Russia-Ukraine war updates: Ukrainian drone targets Kursk region

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has decided to dismiss Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov from his post and would ask parliament this week to replace him with Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s main privatisation fund.

Reznikov, who was named defence minister in November 2021, has helped secure billions of dollars of Western military aid to help the war effort, but has been dogged by graft allegations surrounding his ministry that he described as smears.

“I’ve decided to replace the Minister of Defence of Ukraine. Oleksii Reznikov has been through more than 550 days of full-scale war,” Zelenskyy said.

“I believe the ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and society as a whole.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says an inquiry into a United States allegation that a Russian ship had picked up weapons in South Africa late last year found no evidence that the vessel had transported weapons to Russia.

“None of the allegations made about the supply of weapons to Russia have been proven to be true,” Ramaphosa said in an address to the nation.

“No permit was issued for the export of arms and no arms were exported,” he said.

In claims that sparked a diplomatic row, the US ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, told local journalists in a May briefing that Russian cargo ship Lady R had uploaded weapons at a naval base near Cape Town in December.

The governor of Russia’s Kursk region says a nonresidential building in the city of Kurchatov is on fire following a Ukrainian drone attack.

In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Roman Starovoit said that there were no casualties and that security forces were on the scene.

In an interview, Ukraine’s Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov has expressed hope that the state-of-the-art F-16 fighter jets supplied by Ukraine’s allies will be deployed against Russia by next spring.

Reznikov said that pilots had to be trained on the jets, and infrastructure, experts and maintenance facilities had to be maintained before they are deployed to the front lines.

The Netherlands, Denmark and Norway have all promised Ukraine the jets.

Reznikov said he had to write several letters with assurances that these NATO weapons would be used for defence purposes only and not on Russian territory.

Ukraine intends to increase drone production as early as this autumn, the Ukrainian defence minister was quoted as saying, as the country conducts more frequent drone attacks on Russian territory.

“I think this autumn there will be a boom in the production of various Ukrainian drones: flying, floating, crawling, etc, and this will continue to grow in volume,” Oleksii Reznikov told the state-run Ukrinform news agency.

He said one reason for the growth of production was that authorities had reduced various regulations and laws.

“So we rewrote regulations … and simplified the processes. And I believe that we also succeeded in that and gave us the opportunity for such a booster – especially for drone manufacturers who started production from garages.”

The Nobel Foundation says it has reversed its invitations for representatives of Russia, Belarus and Iran to attend this year’s Nobel Prize awards ceremony in Stockholm after a decision to do so, announced on Friday, “provoked strong reactions”.

Several Swedish lawmakers said they will boycott this year’s event in their nation’s capital after the private foundation that administers the prestigious awards changed its position from a year earlier and invited representatives of the three countries to attend.

“The decision by the Nobel Foundation to invite all ambassadors to the Nobel Prize award ceremony, in accordance with previous practice, has provoked strong reactions,” the foundation said in a press release.

“The basis for the decision is that we believe that it is important and right to reach out as widely as possible with the values and messages that the Nobel Prize stands for. ”

Read more here.

Ukraine is home to some of the most biodiverse and unique ecosystems on the planet, and its rich fertile plains provide food to the world.

More than a year after Russia’s invasion and occupation of parts of Ukraine, many of those ecosystems have been fragmented and reduced to ash, with vast tracts of forests destroyed, agricultural lands and soil contaminated, and rivers degraded.

In the Black Sea, dolphins are washing up by the hundreds, harbingers of an impending environmental crisis brought about by war.

Al Jazeera’s People and Power follows Ukrainian prosecutors and forensic investigators tasked by the government with building an environmental war crimes case against Russia as the International Criminal Court comes under increasing pressure to prosecute such alleged crimes.

Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is dead after a plane crash in Russia.

Could this be Russian President Vladimir Putin taking revenge for the mutiny Prigozhin led in June?

And what will happen to the Wagner Group now?

Al Jazeera’s Sandra Gathmann investigates.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he discussed with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron the “functioning” of a sea corridor set up by Kyiv for safe navigation of ships after Moscow exited a landmark grain deal.

“We also discussed ways to ensure the functioning of the grain corridor and enhance the security of the Odesa region,” Zelenskyy said on social media after a phone call with President Macron.

Ukraine this week said four more ships had gone through its temporary maritime corridor in the Black Sea, which it had set up last month to ensure safe navigation.

Zelenskyy also thanked Macron for France’s “crucial military aid” to Kyiv and said the pair “discussed the next packages”.

Ukraine says it has destroyed 22 Russian drones in the southern Odesa region, as Moscow said it hit the Danube port of Reni, on the border with NATO and European Union member Romania.

“On the night of September 3, 2023, the Russian occupiers launched several waves of attacks by ‘Shahed-136/131’ UAVs from the south and southeast,” Ukraine’s Air Force wrote on Telegram.

Twenty-five of the Iranian-made attack drones had been launched and “22 of them were destroyed by the forces and means of the Air Force in cooperation with the air defence of other components of the Defence Forces of Ukraine”, it said.

But Ukrainian authorities said some of the drones hit the Danube area, noting that at least two people were wounded. The Russian army said it had targeted “fuel storage facilities” in Reni, across the Danube River from Romania.

Russia is recruiting migrants from Central Asia and neighbouring countries to be soldiers for its war against Ukraine, according to British intelligence.

“There are at least 6 million migrants from Central Asia in Russia, which the Kremlin likely sees as potential recruits,” Britain’s defence ministry said in its latest intelligence update.

Russia’s goal is to avoid another unpopular general mobilisation before presidential elections next year, the ministry said.

“Exploiting foreign nationals allows the Kremlin to acquire additional personnel for its war effort in the face of increasing losses,” the statement said.

Romania’s Ministry of National Defence has condemned repeated Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Danube port infrastructure close to its border as “unjustified” following the latest overnight drone attack in the southern Odesa region.

The ministry “reiterates in the strongest terms that these attacks against civilian targets and infrastructure in Ukraine are unjustified and in deep contradiction with the rules of international humanitarian law”, it said in a statement.

“At no time did the means of attack used by the Russian Federation generate any direct military threat to the national territory or territorial waters of Romania.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will focus on the Black Sea grain deal during their meeting on Monday as Turkey seeks to bring Moscow back to the deal, according to Erdogan’s chief foreign policy and security adviser.

“We play a leading role here. We see strong support from all around the world for the realisation of the grain corridor,” Akif Cagatay Kilic said in an interview with A Haber TV channel.

“The current status [of the grain deal] will be discussed at the summit on Monday. We are cautious, but we hope to achieve success because this is a situation that affects the entire world,” Kilic said.

The Russian army says it hit the Ukrainian port of Reni on the Danube River, on the border with NATO member Romania, with drone strikes overnight.

“Today at night, the Russian army carried out a group drone strike on fuel storage facilities used to supply military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the port of Reni, in the Odesa region,” the army said. “All designated targets were hit.”

Russian and Belarusian athletes will not compete at the Asian Games in China starting on September 23 after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) concluded that the plan was “not feasible”.

“The concept of the participation of athletes with Russian and Belarusian passports at the Asian Games 2023 was explored as discussed at the Olympic Summit in December 2022, but was not feasible due to technical reasons,” the insidethegames news portal quoted the IOC as saying.

Russia’s Gazprom says it will ship 41.5 million cubic metres of gas to Europe via Ukraine, a volume in line with recent days.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin on Monday, hoping to persuade the Russian leader to rejoin the Black Sea grain deal that Moscow broke off from in July.

The meeting, to take place in Sochi on Russia’s southern coast, comes after weeks of speculation about when and where the two leaders might meet. Erdogan previously said Putin would travel to Turkey in August.

Here are some key things to know and what is at stake at the meeting.

A Ukrainian court has placed billionaire businessman Ihor Kolomoisky under arrest for two months over fraud and money laundering charges as part of the war-torn country’s crackdown on corruption.

The court gave Kolomoisky the option of posting bail of more than 509 million hryvnyas (about $13m).

Read more here.

As the war enters its 557th day, read the key events as of the morning of Sunday, September 3, 2023.

Some 280,000 people have signed up so far this year for professional service with Russia’s military, the deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, former President Dmitry Medvedev, said.

Visiting Russia’s far east, Medvedev said he was meeting local officials to work on efforts to beef up the armed forces.

“According to the Ministry of Defence, since January 1, about 280,000 people have been accepted into the ranks of the Armed Forces on a contract basis,” including reservists, state news agency TASS quoted Medvedev as saying.