‘It Was Very Scary, To Be Honest’ – Ukraine at War Update for Aug. 27

Thumbing a well-worn page in the Kremlin’s playbook, Moscow again launched a massive airstrike on Ukraine’s capital on Monday, using drones and missiles to hit power infrastructure there, killing at least six civilians.

As summer turns to fall, and as Machiavellian strategy within Red Square’s 15th-century Italian walls turns to Ukrainians’ home-heating sources, Russia fired hundreds of drones and missiles at the nation's energy grid Monday,  causing widespread blackouts. 

After the attacks on Monday, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, announced that Ukrenergo, the state-owned electricity transmission company, has imposed blackouts around the country.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow launched at least 127 missiles and 109 drones at targets including the capital, constituting “one of the largest Russian attacks” in its 30-month unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force clarified that 102 missiles and 99 drones had been shot down.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called the strikes “outrageous” and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy slammed Moscow’s civilian assault as “cowardly.” Germany’s foreign ministry said that “once again, Putin’s Russia is saturating Ukraine’s lifelines with missiles,” AFP reported.

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The Ukrainian military regularly reports that Russian forces are resorting to ‘meat assaults,’ sending wounded or poorly trained fighters into battle as cannon fodder.

Kirby stressed that President Joe Biden’s administration is focused on further strengthening Ukrainian air defenses, particularly by sourcing interceptors and other such systems, not only from US manufacturers, but also from allies and partners, he said at a regular White House briefing.

Meanwhile, Kyiv residents found shelter in subway stations on Monday, as AFP reporters heard the explosions of what appeared to be ground-to-air missiles or artillery launching to intercept the inbound munitions.

“We are always worried. We have been under stress for almost three years now,” Yulia Voloshyna, a 34-year-old lawyer taking shelter in the Kyiv metro, told the French news service. “It was very scary, to be honest. You don’t know what to expect.”

The morning attacks killed at least four people and wounded more than 20 people across the country, officials said, adding that two others were killed in later strikes during the day.

Mysterious Russian drone suddenly vanishes over Polish skies

Ukrainska Pravda cited a Polish news source as saying that an unidentified flying object flew into Poland from Ukraine on Monday morning and “remained in the country’s airspace for at least 33 minutes” and “was most likely a Russian Shahed drone.”

Polish news agency RMF FM reported that the object disappeared from the radar at around 07:16 on Monday, prompting a search team to look for the drone or fallen debris in the area.

Poland has not yet officially announced what type of aerial object flew into its territory, which coincided with a large-scale Russian air assault on Ukrainian targets at least as far west as Kyiv. However, the news agency did report that the Polish military has “unofficially” claimed that it was most likely a Russian Shahed kamikaze drone. Some sources have said that the unidentified flying object fell from the sky after crossing about 25 km into Polish territory.

Maciej Klisz, Commander of the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces, said the aerial object that flew in from Ukraine was not shot down, RMF FM reported.

North Korea welcomes Russian delegation as Kim dismisses flood victim tally as propaganda

North Korea’s state media reported that a Russian trade delegation has arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday morning, local time, coinciding with reports of more than a thousand dead from floods there.

State news agency KCNA reported that the Kremlin’s team was headed by Russian Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Roman Chekushov, who were met at the airport by North Korea’s External Economic Relations Minister Yun Jong Ho as well as Russian embassy officials, who then went immediately to a state reception.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, isolated from the international community by economic sanctions and a warrant for his arrest by The Hague on charges of war crimes in Ukraine, has offered Moscow’s support to North Korea for the devastating floods that caused deaths and unspecified damage to thousands of homes in late July: destruction that Pyongyang’s dictator, Kim Yong Un, has dismissed as Western propaganda.

(South Korean media sources have reported that the number of dead and missing from the floods could be as many as 1,500 people, AFP said.)

North Korea has been accused by the West of supplying train-loads of ammunition to Russia, in violation of international sanctions, to aid in Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Pyongyang unveiled a new “suicide drone”, and the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, oversaw a performance test of the weapons, which experts said could have come from Russia. Kim said that “it is necessary to develop and produce more suicide drones,” KCNA reported.

AFU reportedly tries to strike Engels Air Base, oil refinery in Yaroslavl region

On Monday, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that its forces intercepted nine Ukrainian  drones over the Saratov region, three over the Kursk region, two each over the Belgorod, Bryansk and Tula regions, and one each over Oryol and Ryazan regions, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported.

The ISW analysts highlighted that geolocated footage published on Thursday shows a fixed-wing drone striking a building in Saratov city, even as the region’s governor, Roman Busargin, claimed that Russian air defenses destroyed all of the drones near Saratov and Engels (just across the Volga River southeast of Saratov). He said that falling drone debris damaged infrastructure in both Saratov and Engels.

A prolific Kremlin-affiliated blogger speculated that the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) attempted to strike the Engels Air Base, as they had previously, most recently in March and April 2024.