Ukraine war latest: Russia’s Putin sends in priests to bless firemen

A fire broke out at a military facility in Russia’s southern Volgograd region after a Ukrainian drone crashed into it on Thursday, regional governor Andrei Bocharov said on Telegram.

The Russian official claimed there were no casualties and did not specify what facility had been attacked, but said the attack focused on the area of the Marinovka village, where a military airbase is located.

Orthodox priests deployed an icon at the scene of a huge fuel depot fire – raging since Sunday in southern after a Ukrainian drone attack – hoping it would help tame its flames, the local diocese said yesterday.

The icon of the Unburnt Bush is considered by Christians in Russia as a talisman against fire.

The fire at the Proletarsk fuel depot in Rostov has been burning since Sunday despite a major operation by Russian firefighters to douse it.

“The (priests) spoke with the firefighters and blessed all the fire equipment,” the local Volgodonsk eparchy told Reuters in emailed comments.

An image released yesterday showed two Orthodox priests standing in a field on either side of a wooden stand holding the large icon as a thick plume of black and grey smoke rose into the sky from the depot behind them.

Local people have complained on social media about how polluted the air has become due to the fire. The authorities have said the level of harmful substances in the air is within permitted norms.

Around 20 of 74 storage tanks were on fire, the RIA news agency reported on Tuesday, citing local administration boss Valery Gornich. More than 500 firefighters were tackling the blaze, he said.

Vasily Golubev, the regional governor, said on Monday that 41 firefighters had sought medical treatment, including five who had been placed in emergency care.

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has confirmed he is ready to visit the Kursk nuclear power plant in Russia at the end of August, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

Russia’s Defence Ministry last week accused Ukraine of planning to attack the Kursk plant as part of its ongoing incursion into the Russian region, an assertion Kyiv denied.

“We expect that an understanding of the danger that Ukrainian provocations against Russian nuclear power plants represent will prompt the IAEA’s management to take concrete action to ensure the safety of nuclear power plants in Zaporizhzhia and Kursk,” Zakharova said at a weekly news briefing.

Ukrainian forces came under repeated attack yesterday around the town of Pokrovsk, where Russian forces are pressing for a breakthrough, military officials said but added that they were inflicting losses on the attackers.

In a statement, the military general staff said there were 46 Russian attacks on the Pokrovsk front over the past 24 hours; of these, 44 were repelled and two were still underway as of 7pm GMT.

It also said 238 Russian troops were killed or wounded in the same area yesterday. It did not disclose Ukrainian losses.

Ukraine had not consulted Berlin about its shock incursion into Russia, said German chancellor Olaf Scholz, adding that he expected the military operation to be limited in terms of both time and territory.

“Ukraine has prepared its military operation in the Kursk region very secretly and without feedback, which is certainly due to the situation,” Mr Scholz said. “This is a very limited operation in terms of space and probably also in terms of time.”

Separately Mr Scholz said Germany would continue to be what he said was Ukraine’s biggest supporter in Europe after controversy in recent days over what some have called wavering German support for Kyiv over domestic politicking.

Speaking at a press conference after talks with Moldovan president Maia Sandu in Chisinau, Mr Scholz said Berlin was monitoring further developments around the incursion closely.

Ukrainian leaders have cast the attack as proof that their military can still succeed in offensive operations, and still surprise. Russia has vowed to repel the incursion.

Ukraine said it had destroyed Russian pontoon bridges with US-made weapons to defend its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, while Moscow said its forces had halted Kyiv’s advance there and gained ground in eastern Ukraine.

Kyiv has announced a string of battlefield successes since it crossed unexpectedly into Kursk region on 6 August. Moscow has steadily inched forward in eastern Ukraine, pressuring troops worn down by two and a half years of fighting.

The Ukrainian statement said US-manufactured HIMARS rocket systems had been used as part of operations to disrupt Russian logistics in the Kursk region, Kyiv’s first official statement acknowledging its use of the weapon during its incursion.

Washington has not commented directly on the use of US-made weapons in Kursk region, while saying US policies have not changed and Ukraine was defending itself from Russia’s ongoing all-out invasion.

A video posted by Ukrainian special forces showed strikes on several pontoon crossings in Kursk region, where Russia has reported that Ukraine has destroyed at least three bridges over the Seym river as it seeks to hold the captured land.

“Where do Russian pontoon bridges ‘disappear’ in the Kursk region? Operators… accurately destroy them,” Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said on Telegram.

Kyiv’s attack on Russia’s Kursk region was intended to protect Ukraine, the country’s defence minister Rustem Umerov told a visiting delegation of US Congressmen.

Referring to Kursk region, Mr Umerov said in a statement released by his ministry: “Our goals there are to clear the border from Russian military threats and make enemy shelling and attacks on our towns and villages impossible.”

A close ally of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin warned the US risked triggering a global war if it continued to “provoke” the conflict in Ukraine.

Sergei Chemezov, CEO of the Rostec corporation which supplies many of Russia’s arms for the war, said the world could be drawn into a mass conflict and Moscow was ready for confrontation.

“In a situation where the West, led by the United States, provokes war, we must be ready. The third year of the special operation is under way. Russia feels confident,” Mr Chemezov said.

“The further it goes, the greater the risk that the world will be drawn into a global conflict. It looks strange, but Western countries do not seem to understand just how fraught this is for them.”