Ukraine updates: Ammo depot in Russia's Tver region explodes

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that his so-called "Victory Plan" was now complete. According to Zelenskyy, the plan is intended to bring peace to the war-torn country, while also avoiding all "frozen conflicts."

"The most important thing is the determination to implement it," the Ukrainian leader said, while not giving any information regarding the plan's content.

Last month, Zelenskyy pledged to present his plan to US President Joe Biden.

Russia said it is willing to negotiate but ruled out any discussions while Ukrainian soldiers remain in its Kursk region.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he will "probably" meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when the latter visits the US next week.

The two have not talked in person since Trump’s previous term as president.

Trump has consistently described US aid to Ukraine as a waste of money.

Speaking to Tim Sebastian on DW's Conflict Zone program, Ukrainian lawmaker Kira Rudik said that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are "getting ready for a bigger war.

Rudik as an opposition MP and the leader of the liberal Holos party.

"It's time for the leaders of the West to wake up to the point that Russia and China and Iran and North Korea, they are getting ready for a bigger war," she said, adding that Ukraine was "just the frontline."

She said that she still believed in a Ukrainian victory in the war despite delayed arms deliveries from Western allies.

Rudik said that Ukraine was "facing an incredibly hard winter."

"I'm not sure our energy system will be able to sustain yet another massive attack on it."

She called for Western states to give Kyiv permission to use long-range weapons to strike in Russian territory so that Ukraine can stave off attacks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine had "fully prepared" its "victory plan" to end the war with Russia.

"Today we can say that our victory plan has been fully prepared — all the points," Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.

"Everything has been worked out. The most important thing now is the determination to implement it."

Zelenskyy said that he planned to discuss the plan with Biden this month.

There cannot be any alternative to peace, any freezing of the war or any other manipulations that will simply move the Russian aggression to another stage. We need reliable and lasting security for Ukraine, and therefore for the whole of Europe," he said.
He said that he aims to host another international peace summit in November to which Russia will be invited. Russia was invited to a previous peace summit hosted by Switzerland.

The announcement comes as Russian forces press on in advance in eastern Ukraine and with Ukrainian forces controlling territory in Russia's western Kursk region.

The German government has pledged further aid for the reception and treatment of injured Ukrainian soldiers in Germany. 

It has decided to allocate an additional amount of up to €50 million ($55 million) for this purpose, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of the Interior said in a joint press release. 
      
After the start of the Russian full-scale invasion in 2022, the German government undertook to treat and care for injured people from Ukraine. 

Since then, 1173 people have been treated in Germany. Among them were both soldiers and civilians, many of whom have lost limbs and suffered gunshot and blast injuries.

NATO needs to adopt a "coordinated" response to incidents in which Russian missiles or drones fired at Ukraine enter the alliance's airspace, Romanian Defense Minister Angel Tilvar said.

"B9 states are profoundly concerned about the repeated incursions of Russia's drones and missiles in NATO air space, in Poland, Romania, Latvia, as well as escalating tensions along NATO's eastern flank," Tilvar told reporters, referring to the regional grouping of NATO members.

"That is why a robust, coordinated response on an allied level is needed as well as enforcing the rotational air defence and integrated anti-missile model as soon as possible," he added.

The nations on NATO's eastern flank, whose defense ministers met in Bucharest on Wednesday, have repeatedly said Russia's activities in the Black Sea region and beyond are a source of deep concern.

Earlier this month, NATO members Romania and Latvia saw Russian drones crash after violating their airspace, prompting official calls for joint action to counter Russian air incursions.

Ukraine's parliament has amended the 2024 budget to increase defense spending by an additional 500 billion hryvnias (€10.8 billion, $12 billion) as the war with Russia rages on.

The Finance Ministry said total budget spending rose nearly 11% to 2.1 trillion hryvnias in the first eight months of the year.

The spending included about 965.8 billion hryvnias for soldiers' salaries, ammunition, equipment and other military needs, it said in a statement.

To raise additional funds for the army for the rest of the year, the government plans to raise taxes and borrow more from the domestic debt market, the Finance Ministry said.

Ukraine spends most of its state revenues on national defense and relies on financial aid from its Western partners to finance pensions, public sector wages and other social spending.

The Kremlin has described as "dangerous" comments by Jens Stoltenberg, the outgoing head of NATO, that a decision by the West to allow Ukraine to use Western long-range weapons to strike Russia would not be a red line that would trigger an escalation by Moscow.

"This ostentatious desire not to take seriously the Russian president's statements is a move that is completely short-sighted and unprofessional," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Stoltenberg's position is "extremely provocative and  dangerous," Peskov added.

In an interview published Tuesday, Stoltenberg dismissed a warning by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week that allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied long-range weapons to strike deep into Russian territory would mean the West was fighting Russia directly.

European Union sanctions could target financial institutions that underpin the flow of battlefield equipment to Russia, as well as the supply of products made in Southeast Asia by Western subsidiaries, according to the EU's sanctions envoy, David O'Sullivan.

"It is a question of identifying the financial institutions which are potentially funding the trans-shipment of battlefield products (to Russia)," he said.

"Where these are identified, these institutions will be contacted saying... if they do not desist they are at risk of being listed. The US has done this to great effect with three instances earlier in the year," O'Sullivan added.

The envoy said sanctions were no "magic bullet" but the aim was to make it harder, slower and more expensive for Russia to fuel its war machine. 

The 27-member bloc has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 2022. 

Russian airstrikes targeted energy facilities in Ukraine's northeastern city of Sumy and killed one person in the central city of Kropyvnytskyi, regional officials said.

Ukraine's air force said it shot down 46 of 52 drones launched by Moscow overnight and that Russia used three guided air missiles that failed to reach their targets.

Authorities in the central Kirovohrad region said one person was killed, a 90-year-old woman was wounded and several residential buildings were damaged in Kropyvnytskyi.

Meanwhile, Sumy regional authorities said air defenses had shot down 16 drones over the region, where energy infrastructure has repeatedly come under fire, forcing authorities to use backup power systems.

A major Ukrainian drone attack triggered a huge explosion and forced the partial evacuation of residents near the site of a large Russian arsenal near the town of Toropets in Russia's western Tver region.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it had shot down 54 Ukrainian drones launched overnight, half of them over the Kursk border region, where Ukrainian forces have been waging a counteroffensive since August, but didn't mention Toropets.

Toropets has a population of just over 11,000 and is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Moscow.

Firefighters were trying to contain the blaze, Igor Rudenya, the governor of the Tver region, said in a post on the region's Telegram messaging channel. He did not say what was burning.

NASA satellites picked up several heat sources emanating from the site in the early hours of Wednesday, and seismic monitoring stations picked up what sensors thought was a small earthquake in the area.

Power cuts were announced in parts of the Tver region on Wednesday, and schools and kindergartens were canceled, the local administration said, following reports of a drone attack on the region.

According to Ukrainian security sources, Ukrainian drones struck a missile and artillery storage facility in Toropets, causing a powerful explosion and massive fire.

dh/sms (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)