During a visit to Kyiv, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was briefed on Ukraine's plans to pressure Russia to end the war.“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to announce the plan on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next week. Ahead of Tuesday, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Washington had seen the plan, saying, “We believe it presents a workable strategy and plan.”
Russian state news agency RIA and pro-Russian war bloggers reported that Russian forces captured the city of Ukrayinsk in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region on Tuesday.They have been marching westwards in an attempt to seize the whole of Donbas. Russian forces have raised their flag on a mine vent outside the town, which had a population of more than 10,000 before the war, RIA Novosti reported, citing an unidentified Russian military source. In a late-night report, the Ukrainian General Staff said nothing about a change of control in Ukrainian territory, but that it was one of several areas under Russian attack. Thirty-four strikes were recorded near the town of Pokrovsk, it said. Reuters could not immediately verify the sides' battlefield claims because of reporting restrictions in war zones.
A false claim circulating on social media that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris was involved in a hit-and-run accident in San Francisco in 2011 that paralyzed a 13-year-old girl is the result of a covert Russian disinformation operation.According to new research from Microsoft, the campaign created videos, paid actors to appear as the alleged victims, and spread the claims through a fake website for a non-existent San Francisco news outlet called KBSF-TV. The Russian group, which Microsoft calls Storm-1516, is described as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm.
Facebook owner Meta announced on Monday that it would ban RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state-run media networks from its platform.They alleged that these outlets were using deceptive tactics to secretly exert influence online.
The ban, which has been strongly criticised by the Kremlin, marks a sharp increase in the world's largest social media companies' crackdown on Russian state media after years of limited measures such as banning advertising and reducing the reach of posts.
Russian forces heavily shelled areas in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhia region late on Tuesday, killing two people and wounding five.“Rescue teams were searching under rubble in the town of Komyshvakha, southeast of the regional capital, Zaporizhia,” regional governor Ivan Fedorov said in a Telegram post.
Ukrainian Olympic heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk has been released after being detained by police at Krakow airport in Poland.“I am outraged by this attitude towards the people and defenders of our country,” Zelenskiy said on Wednesday in a message on the Telegram messaging app.
“Our champion is free and no one is holding him.” It was not immediately clear why the 37-year-old Usyk was detained. The WBC, WBO and WBA champion, who won gold at the 2012 London Olympics, is a national hero supporting Kiev's war efforts. “Friends, everything is fine,” Usyk said in an Instagram post. “There was a misunderstanding that was quickly resolved. I thank everyone for their concern.” Usyk's charitable fund, the Usyk Foundation, is supporting Kiev's army in the war that began in 2022 with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It has bought ambulances and delivered humanitarian supplies to the front line.
