Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy pays tribute to foreign aid worker killed in Donetsk

Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, has used his social media channels to again call for renewed sanctions against Russia. He posted to Telegram to say that:

Our task is to make these zombies [Russian soldiers] fight with spears against modern weapons. The more [the Russians] spend efforts on killing, the stronger the sanctions should be against the military industry, energy and all sectors that provide the enemy with missiles and attack UAVs. Quantity is always destroyed by quality.

In its latest intelligence briefing on the war in Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has claimed that conscription in Russia has worsened “non-defence workforce shortages”.

I’ll now pass the reins to my colleague Martin Belam. Thanks for following along.

Brazil’s Lula backtracks on Putin’s safety at Rio G20

News via AFP:

Brazil’s leader withdrew on Monday his personal assurance that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, would not be arrested if he attends next year’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, saying it would be up to the judiciary to decide.

Putin missed this year’s gathering in the Indian capital New Delhi, avoiding possible political opprobrium and any risk of criminal detention under an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant.

Brazil is an ICC member but President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva raised eyebrows at the weekend when he told Indian news network Firstpost: “If I’m the president of Brazil and if he comes to Brazil, there’s no way that he will be arrested.”

He changed tack on Monday, telling reporters: “I don’t know if Brazil’s justice will detain him. It’s the judiciary that decides, it’s not the government.”

Putin has skipped recent international gatherings and sent his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to New Delhi instead for the September 9-10 G20 meeting, even though India is not an ICC signatory.

In March, the ICC announced an arrest warrant for Putin over the war crime accusation of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children. The Kremlin denies the accusations, insisting the warrant against Putin is “void”.

Watered-down G20 statement on Ukraine is sign of India’s growing influence

In case you missed it, my colleague Patrick Wintour has written an analysis piece on why the G20 statement on Ukraine – which softened the language around Russia’s role in the Ukraine war compared to last year – is sign of India’s growing influence.

Wintour writes:

The outcome obviously reflects India’s rigid determination not to take sides in the war, but it is extraordinary that the majority of countries at the G20 that do oppose Russia’s war of conquest were so prepared to be muzzled by the minority that prefer to look away.

A UK official said the joint declaration, widely seen as weak, was in fact effective at putting pressure on Moscow. “By achieving consensus in New Delhi, the G20 has forced [Vladimir] Putin to commit to a cessation of attacks on infrastructure, to the withdrawal of troops and to the return of territory,” they said.

[Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei] Lavrov, unsurprisingly, did not share this interpretation. “We were able to prevent the west’s attempts to ‘Ukrainise’ the summit agenda,” the veteran diplomat said, calling the two-day gathering a success. He pointed out: “The text doesn’t mention Russia at all.”

The compromise must be hard for Ukraine to take, and will only increase its nervousness that the next diplomatic staging post – an EU decision on Ukraine’s accession in December– will be equally empty. The Ukrainian foreign ministry said the G20 had “nothing to be proud of”.

Read more of Wintour’s take here:

Exclusive: Zelenskiy urged to intervene in case of British soldier who deserted to fight in Ukraine

A decorated Ukrainian commander has urged Volodymyr Zelenskiy to intervene in the case of a British soldier who has been sentenced to 12 months in jail after deserting his unit to go to fight in Ukraine.

Alexander Garms-Rizzi, 21, slipped away from his regiment while it was deployed in Estonia and joined Ukraine’s foreign legion. He spent six months fighting on the frontline near the southern city of Mykolaiv before returning to the UK.

In July, he became the first British soldier to be imprisoned for deserting the army and signing up with Ukraine’s armed forces. He had defied orders and created a “security risk”, a tribunal was told.

Roman Kostenko, a politician and special forces colonel, said Garms-Rizzi had served in Ukraine under his personal command. He has written to Zelenskiy and asked him to raise Garms-Rizzi’s imprisonment with Downing Street.

The letter reads:

I had the opportunity to meet him personally on the battlefield and watch how he, as part of a group, selflessly and bravely defended our lands. Despite his young age, and at that time he was 19 years old, he understood the strategic importance of defending Ukraine.

I ask you to appeal to the leadership of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland with a request to consider the possibility of a pardon.

More on this story from my colleagues Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh here:

Russia says it destroyed Ukraine-launched drones over Belgorod region

News via Reuters:

Russia’s air defence systems destroyed two Ukraine-launched drones over the Belgorod region in the early hours of Monday, the Russian defence ministry said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region which borders Ukraine, said in a statement on Telegram that there were no injuries and drone debris fell on a road in the Yakovlevsky district.

Late on Sunday night, Volodymyr Zelenskiy paid his condolences to the families of two foreign aid workers whose van was hit by a Russian anti-tank missile on Donetsk on Sunday.

The Ukrainian president said Anthony Ignat of Canada was killed, and that it was “likely” that Emma Igual of Spain had also died in the attack. Two other volunteers –German citizen Mawick Ruben and Swedish citizen Johan Mathias – were seriously injured and are being treated in hospitals in Dnipro. The four volunteers were trapped inside the van as it flipped over and caught fire after being struck by shells near the town of Chasiv Yar, according to the Associated Press.

“This Russian shelling once again confirms how close the war against Ukraine is to everyone in the world who truly values human life and who believes it is the common moral duty of humanity to stop terror and defeat evil,” he said in a Telegram post.

• Ukraine’s summer offensive probably has a “reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days, worth of fighting weather left”, the head of the US military has said. Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Gen Mark Milley said: “That offensive kicked off about 90 days ago. It has gone slower than the planners anticipated. But that is a difference between what Clausewitz called war on paper and real war. So these are real people in real vehicles that are fighting through real minefields, and there’s real death and destruction, and there’s real friction.”

• The US deputy secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, has said Washington is “impressed” by the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Nuland, deputy to Antony Blinken, said Russia’s defences were on the largest scale seen in 100 years. “We need to understand what Ukraine needs to clear these defences, and we cannot do that until Ukraine confronts the defences. We got a good sense of what was needed when we were here.” She added: “If Ukraine does not win, if Putin succeeds, this type of evil will be normalised across the world. Ukraine stands on the right side of democracy and needs our support.”

• Ukraine’s newly nominated defence minister, Rustem Umerov, has called on Kyiv’s partners to increase deliveries of heavy weapons, amid a long and difficult counteroffensive against Russian forces. “We are grateful for all the support provided … we need more heavy weapons,” Umerov said in an embargoed speech released on Saturday.

• Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, on Sunday spoke at the Yalta European strategy forum in Kyiv, which gathered Ukrainian and international policymakers to discuss the progress of the war. Budanov had this to say on Russia’s tactics: “In terms of creativity and flexibility, we still have an edge over them, they are rather outdated. But they are adapting, they are trying to change tactics, to alter the way they use forces, they miserably fail with their strategy, but their tactics do have some improvements.”

• Ukraine said air defence systems stopped 25 out of 32 Iran-made Shahed drones launched by Russia in a wave aimed at Kyiv and the surrounding region. Reuters witnesses heard at least five blasts across Kyiv, and Ukrainian media footage showed cars damaged. “Drones came on to the capital in groups and from different directions,” Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s city military administration, said on Telegram.

• Residents and Ukrainian activists have alleged that Russian poll workers made house calls with armed soldiers detaining those who refuse to vote in the sham elections that Russia is imposing in occupied regions of Ukraine. People are put under pressure to write “explanatory statements” that could be used as grounds for a criminal case.

• Russia has meanwhile said there were efforts to sabotage the illegitimate elections – including a drone strike destroying one polling station in Zaporizhzhia province in the hours before it opened on Sunday.

• At the G20, both the US and Russia praised a consensus that did not condemn Moscow for the war in Ukraine but called on members to shun the use of force.

• Vladimir Putin can attend next year’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro without fear of arrest, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said as he took leadership of the forum. Putin is charged with war crimes before the international criminal court (ICC). Lula – who has controversially tried to position himself as a peacemaker between Moscow and Kyiv – said: “What I can tell you is that, if I’m Brazil’s president, and if he comes to Brazil, there’s no reason he’ll be arrested.” Brazil is a member of the ICC.

• The Romanian foreign ministry has called in the head of Russia’s mission in Bucharest to complain about the discovery of more fragments of a Russian drone thought to have been used in an attack on Ukraine. Romanian government minister Iulian Fota said he was unhappy about the apparent violation of Romania’s airspace. It is the second discovery of its kind in Romanian territory this week.

• The South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, said on Sunday that South Korea would provide an additional $2bn in aid to Ukraine starting in 2025, in addition to the $300m previously pledged for next year, Yonhap news reported. Yoon made the comment at a session of the G20 summit held in Delhi, India.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency warned of a potential threat to nuclear safety after a surge in fighting near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The UN atomic watchdog said its experts at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant reported hearing explosions over the past week.

This is Jordyn Beazley, here to cover the latest developments in the war in Ukraine.