Ukraine War – Voices and Developments: Ukraine destroys Russian brigade with thousands of soldiers.

Ukraine creates war dummies for a few thousand euros to make the Russians waste their valuable ammunition. To do this, grain freighters want to break through the Russian blockade, while a NATO general estimates that the Russians are losing 200 to 300 meters of ground per day. All news about the war in Ukraine in the ticker.

Zelensky warns of World War III and compares Putin to Hitler

Monday, September 18th, 6:20 a.m.: Shortly before the start of the high-profile UN general debate, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned of a third world war and compared Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. Russian society has lost the respect of the world public, Zelensky said in an interview with the “60 Minutes” program broadcast on Sunday, according to an English translation by the US broadcaster CBS. “They elected him and re-elected him and brought in a second Hitler.” You can’t turn back time, but you can stop Putin now.

“If Ukraine falls, what will happen in ten years?” Zelensky continued. If the Russians reached Poland, would there be a third world war, he asked. Therefore, the whole world must decide whether Putin should be stopped or whether they want to provoke the start of a world war.

Zelensky is expected in New York this Monday. The general debate at the UN General Assembly begins on Tuesday, where more than 140 heads of state and government will speak for over a week from Tuesday. President Zelensky is likely to attract the most attention – a high-level Security Council meeting on Wednesday is eagerly awaited, where he could meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for the first time since the start of the war. Zelenskyj wants to travel to Washington after his visit to New York.

Explosions in Crimea – Russia shoots down Ukrainian drones

10:32 p.m.: According to media reports, there were several explosions in the port city of Sevastopol on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. The Russian Ministry of Defense, on the other hand, simply announced on Sunday: “Two Ukrainian drones were destroyed by air defense over the southwestern part of the Crimean peninsula.” Meanwhile, several Telegram channels published photos showing a fire glow over the city. Residents reported a strong smell of burning. Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014 in violation of international law.

According to the Moscow-appointed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvoshayev, no infrastructure objects were hit. The port city is also the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Raswoshayev explained the smell of fire with a smoke screen that the Navy had used to provide visual protection against the drones. “Yes, the smell is unpleasant, but completely harmless,” he wrote on Telegram.

In the past few days, Ukraine has attacked targets in Crimea several times with drones and cruise missiles. Among other things, a shipyard and two warships were damaged; a day later, according to information from Kiev, a modern S-400 anti-aircraft unit was also destroyed. Russia has not yet confirmed the loss of the S-400. Ukraine has been defending itself against a Russian war of aggression for a good year and a half.

Ukraine destroys Russian brigade with thousands of soldiers

8:40 p.m: The Ukrainian army says it has recaptured a town near the war-damaged city of Bakhmut. The Russian troops have been driven out of Klishchiyivka, the commander of the Ukrainian land forces, Oleksandr Syrskyj, said on Sunday in online networks.

As the “Picture“-newspaper reports, the Ukrainian troops destroyed the entire Russian 72nd brigade with several thousand soldiers during the conquest. The victory was the result of a two-month battle. The Russians were already cut off from supplies in the area. Drones observed the Russian T-90 tanks. As soon as they got within four kilometers of the village, they came under fire from kamikaze drones. The Ukrainian troops managed to push back the line of contact with the Russians, advance uncovered and take the town.

On Friday, Ukraine also reported the capture of the town of Andriivka near Bakhmut, which Russia has so far denied. There, Russian troops are said to have holed up in a bunker under a railway line and were protected from Ukrainian fire. But the Ukrainians surrounded the enemy. According to the commander of the 3rd Ukrainian Assault Brigade, in the last two days the brigade’s scout commander, as well as all battalion commanders and a large proportion of the remaining men, have been eliminated.

This exhausted the Russians, which is why the Ukrainians accelerated the attack. The commander is said to have used a loudspeaker to send a threat to the remaining Russian troops and made an announcement calling on them to surrender. They had ten minutes to do this. Most of the Russians surrendered and are now supposed to serve as troops for a prisoner exchange for the Ukrainians. The remaining men were shot.

US general defends Ukrainian counteroffensive: “They did not fail”

6.45 p.m.: According to US Chief of Staff Mark Milley, the Ukrainian armed forces “did not fail” in their counteroffensive. “You didn’t fail. I know there are some comments that this offensive somehow failed. “She didn’t fail,” Milley told US broadcaster “CNN” in an interview broadcast on Sunday. There have been partial successes, and Ukraine also has great combat power. The counteroffensive progressed more slowly than expected, said Milley. But she was “steady”. Ukraine has been repelling a Russian invasion since February 2022.

Ukraine apparently retakes occupied town near Bakhmut

5:46 p.m: The head of the presidential office in Kiev, Andriy Yermak, has published a photo of Ukrainian soldiers that is said to have been taken in the town of Klishchiyivka in the east of the country, which has long been occupied by Russian troops. “Ukraine always takes its own back,” Yermak captioned the photo on his Telegram channel on Sunday. The picture shows military men holding Ukrainian flags in front of a destroyed church. Ukrainian media located the image based, among other things, on the striking church in Klishchiyivka, a town south of the embattled city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. There has been heavy fighting around the village in recent weeks.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has not yet officially announced the liberation of Klishchiyivka. The place was occupied by the Russians in January 2023. According to their own statements, the Kiev military recently recaptured the neighboring town of Andriivka. According to pictures, not much is left of the place as a result of the heavy fighting.

The capture of Klishchiivka by Ukraine would significantly worsen the tactical situation of the Russian occupiers in Bakhmut, who now run the risk of being held in a pincer position from the south and the north. The Russians and Ukrainians fought over Bakhmut for a good six months. On the part of the Russian armed forces, mercenaries from the Wagner private army were mainly used here. At the end of May, Russia declared the city conquered.

Kadyrov mocks rumors about his health in new videos

4:47 p.m.: Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has dismissed rumors about his poor health as “lies”. In response to Ukrainian media reports that he is said to be in a coma, the close ally of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin released video footage of himself smiling into the camera on Sunday.

Kadyrov said he would advise everyone “who cannot distinguish between truth and lies on the Internet to take a breath of fresh air and organize their thoughts.” The video shows the 46-year-old on a walk. He is wearing a hood and his face is noticeably puffy. “The rain is wonderfully invigorating,” Kadyrov added in the accompanying message.

In another video, also published on his Telegram channel, he first speaks Chechen and then adds in Russian: “Do sports.” The news agency “AFP” was initially unable to determine exactly when the two videos were filmed.

Kadyrov fully supports Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, and his soldiers are fighting alongside Russian troops there. There has been speculation for months that he is ill. On Friday, the Ukrainian news portal “Obozrevatel” reported, citing the secret service, that Kadyrov was “seriously” ill and in a coma. So far there has been no reaction from the Kremlin.

Kadyrov has been at the helm of the Muslim-majority Russian Caucasus republic since 2007. Human rights groups accuse him of a “totalitarian regime.” They repeatedly point to cases of extrajudicial killings and torture by his opponents.

Ukraine is missing 20,000 children – Wladimir Klitschko wants to save them

4:25 p.m.: At least 20,000 children have disappeared since Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. This is what former boxing world champions Wladimir Klitschko and Tatjana Kiel write in their book “Stolen Lives”. Together they founded the initiative #WeAreAllUkrainians, with which they want to draw attention to the tragedies. So far, together with their local partner “Save Ukraine”, they have been able to save 163 children return to her parents in Ukraine.

Klitschko sees the rescued children as “adults in the womb of a child,” as he said in an interview with “Picture“-newspaper reported. Her eyes “saw things that children shouldn’t see. How relatives, mothers, siblings were raped and murdered.” You can feel the children’s insecurity, they are “deeply frightened”.

While the book mentions 20,000 stolen children, Russia claims to have “liberated” 700,000 children from Ukraine. According to author Kiel, the number in Russia is “inflated” and there are 20,000 documented cases in which parents reported their child missing. According to Klitschko, “you can’t hear all the stories because the people don’t exist anymore. They are dead.” He has old friends in Mariupol who he no longer hears from. “I don’t know where they are. Dead? In Crimea?”

According to Kiel, the repatriation of children is particularly successful for mothers and grandmothers. The fathers would be “immediately arrested” when they set foot on Russian soil. “The women endure enormous hardships and have to travel via detours to Russia or Crimea,” says Kiel. Save Ukraine’s partners would support the women by obtaining the necessary documents for the trip. But “far too often” the women don’t get their children back, says Klitschko.

But the magnitude of the task does not cause him to despair. “Every life we ​​bring back gives us enormous motivation,” said Klitschko. He has “no doubt” that the project will succeed in bringing all the stolen children back home. “We just do it, we don’t stop. You can’t stop life.”