Smoke rises from an oil refinery set afire by a Ukrainian drone strike on the Rostov region in southwest Russia, August 28, 2024

Wednesday’s Coverage: Setting Russia’s Oil Depots on Fire

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1606 GMT:

One of six US-made F-16s delivered to Ukraine weeks ago has crashed, killing a senior Ukrainian pilot.

A “Ukrainian military source” said Oleksiy Mes, “Moonfish”, died while “repelling the biggest ever aerial attack” by Russia against Ukraine on Monday. He was buried on Thursday.

The Ukraine Defense Forces do not believe pilot error was the cause of the crash.

After months of hesitation and more time to train pilots, the first F-16s were delivered by the Netherlands and Denmark. Up to 24 are expected by the end of the year.

In an interview with CNN, Mes said Ukrainian pilots had to undergo a truncated version of training so they could use the F-16s to repel Russian attacks.

“We would have had a lot of time to study the jet completely in peacetime, but we do not have the time,” he said.

UPDATE 1558 GMT:

In a Kremlin purge of military commanders and defense officials, former Deputy Defense Minister Pavel Popov has been arrested on fraud charges.

At least nine commanders and officials have been arrested since the spring.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said Popov benefitted financially from the construction of the army-themed Patriot Park outside Moscow.

UPDATE 0719 GMT:

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region says residents are being evacuated from several villages, amid reports of an attempted Ukrainian incursion.

Vyacheslav Gladkov said there are “many injured and dead” in the border area. He claimed one person was killed and two hospitalized in the town of Shebekino, with airstrikes damaging an administrative building.

Belgorod lies to the south of the Kursk region, where Ukraine forces have taken territory since August 6.

Around 35 settlements in Belgord have been closed to entry due to the “operational situation”. Schools within a 20-km (12.5-mile) zone are operating remotely.

UPDATE 0710 GMT:

Five civilians were killed and six injured by Russian shelling of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday.

Four were slain in Izmail and one in Lysivka.

UPDATE 0640 GMT:

Russia has attacked Ukraine’s capital Kyiv for the third time in four nights.

Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said several buildings were damaged. Debris reportedly fell in at least three districts, causing a fire in one area.

Serhii Popko, the head of the city’s military administration, said air defense shot down around 15 drones during six hours of attacks.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Several NATO members have supported Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s appeal for the lifting of restrictions on Kyiv’s long-range attacks inside Russia.

A “diplomatic source” said the members staked out their position in a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine council in Brussels on Wednesday. Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said NATO should “let Ukraine fight with whatever it has, with whatever we have delivered them — and let’s deliver them more”.

The official statement did not formally endorse permission for Ukraine to use Western-supplied long-range missiles, including US-made ATACMS, French SCALPs, and British Storm Shadows. It did condemn the “indiscriminate” Russian missile and drone strikes this week, with hundreds of weapons launched in Moscow’s largest attacks of its 30-month invasion.

NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said the bloc reaffirmed its commitment to “stepping up their military aid to Ukraine”.

We must continue to provide Ukraine with the equipment and munitions it needs to defend itself against Russia’s invasion. This is vital for Ukraine’s ability to stay in the fight.

In his nightly address to the nation, Zelenskiy referred to Russia’s latest mass killing in cities such as his hometown of Kryvyi Rih in south-central Ukraine and Kupyansk in the east.

We continue to insist that…lifting the restrictions on long-range strikes for Ukraine now will help us to end the war as soon as possible in a fair way for Ukraine and the world as a whole.

The defense of life has the same meaning everywhere.

In Brussels, Foreign Minister Dmytru Kuleba added that the biggest problem was partners’ fear of escalation:

The war is always about a lot of hardware – money, weapons, resources – but the real problems are always here, in the heads….

Most of our partners are afraid of discussing the future of Russia….This is something that is very upsetting because if we do not speak about the future of the source of threat, then we cannot build strategy.

The European Union’s foreign policy head Josep “We need to lift restrictions on the use of weaponry against Russian military targets, in accordance with international law,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered in Brussels to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The weaponry that we are providing to Ukraine has to have full use, and the restrictions have to be lifted in order for the Ukrainians to be able to target the places where Russia is bombing them. Otherwise, the weaponry is useless,”