TOP HEADLINES

• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday for a two-day visit in which he is expected to announce a new package of U.S. assistance worth more than $1 billion. On the first Kyiv trip by a top U.S. official since the Ukrainian counteroffensive began, Blinken is expected to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. READ MORE BELOW

• Russia said Blinken's Ukraine visit showed that Washington would fund Kyiv's war effort "until the last Ukrainian." “They are going to continue to support Ukraine in a state of war and to wage this war to the last Ukrainian, sparing no money for this," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Western powers had installed Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, as president of Ukraine to cover up the glorification of Nazism. Moscow accuses Kyiv's leaders of pursuing a neo-Nazi "genocide" of Ukraine's millions of native Russian-speakers – something Kyiv and its Western allies call a baseless pretext for conflict. READ MORE BELOW

• Russia carried out air strikes on Kyiv and the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa early on Wednesday, killing a civilian and causing a fire and damage at a Danube River port, Ukraine's military said.

• The Russian defense ministry said its air defense systems destroyed a Ukraine-launched drone just before midnight on Tuesday over the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine.

• A Russian-appointed official has acknowledged that Moscow's forces have abandoned the Ukrainian village of Robotyne, more than a week after Kyiv announced its recapture. Yevgeny Balitsky, the top Moscow-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region, said in a television interview that the Russian army had "tactically abandoned" the settlement "because staying on a bare surface when there is no way to completely dig in... doesn't generally make sense.”

• Ukraine's ground force commander said the situation along the eastern frontline remains difficult and the main task for Ukraine's troops is to ensure reliable defense and prevent the loss of strongholds. "The enemy does not abandon his plans to reach the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions," Oleksandr Syrskyi was cited as saying on the Telegram messaging app.

• Ukraine's gross domestic product grew by 2.2 percent year-on-year in the first seven months of 2023, the economy ministry said, citing the beginnings of a recovery after an extremely difficult 2022 in which the economy shrank by a third.

• The UK is set to proscribe the Russian mercenary Wagner Group as a terrorist organization, the interior ministry said, making it illegal to be a member or to support the group.

• The Democratic and Republican leaders of the U.S. Senate expressed support for continued assistance for Ukraine as lawmakers returned to Washington facing a tight deadline for passing spending bills.

• Russia said that Ukraine had used Australian drones to attack targets on Russian territory and that Australia was increasingly being drawn into the conflict. "Australian drones are actually used to strike targets in Russia," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, accusing the Australian government of "enthusiastically contributing to the anti-Russian campaign directed from Washington."

• ROK President Yoon Suk Yeol said any attempt to cooperate with DPRK on military affairs in a way that damages international peace must immediately halt. Yoon spoke at the ASEAN summit meeting, amid reports of arms negotiations between Russia and DPRK – negotiations denied by both those countries.

IN DETAIL

Blinken arrives in Kyiv

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday in a gesture of support as Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russian forces grinds into its fourth month with only small gains.

During his two-day visit, Blinken is likely to announce a new package of U.S. assistance worth more than $1 billion, a senior State Department official told reporters on the trip.

Blinken, on the first trip to Kyiv by a top U.S. official since the Ukrainian counteroffensive began, is expected to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba among other senior officials as well as civil society figures, the official said.

Several hours before his arrival, Russia carried out air strikes on Kyiv and the southern region of Odesa. No casualties were reported in the capital but a civilian was killed and port infrastructure damaged in the south, Ukrainian officials said.

Media reports have cited unidentified U.S. officials as saying the Ukrainian counteroffensive has been too slow and hindered by poor tactics – criticism that angered Ukrainian officials and prompted Kuleba to tell critics to "shut up."

Ukraine has retaken more than a dozen villages and small settlements in its offensive but its soldiers' push into Russian-held territory has been slowed by minefields and miles of trenches. U.S. officials have been careful not to publicly criticize Ukraine's military tactics, and last week said they had seen notable Ukrainian progress in the previous 72 hours of its push in the southeast.

The State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington would like to have a discussion with the Ukrainians on how the offensive is going, assess the battlefield needs as well as any steps that might be required to shore up Ukraine's energy security ahead of the winter months.

"I think what's most important is that we get a real assessment from the Ukrainians themselves," the official said. "We want to see, hear how they intend to push forward in the coming weeks."

Blinken's visit follows the dismissal this week of Oleksii Reznikov who, as Ukraine's defense minister, had lobbied Washington and its allies for arms. Parliament was expected to confirm former lawmaker Rustem Umerov as his successor.

Despite staunch U.S. support for Ukraine so far since Russia's attack began in February last year, several Republican presidential hopefuls have questioned that aid, fueling concerns over whether Washington will be able to back Ukraine at the same level once the U.S. 2024 election campaign intensifies.

The U.S. government has so far provided more than $43 billion in weaponry and other military aid to Ukraine, with a new package of security assistance set to be announced this week. Kyiv is hoping to receive U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets pledged by a number of NATO allies.

U.S. President Joe Biden asked Congress in August to approve about $40 billion in additional spending, including $24 billion for Ukraine and other international needs.

The request could face opposition in Congress, where some far-right Republicans – especially those with close ties to former President Donald Trump – want to pare back the billions in assistance Washington has sent to Ukraine. 

Putin: West installed an ethnic Jew in Ukraine as cover

Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged in a television interview on Tuesday, without citing evidence, that Western powers had installed Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, as president of Ukraine to cover up the glorification of Nazism.

Moscow accuses Kyiv's leaders of pursuing a neo-Nazi "genocide" of Ukraine's millions of native Russian-speakers – something Kyiv and its Western allies call a baseless pretext for a war of acquisition.

It was not the first time Putin had tried to associate modern Ukraine's government with the mass murder of Ukrainian Jews in World War II by Nazi German occupiers of Soviet Ukraine and their local collaborators.

Zelenskyy, himself a native Russian-speaker who was democratically elected in 2019, has said some of his grandfather's brothers were killed in the Nazi Holocaust, and has repeatedly rejected Russian accusations that he has supported neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

Putin told Russian television reporter Pavel Zarubin: “Western curators have put a person at the head of modern Ukraine – an ethnic Jew, with Jewish roots, with Jewish origins. And thus, in my opinion, they seem to be covering up an anti-human essence that is the foundation ... of the modern Ukrainian state.”

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