Worth noting, korrespondent.net has compiled its Invasion of Ukraine series into separate months, beginning May 9th, 2023. Linked in the title.
[Korrespondent] 22:28 Czech President Petr Pavel said that Ukraine can join NATO even if part of its territory is occupied: "I believe that full restoration of control over the entire territory is not a necessary condition. If there is demarcation, even an administrative border, then we can consider this administrative border temporary and accept Ukraine into NATO on the territory that it will control at that time."
20:54 Zelensky said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces control more than 1,250 square kilometers of the Kursk region and 92 populated areas. "The strengthening of our positions, stabilization of certain areas and replenishment of the exchange fund continues," the president noted. According to him, this operation has become "our largest investment in the process of liberating Ukrainians from Russian captivity, this is one of our goals."
Zelensky also stated that if Western partners lifted all restrictions on range, Ukraine "would not need to physically enter, in particular, the Kursk region" in order to protect Ukrainian citizens in the border area and destroy Russia's potential for aggression.
"Just a few months ago, many in the world, if they heard that we were planning an operation like the one in Kursk Oblast, would have said that it was unrealistic and that it was supposedly crossing the reddest of all the red lines that Russia has. That is why, in fact, no one heard about our preparations. And now the real success of our soldiers speaks for itself: our active defensive actions on the other side of the border and Putin's inability to protect his territory from such defensive actions of ours are very eloquent," the president emphasized.
According to the head of state, "our active preventive defense is the most effective counteraction to Russian terrorism and ensuring a real complication of the situation for the aggressor state. And secondly, we now have an extremely important ideological change, namely: the entire naive, illusory concept of the so-called red lines in relation to Russia, which reigned in the assessments of the war by some partners, crumbled the other day somewhere near Sudzha."
20:37 Zelensky said that he is on a visit to the Dnipropetrovsk region and met with veterans of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
18:56 On Tuesday, August 20, electricity consumption restriction schedules will be in effect, Ukrenergo reported. From 16:00 to 17:00 and from 22:00 to 24:00, one turn-off sequence will be applied, from 17:00 to 22:00 - two sequences simultaneously.
18:24 Lavrov said that after Ukraine's invasion of the Kursk region, "there can be no negotiations with Kiev, the president said so." He also called rumors about secret contacts between Moscow and Kiev with the mediation of Qatar and Turkey. Lavrov believes that information about such contacts is in the development of the conference on Ukraine in Switzerland, where a decision was made to create working groups. But for Moscow, this process is unacceptable, because its only goal is "to promote an ultimatum called the Zelensky formula," the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized.
17:35 Danish Foreign Minister Lars Rasmussen stated that Ukraine could use Danish weapons to strike Russian territory.
17:27 Russia is not reducing its presence in the occupied territories of Ukraine: at the beginning of the year, the Russian group numbered 440 thousand people, now - about 600 thousand, and by the end of the year an increase to 800 thousand people is expected, said Deputy Defense Minister Ivan Gavrilyuk. He also noted that today mobilization does not meet the needs of the troops, because a mobilized person "is not a fighter, he will become one in 3-6 months." According to Gavrilyuk, at present about 930 thousand Ukrainians liable for military service are reserved from mobilization, and in a week this number will cross the border of 1 million.
16:31 The Office of the President confirmed that on August 23, the National Flag Day, an official visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Ukraine will take place. This is the first visit of the head of the Indian government to Ukraine in the history of bilateral relations.
15:58 Ukrenergo reported that it is completing the construction of the first stage of anti-drone protection of high-voltage equipment at 41 of the company's facilities. The State Agency for the Restoration and Development of Infrastructure is completing the construction of the first stage of protection at another 22 facilities. Protective reinforced concrete structures can withstand a direct hit from "shahids" and protect equipment from missile debris. According to calculations, the damage due to drone strikes without protective structures would be 5-6 times greater. The project is fully financed by international financial organizations.
15:29 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will visit Ukraine on Friday, August 23, intends to convey messages between Putin and Zelensky, Bloomberg writes. In addition, according to the publication, India and Ukraine will discuss the production of aircraft and aircraft engines in India and the joint production of gas turbines.
14:43 Russians have attacked a private sector in the village of Zarechnoye in the Liman community of Donetsk Oblast - three people have died, the prosecutor's office reported. Another person has died as a result of artillery shelling of Toretsk.
14:37 The Danish government has announced a new aid package for Ukraine worth 783 million Danish kroner (around $116 million). The bulk of the funds will be used to purchase new military equipment through the Ukrainian defense industry and international partners. In particular, an important part of the new package will be an increase in the industrial pool by 300 million kroner in 2024, which will strengthen the Ukrainian defense industry. An additional 112 million kroner will be allocated to finance purchases through Ukrainian defense enterprises.
13:35 Germany has updated the list of military aid supplied to Ukraine. The new package includes, in particular: the IRIS-T SLS air defense system, 14 thousand 155-mm artillery shells, ten naval drones, 26 Vector UAVs, etc.
13:26 The head of the Donetsk OVA Vadim Filashkin announced the beginning of the forced evacuation of families with children from the Pokrovsk community. "More than 53 thousand people still live here, including almost 4,000 children, but recently the front has come too close to Pokrovsk, and this should be responded to appropriately," he explained.
13:04 Zelensky reported that he had heard Syrsky's report: "First of all, the frontline situation and our measures to control it. Heavy fighting is underway in the Pokrovsk direction, the defense of Toretsk... The commander-in-chief also reported on new details of the operation in the Kursk region. We are achieving our goals. In the morning, there will be another replenishment of the exchange fund for our state. We discussed with the commander-in-chief some aspects of our missile program."
12:17 Russia will not talk to Ukraine at this stage, Putin's aide Yuri Ushakov said. At the same time, according to him, Moscow's "peace proposals" have not been cancelled, and the pause in the possibility of the negotiation process depends on the situation on the battlefield.
11:38 From Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast, where Russian troops are approaching, 500-600 people are leaving every day, said the head of the city's military administration, Sergei Dobryak. At the same time, he predicts that a forced evacuation of children will be announced in the city this week. According to him, there are currently 4,788 children left in the city, compared to 13,700 children before the full-scale war.
Dobryak noted that approximately 60% of residents leave Pokrovsk on their own, using their own transport, and given the timing of the Russian army's advance, residents have one to two weeks to evacuate. Dobryak also suggested that city services and facilities will have to be shut down for a week.
10:59 The Askania-Nova Reserve practically no longer exists, the head of the Kherson OVA, Alexander Prokudin, said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine. According to him, the occupiers plundered the biosphere reserve, took animals to Crimea and the Russian Federation, and even organized hunting there.
10:35 The Indian Foreign Ministry has confirmed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Ukraine and Poland. The visit is likely to take place on August 23, Reuters reports. Modi met Putin in Moscow a month ago.
09:22 In Donetsk Oblast, three people were killed as a result of Russian shelling on August 18: in Mirnohrad, Toretsk and Razliv. Another nine people in the region were injured in the past 24 hours, said OVA head Vadim Filashkin.
08:57 In the Kherson region, over the past day, as a result of Russian shelling, three people were injured, reported the head of the OVA, Oleksandr Prokudin.
08:34 On Sunday, August 18, Russians shelled Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region, one person was wounded, reported the head of the OVA Oleg Sinegubov.
07:59 The General Staff announced the estimated losses of the Russian Federation as of the morning of August 19:
- personnel - about 600,470 (+1120) people,
- tanks - 8513 (+5),
- combat armored vehicles - 16,495 (+15),
- artillery systems - 17,104 (+48),
- MLRS - 1165 (+4),
- air defense systems - 925 (+2),
- aircraft - 367 (+0),
- helicopters - 328 (+0),
- Operational-tactical level UAVs - 13,809 (+57),
- cruise missiles - 2437 (+5),
- ships/boats - 28 (+0),
- submarines - 1 (+0),
- automotive equipment and tank trucks - 23,047 (+55),
- special equipment - 2863 (+17).
07:32 Air defense destroyed all 11 Shahed-type attack UAVs in the Nikolaev, Cherkasy, Vinnytsia, Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Sumy and Donetsk regions at night, the Air Force reported.
07:25 The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports that the Ukrainian Armed Forces continue to advance in the Kursk region. Thus, one of the Russian war correspondents on August 18 stated that Ukrainian forces captured Troitske (south of Korenevo and approximately 2 km from the international border) and advanced to Semenovka (north of Sudzha and approximately 24 km from the international border). The Ukrainian project DeepState reports that the Defense Forces liberated Apanasivka, Snagost, Otruba and advanced in Olhivka.
At the same time, ISW analysts point out that the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk Oblast, as well as Russian offensive operations in eastern Ukraine, are not in themselves decisive military operations that will help one side win the war. According to experts, both Russian and Ukrainian forces lack the capabilities to conduct individual decisive winning operations and instead must conduct several successive operations with limited operational objectives that do not achieve victory, but in aggregate can help achieve strategic goals.
04:11 Ukraine considered several options for an operation on Russian territory: a strike in the Bryansk region, a strike in the Kursk region, a combined strike in two regions at once, or even a larger scale, The Economist writes. According to the publication, Syrsky kept his plans secret, sharing them only with a small group of generals and security service officers, and communicating with Zelensky tête-à -tête. The main goal of the offensive is to distract Russian troops in the Donetsk region and create trump cards for any future negotiations.
Army intelligence learned most of the information independently, and the GUR was brought in only at a late stage of preparation for the operation. One of the publication's sources claims that the Western allies also did not know about the preparation of the operation, and when they learned about the breakthrough, they did not object. Limited communications to the level of official necessity allowed the Ukrainian Armed Forces to begin the attack before the Russians realized what was happening.
In particular, Syrsky had thrown the enemy off guard by concealing the arrival of his most experienced divisions. Reinforcements had been deployed to the forests near the Kursk border, under the pretext of protecting against a supposed Russian attack on Sumy, a week and a half before the operation began. The troops themselves began to suspect that something serious was going on in early August, when they were suddenly given equipment. They conducted exercises on mock-ups of what they later realized were Russian villages.
00:54 The Ukrainian Armed Forces' offensive in the Kursk region is only the first of several stages of the operation, said the head of the Sumy city military administration, Oleksiy Drozdenko. He noted that he took direct part in planning the operation and was part of a narrow trusted circle of insiders. "We see only part of this operation, in the future we will see several stages," Drozdenko said.
He also said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces sometimes take 100-150 prisoners of war per day, many of them conscripts who do not want to fight. In addition, Drozdenko said that hospitals in Sumy were preparing to accept many wounded after the invasion began, but there were unexpectedly few casualties. "On the first day of the operation, there were only 15 wounded. Sixty, seventy percent of them were very light, caused by bomb damage, shrapnel," he added.