Ukraine-Russia – live: Putin puts ‘Satan II’ nuclear missile ‘on combat duty’ as Kyiv launches drone strikes

Russian authorities on Friday declared newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, to be a foreign agent, continuing the country’s moves to suppress critics and independent reporting.

Russian law allows for individuals and organizations receiving funding from abroad to be declared foreign agents, a pejorative term that potentially undermines their credibility with the Russian public. The status also requires designees to mark any publications with a disclaimer stating they are foreign agents.

Muratov was chief editor of Novaya Gazeta, which was widely respected abroad for its investigative reporting and was frequently critical of the Kremlin. Muratov was a co-laureate of the 2021 Nobel prize; he later put up his Nobel medal for auction, receiving $103.5 million which he said would be used to aid refugee children from Ukraine.

Hundreds of Bosnian Serbs waved flags of Serbia and Russia and banners of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday as they staged a protest in support of their separatist leader who seeks union with neighboring Serbia.

The protests were held at the unmarked internal border in Bosnia that separates the country into two entities — the Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat federation — as called for under the US-mediated peace deal that ended the country’s 1992-95 war.

The Serb protesters chanted slogans against Bosnia being a single state. They briefly blocked traffic between the two entities, but there were no major incidents reported.

A Polish helicopter did not cross the Belarus border on Friday, a Polish military operational command spokesman said, denying a claim from Minsk that such an incursion took place.

“I do not confirm this information, none of the Polish helicopters crossed the border into Belarus, such a border crossing could not have happened and it did not happen, our radar systems are unambiguous,” Lieutenant Colonel Jacek Goryszewski said.

Drone strikes on Russian soil are only set to increase as Ukraine brings Moscow‘s invasion home, a senior Kyiv official has said.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky said that it has increased strikes on Russian-occupied areas and would also ramp up attacks within Russia itself. Kyiv does not generally directly claim attacks outside of Ukraine, with Mr Podolyak saying such strikes would be carried out by “agents” or “partisans”.

“As for Russia… there is an increasing number of attacks by unidentified drones launched from the territory of the Russian Federation, and the number of these attacks will increase,” Mr Podolyak told Reuters. “This is the stage of the war when hostilities are gradually being transferred to the territory of the Russian Federation”.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met on Friday with a delegation comprised of the heads of Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions and reiterated American support for anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine, the White House said in a statement.

Ukraine has fought back courageously against Mr Putin’s warped bid to restore territory lost to Moscow with the collapse of the Soviet Union and has continued to defy the odds by defending itself against Russian onslaughts with the help of Western military aid.

Clad in white shirts and carrying bouquets, children across Russia flocked back to school Friday, where the Kremlin‘s narratives about the war in Ukraine and its confrontation with the West were taking an even more prominent spot than before.

Students are expected each week to listen to Russia’s national anthem and watch the country’s tricolor flag being raised. There’s a weekly subject loosely translated as “Conversations about Important Things,” which was introduced last year with the goal of boosting patriotism.

A new high school history textbook has a chapter on the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the “special military operation” — the Kremlin’s euphemism for the war, and some basic military training is included in a course on self-defense and first aid.

A Polish military helicopter violated the Belarusian border, the Belarusian State Border Committee said on Friday.

“The Polish Mi-24 military helicopter crossed the state border at an extremely low altitude, flew to a depth of up to 1,200 meters into the territory of Belarus, and then turned back,” the Committee said in a statement.

The Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had summoned the Polish charge d’affaires and demanded an investigation into the incident.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping soon, following earlier reports that he planned to visit China in October.

Russia has turned increasingly to China as its most powerful ally since alienating the West last year with its decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, what it calls a “special military operation”.

China has declined to blame Moscow for the war and condemned Western sanctions on Russia, even as it has profited by securing discounts for oil and gas that Russia can no longer sell to Europe.

Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov said in July that Putin planned to visit China in October at the time of its third “Belt and Road” forum, responding to an invitation issued by Xi during a high-profile state visit to Russia in March.

Putin and Xi had already heralded an era of much closer ties, and a shared rejection of a Western-based world order, by signing a “no limits” partnership agreement in Beijing last year, weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.

But Putin, speaking in a televised meeting with selected schoolchildren on the first day of the school year, did not explicitly confirm that he would travel to China again.

Putin is not known to have travelled abroad since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him in March, just before Xi’s visit, on suspicion of war crimes in Ukraine.

“Quite soon we will have events, and there will be a meeting with the president of the People’s Republic of China,” he said, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

“He (Xi) calls me his friend, and I am happy to call him my friend, because he is a person who does a lot for the development of Russian-Chinese relations.”

Last week, Putin participated remotely in a summit of the BRICS countries, with Brazil, India, China and the host, South Africa.

He will be represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a 9-10 September meeting of the Group of 20 leading industrialised and developing countries in India.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that Denmark’s demand that it reduce its Copenhagen embassy’s staff is another manifestation of its hostile stance.

“The necessary conclusions will, of course, be drawn,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

Denmark, a NATO member, has decided to cap the number of Russian diplomats allowed at the Copenhagen embassy to five and administrative staff to 20, forcing Moscow to cut its staffing, the Danish foreign ministry said in a statement earlier on Friday.