President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Reuters that the new Russian POWs have “significantly added” to the list of captured soldiers. He also said that Russia has more POWs than Ukraine. “Our task is to have more of them in order to return our own,” Zelensky said.
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky called for punishing all Russian war criminals following the discovery of a mass burial site in Izium, a Kharkiv Oblast town that was liberated by Ukrainian troops earlier in September. Evidence has been piling up that Russian troops massacred hundreds of people in Izium.
Four powerful explosions were heard in Kherson on the evening of Sept. 17, Ukrainian media reported. Local residents said that black smoke was rising from the territory of a machine-building plant where a Russian military base is allegedly located.
High-resolution Maxar satellite imagery shows the entrance of the city's Pischanske cemetery in March and five months later under Russian occupation. The mass burial site reportedly contains around 440 bodies. Evidence has been piling up that Russian troops massacred hundreds of people in Izium.
Donetsk Oblast Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko reported that Russian troops shelled the city with S-300 missiles. A 16-year-old teenage girl was among the injured people. The oldest wounded civilian is 72 years old. The Russians damaged 32 residential buildings and completely destroyed two houses, Kyrylenko said.
Engineers have fixed one of the four main power lines of the plant damaged during the Russian occupation and reconnected it to the Ukrainian grid, the IAEA reported on Sept. 17. "While (the plant's) power status has improved over the past week, the situation is still precarious," the IAEA tweeted.
Western sanctions are starting to hurt Russia's ability to make advanced weaponry for the war in Ukraine, Rob Bauer, who chairs NATO's Military Committee, told Reuters. NATO sees signs of Russia's decreased ability to produce replacements for cruise missiles and more sophisticated weaponry, Bauer said. On Sept. 16, unnamed U.S. officials told CNN they were disappointed about sanctions not having a bigger impact on the Russian economy.
Based in then-occupied Kupiansk, they had tortured local residents, threatening to send them to a minefield and kill their families, Ukraine's Security Service reported on Sept. 17. One of the victims said, "For 40 minutes, they had been using a stun gun on me, then they shot at me with either an airgun or a gas gun, I don't know – I was in a bag." As Ukraine recaptured settlements in Kharkiv Oblast, law enforcement started uncovering potential crimes the Russian forces committed during the occupation.
Russian forces targeted Kostiantynivka, damaging residential buildings and injuring five civilians, including one child, Donetsk Oblast Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Sept. 17.
It is the last tranche of the $4.5 billion grant provided by the U.S. from the World Bank's trust fund, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said. Ukraine will spend the money on pensions and social care. On Sept. 14, Shmyhal said Ukraine relies on its foreign partners to face massive expenses in the coming year as the budget deficit in 2023 may amount to around $38 billion.
In total, Spain has delivered 75 pallets of ammunition for large-caliber artillery systems to Ukraine over the "last several days," according to Ukraine’s General Staff. The country is also currently delivering military cold weather gear to Ukraine. "(This) is an example of Spain's decisive and constant support of the Ukrainian people," said Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles.
A cargo ship left Odesa Oblast on Sept. 17 and is heading towards the Port of Djibouti, after which the grain it carries will be sent to Ethiopia, according to the Odesa Regional Military Administration. On Sept. 16, Turkey’s Defense Ministry reported that five cargo ships left Odesa Oblast via the “grain corridor.” Ukraine has exported at least 3.33 million metric tons of grain since Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement brokered by the UN and Turkey on Aug. 1 to allow grain exports to restart.
According to Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov, the right of Galtera, a company linked to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, has been revoked by a court. Despite the fact that the airport was destroyed by the Russian invasion, “the time will come when Dnipro people will fly freely to Europe," Filatov said.
Saodat Narzieva, a sister of the oligarch Alisher Usmanov; Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died in April, and Olga Ayziman, the ex-wife of Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman, have been removed from the list. On Sept. 14, the EU extended restrictive measures against the country for another six months, until March 15. The sanctions apply to 1,206 individuals and 108 legal entities.
Ukraine's state nuclear company Energoatom reported that a 25-truck convoy passed Russian military checkpoints and arrived in Russian-occupied Enerhodar with spare parts for the repair of damaged facilities. The trucks also brought diesel fuel for power generators to ensure the stable functioning of the plant in case of a possible power outage. Russia, which has been shelling Ukrainian positions from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar, is accused of using it as a shield and a tool of blackmail.
“These air defense systems will help Ukraine protect itself from threats from the air - in particular from airplanes, drones, and cruise missiles,” Pentagon press secretary General Patrick Ryder said. NASAMS are surface-to-air missile systems capable of detecting and hitting targets at distances up to 180 kilometers.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Reuters that he proposed the plan to the UN amid a global shortage of fertilizers. “I am against supplying ammonia from Russia through our territory. I would only do it in exchange for our prisoners,” he said. Ukraine has a pipeline that can pump up to 2.5 million tonnes of ammonia annually from Russia to Ukraine's Black Sea ports. Zelensky’s idea was rejected by the Kremlin.
According to a deal finalized with Germany, Greece will receive the same amount of Marder armored fighting vehicles from Germany in return for the BMP-1 vehicles supplied to Ukraine, Greece's Defense Ministry said. It took Germany and Greece four months to agree on the deal.
The EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said the bloc is "deeply shocked" by the mass graves with more than 440 bodies discovered in the city by the Ukrainian authorities. “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has been leaving a trail of blood and destruction across Ukraine,” he said. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Izium atrocities may be interpreted as war crimes, and there is a need to “build the evidence and document the atrocities that have been committed.”
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin claimed at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan that the Russian army is gradually capturing “more and more territories” despite the Ukrainian counter-offensive. He added that only a part of the Russian army is engaged in the war. Russia's initial war aim was to "de-Nazify" and "demilitarize" Ukraine - propaganda terms that imply stripping Ukraine of its sovereignty.
The Ukrainian army also hit an unloading station, preventing Russia's military from sending new reserves, Ukraine's General Staff said. On Sept. 16, Russia launched 4 missiles and 5 air strikes on Ukraine and carried out 12 attacks with multiple rocket launchers, according to the General Staff.
Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on Sept. 16 that the bodies of the members of Ukraine's Armed Forces with tied hands were found at a mass burial site in the recently liberated city of Izium, Kharkiv Oblast. According to Lubinets, soldiers may have been tortured before being killed. Ukrainian police earlier said they had found a mass burial site containing around 440 graves in Izium.
According to Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Governor Valentyn Reznichenko, Russian troops shelled the oblast's Velyka Kostromka village with heavy artillery on Sept. 16, killing two men. The official also reported some infrastructural damages but didn't provide details.
Cherkasy Oblast Governor Ihor Taburets reported on Sept. 16 that the missile was downed over the oblast's Uman district, causing minor damage to several non-residential buildings and an emergency shutdown of power supply facilities. He said there were no casualties.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to the President’s Office, said in an interview with Interfax Ukraine news agency that the successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast and Russian attacks on Ukrainian thermal power plants and dams may push the West to supply anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems to Kyiv. He believes the allies are still not ready to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, fearing a direct confrontation with Russia, “but the situation will finally change with a little more of effective counteroffensive.”
Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov said there was a powerful explosion in the Russian-occupied city in Zaporizhzhia Oblast on Sept. 16. Fedorov didn’t provide any details about the attack but hinted he was hoping for "good news" from the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
According to Oleh Kotenko, the government’s commissioner for missing persons, the exhumation of bodies at mass burial sites has begun in the recently liberated city of Izium, Kharkiv Oblast. He said that the number of dead in Izium may be much higher than in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb where at least 458 people were found dead after the liberation from the Russian occupation in April. Earlier on Sept. 15, Ukrainian police said that they had found a mass burial site containing around 440 graves in Izium.
Liz Throssell, a spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office, said on Sept. 16 that the agency plans to send monitors to the recently liberated city of Izium in Kharkiv Oblast where Ukrainian police say they have found a mass burial site containing around 440 graves. “They (monitors) are aiming to go there to try to establish a bit more about what may have happened,” Throssell said.
“We were expecting that things like SWIFT and all the blocking sanctions on Russia’s banks would totally crater the Russian economy,” CNN quoted one of the U.S. officials. Russia’s economy was expected to shrink by nearly 15% earlier in the year, but between April and June, it declined by about 4% as compared to the same period last year, the report reads.
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said the damages inflicted on the infrastructure by the Sept. 16 strikes were severe but didn't provide details. Russia has repeatedly targeted critical infrastructure in Kyryvi Rih. The earlier attack on a local dam on Sept. 14 had caused the flooding of over 100 homes, according to Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s military administration.
Russia’s state-controlled TASS news agency reported that one person died and one was injured as a result of the explosions in temporarily occupied Kherson on Sept. 16. According to TASS, it was a missile strike launched by Ukraine's Armed Forces when Russian proxies had their morning meeting in one of the administrative buildings in Kherson. Kyiv hasn’t yet commented.
Russian state-controlled RIA Novosti news agency reported that Sergey Gorenko, a Russian-installed proxy in charge of prosecution, was killed by an explosion in his office in Luhansk on Sept. 16. Kyiv hasn't yet commented.
