office said on Sunday.
Oleksandr Nakonechny was found by his wife with gunshot wounds in a room of their apartment in the city of Kropyvnytsky late Saturday after she heard gunfire, the office wrote on Telegram.
Police have opened an investigation into the death but made no further comments.
A local politician, Andrii Lavrus, wrote on Telegram that Nakonechny had shot himself. The information could not be immediately confirmed.
Nakonechny has headed the SBU in the Kirovograd region since January 2021.
9 a.m.: The Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office says it has detained a man for communicating with Russian forces in Vovchansk and organizing the looting of a National Guard unit located in a local meat factory, The Kyiv Independent reports.
The suspect is alleged to have given stolen food and fuel to Russian forces and leaked information about Ukrainians living in the area.
8:30 a.m.: Kharkiv Governor Oleh Synyehubov has announced a 36-hour curfew in Kharkiv from August 23 through August 25.
8:15 a.m.: The Albanian Defense Ministry said it is investigating an incident of alleged espionage by two Russians and a Ukrainian at a military plant in southern Albania.
A statement late Saturday said a Russian man identified only as M.Z., 24, was detained after entering the plant’s grounds in Gramsh, 50 miles south of the capital, Tirana, and taking photos.
Two military guards were injured by a “neo-paralyzing spray” used by the Russian while resisting arrest.
Another Russian woman, S.T., 33, and a Ukrainian man, F.A,. 25, were arrested outside the complex and their vehicle was blocked, the ministry said.
Albania, a NATO member since 2009, has strongly renounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has joined EU and U.S. sanctions against Moscow.
8 a.m.: Russia said on Sunday that its Kalibr missiles had destroyed an ammunition depot containing missiles for U.S.-made HIMARS rocket in Ukraine's southeastern Odesa region; Kyiv said a granary had been hit.
Russia's defense ministry said sea-based Kalibr missiles had destroyed a depot that also housed Western-made anti-aircraft systems.
A spokesman for Odesa's regional administration said two missiles had been shot down over the sea, but that three had struck agricultural targets.
Reuters was not able to immediately verify the battlefield reports.
7:45 a.m.: Russia has deployed hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) missiles three times over the course of what Moscow calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Sunday.
The Kinzhal missiles are part of an array of new hypersonic weapons President Vladimir Putin presented in a 2018 speech in which he said they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a U.S.-built missile shield.
Shoigu, speaking on state television, said the missiles had proved effective in hitting high-value targets on all three occasions, hailing them as without compare and as almost impossible to take down when in flight.
7:30 a.m.: Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's presidential office, said that Ukraine was not behind the Saturday murder of the daughter of Alexander Dugin, the ideologist behind Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its active supporter, Kyiv Independent reports.
"We are not a criminal state, unlike Russia, and definitely not a terrorist state," Podolyak said on national TV.
5:42 a.m.: The latest Ukraine assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said Russian forces attempted limited, failed assaults north of Kharkiv City. The update said Russian forces failed to advance after several assaults northwest of Kherson City and east of Mykolaiv City.
Additionally, the update said, Ukrainian forces continued to strike Russian ammunition depots and positions in Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts.
4:46 a.m.: Al Jazeera reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Ukrainians to be vigilant ahead of Independence Day on Wednesday.
3:42 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry said Igor Girkin, a Russian hardliner and former FSB officer and minister in the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, has become an increasingly outspoken critic of the war in Ukraine.
On Aug. 19, the update said, Girkin posted a grudgingly admiring critique of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's conduct during the war.
2:47 a.m.: The Associated Press, citing The Albanian Defense Ministry, reported that two Russians and a Ukrainian were arrested for alleged espionage at a military plant in southern Albania.
2 a.m.: The daughter of Alexander Dugin, an ultranationalist Russian political thinker nicknamed "Putin's brain," was killed by a car bomb near Moscow, The Guardian newspaper reported.
The Guardian reported that Darya Dugin's vehicle was destroyed in a blast that threw debris all over the road and engulfed the car in flames. Darya Dugin had been due to travel with her father, The Guardian reported, and Russian media reports suggest he may have been the target.
1:35 a.m.:
12:02 a.m.: The Joint Coordination Center (JCC) authorized on Saturday the movement of four outbound vessels carrying a total of 33,300 metric tons of foodstuffs from Ukraine under the Black Sea Grain Initiative, according to a JCC statement.
The four vessels authorized to depart Sunday are: MV Da Liang from Chornomorsk carrying 14,000 metric tons of sugar beets heading to Kunsan, South Korea; MV Kubrosli Y from Odesa carrying 10,000 metric tons of wheat heading to ports of Turkey; MV Filyoz from Chornomorsk carrying 5,000 metric tons of vegetable oil heading to Aliaga, Turkey; MV Foyle from Yuzhny/Pivdennyi carrying 4,300 metric tons of vegetable oil heading to Mersin, Turkey.
The JCC concluded inspections Saturday on two commercial vessels, one outbound Propus and one inbound SSI Invincible II.
The joint inspection teams plan to conduct 10 inspections Sunday on nine inbound and one outbound vessels.
As of Aug. 20, the total tonnage of grain and foodstuffs exported from the three Ukrainian ports is 689,649 metric tons.
Some information in this report came from Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press and Reuters.
