This blog file is now closed. For the latest developments, please click here.
The war in Ukraine, which broke out in February 2022 with Russia's invasion of its neighbor, shows no sign of ending as both sides intensify attacks to gain control of contested regions.
Read our latest updates here. For all our coverage, visit our Ukraine war page.
Maldives: Small island nation with big role shipping chips to Russia
HSBC to halt corporate remittances to and from Russia
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Putin psychological analysis shows anger and disgust but no fear
Special report: Russia buying civilian drones from China for war effort
Note: Nikkei Asia decided in March 2022 to suspend its reporting from Russia until further information becomes available regarding the scope of the revised criminal code. Entries include material from wire services and other sources.
Here are the latest developments:
Tuesday, Sept. 12 (Tokyo time)
1:00 a.m. Russia targeted a civilian cargo ship in the Black Sea last month, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tells parliament. The Aug. 24 incident involved "multiple missiles," says Sunak, citing declassified intelligence.
Kyiv has accused Russia of threatening civilian vessels in the area since Moscow decided in July to exit a deal that had allowed Ukraine to export grain safely via the Black Sea.
Monday, Sept. 11
6:02 p.m. An emotional evaluation of one of Vladimir Putin's speeches reveals a high degree of anger and disgust but surprisingly, almost no fear, clinical psychologist Nirit Pisano tells Nikkei Asia in an interview. The Russian leader's lack of fear was also apparent in a speech a year after the invasion, she says.
"We need to know what we're looking to deter," says Pisano, who serves as chief psychology officer at Cognovi Labs, an Ohio-based artificial intelligence company that mixes machine learning and behavioral psychology to reveal how people are feeling in the moment and what drives their decisions. Read more.
3:01 p.m. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says he hopes Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will resume participation in the Group of 20 next year as he prepares to take over the grouping's presidency from India.
Lula says he did not know why Xi and Putin did not attend the India summit. "We will invite them and we hope they participate," he says.
He also says he hopes the Ukraine war will be "over" by the time the G20 gathers in Rio de Janeiro in November 2024. Read more.
Sunday, Sept. 10
10:45 p.m. Isolating Russia in global forums hinders efforts to resolve gridlock stemming from its invasion of Ukraine, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tells reporters at the Group of 20 summit.
"Any initiative that isolates Russia will fail," Erdogan says as the summit wraps up, after leaders agreed on a joint declaration that omitted past language condemning Moscow.
The G20 leaders call for "immediate and unimpeded deliveries of grain, foodstuffs and fertilizers or inputs" from Russia and Ukraine to "meet the demand in developing and least developed countries, particularly those in Africa." Read more.
At the summit, G20 leaders reached a consensus on a joint declaration, avoiding explicit condemnations of Russian aggression against Ukraine but defying doubts about whether a document could be issued at all.
4:00 p.m. Russia's Eastern Economic Forum has begun in Vladivostok. The conference runs until Wednesday, with President Vladimir Putin set to attend on Monday and Tuesday.
Putin will address the forum on Tuesday, according to the presidential office. He is expected to emphasize cooperation with "friendly" countries, such as China, in food and energy exports. Among Asian nations, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing and Laotian Vice President Pany Yathotou are scheduled to attend. There are reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will visit Russia in conjunction with the forum.
Saturday, Sept. 9
11:08 a.m. Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi made an unannounced visit to Ukraine, the Japanese government said, in a show of support for the Eastern European nation's defense against Russia's ongoing invasion. It is the first Ukraine visit by the Japanese foreign minister since Moscow launched the war in February 2022. All other Group of Seven member nations have sent their top diplomats to Ukraine since the invasion, making Japan the last to do so.
4:00 a.m. Ukraine's partners need to redouble sanctions on Russia, hitting its energy sector and chip supply harder, says President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ukraine is seeing too long of a "pause" in sanctions on the part of its partners, along with active attempts by Russia to evade them, Zelenskyy says in his nightly national address.
He calls for "further sanctions against Russia's energy sector, real restrictions on the supply of chips and microelectronics in general to terrorists, and further blocking of the Russian financial sector."
"This sanctions offensive of the world must resume," he says.
Friday, Sept. 8
11:30 p.m. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Vladimir Putin of being responsible for the death of mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, saying this shows the Russian leader is "weak."
Zelenskyy makes the claim during a news conference in Kyiv. He does not provide any evidence but says "the information we all have" indicates Putin killed Prigozhin, Reuters reports. Moscow has said it would investigate the fatal crash of the plane carrying Prigozhin, who headed the private military company Wagner Group, while denying Putin had any connection to his death.
Zelenskyy also acknowledges the challenges facing his country's counteroffensive amid reports of hard-fought gains with Western-supplied weapons.
"The war is slowing down," he says. "It is, we admit it. All processes are complicated and slowed down: from sanctions to the provision of weapons."
2:30 p.m. HSBC Group will halt remittance services to and from Russia and Belarus for its corporate clients next month as financial institutions respond to Western sanctions over the Ukraine war, Nikkei Asia has learned.
The British financial services group, which includes Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong, sent letters in the past month notifying business customers that it would no longer process commercial payments starting Oct. 27 in the face of an "increasingly complex regulatory landscape."
The notice, seen by Nikkei Asia, said the decision was taken to "minimise operational exposure to Russia and Belarus even where such activity is permitted under applicable laws and regulations. Read more.
5:30 a.m. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken calls elections underway in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine a "sham" whose outcome has been decided by Moscow.
"The Kremlin hopes these pre-determined, fabricated results will strengthen Russia's illegitimate claims to the parts of Ukraine it occupies, but this is nothing more than a propaganda exercise," Blinken says in a statement.
The local assembly elections are being held from Friday to Sunday in what Russia calls the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. Moscow claims to have annexed these parts of Ukraine after its invasion last year.
"The United States will never recognize the Russian Federation's claims to any of Ukraine's sovereign territory, and we remind any individuals who may support Russia's sham elections in Ukraine, including by acting as so-called 'international observers,' that they may be subject to sanctions and visa restrictions," Blinken said.
Russian electoral law has been adjusted to make it possible to hold elections even in the conditions of combat and shelling, Tass reports. Early voting began on Aug. 31.
Thursday, Sept. 7
4:15 a.m. The new U.S. package of security assistance for Ukraine includes depleted uranium rounds for use in Abrams tanks, the Department of Defense says.
The package, worth up to $175 million, also includes standard artillery rounds and air defense equipment, among other supplies.
The Biden administration's decision to supply dense, armor-piercing depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine follows its earlier provision of cluster bombs. Critics say both types of weapons can pose a long-lingering danger to civilians.
1:35 a.m. Armenia hosts a joint army exercise with the U.S. next week amid intense frustration with its ally Moscow. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has accused Russia, distracted by its war with Ukraine, of failing to protect Armenia against what he calls continuing aggression from neighboring Azerbaijan.
The Sept. 11-20 "Eagle Partner 2023" exercise is intended to prepare Armenian forces to take part in international peacekeeping missions, the country's Defense Ministry says. A U.S. military spokesperson says 85 American soldiers and 175 Armenians will take part.
Wednesday, Sept. 6
9:55 p.m. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemns a Russian attack on Wednesday that he says killed at least 16 people, including a child, and wounded many more in the eastern city of Kostiantynivka.
Zelenskyy says on the Telegram messaging app that a market, shops and a pharmacy were hit. The attack coincided with a visit to Kyiv by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
9:15 p.m. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits Kyiv to show support for Ukraine and its grinding counteroffensive against Russian forces. He is likely to announce a new package of wartime assistance worth more than $1 billion, a senior State Department official tells reporters.
"We want to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs, not only to succeed in the counteroffensive, but has what it needs for the long term, to make sure that it has a strong deterrent," Blinken says alongside Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. "We're also determined to continue to work with our partners as they build and rebuild a strong economy, strong democracy."
9:01 p.m. Ukraine's parliament approves the appointment of former lawmaker Rustem Umerov as defense minister.
Umerov, 41, replaces Oleksii Reznikov, who helped secure billions of dollars of Western military aid but was dogged by media allegations of corruption at the ministry. His removal is not expected to affect Ukraine's military strategy.
2:00 p.m. A Russian drone attack on the Danube port of Izmail in the Odesa region killed one person and damaged infrastructure on Wednesday, the region's governor, Oleh Kiper, says on the Telegram messaging app. During the nearly three-hour attack, several agricultural and port facilities were damaged and several fires occurred, Kiper said. "An employee of an agricultural enterprise, who was seriously injured, died in the hospital," Kiper said.
7:00 a.m. The Russian Defense Ministry says its air defense systems destroyed a Ukraine-launched drone just before midnight on Tuesday over the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine. The ministry did not say in its statement, posted on the Telegram messaging app, if there were any casualties or damage.
2:48 a.m. Arms negotiations between Russia and North Korea are advancing, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan says, and he warns Pyongyang over supplying weapons to Moscow for use in Ukraine.
Providing weapons to Russia "is not going to reflect well on North Korea, and they will pay a price for this in the international community," he tells reporters at the White House.
"We have continued to squeeze Russia's defense industrial base," Sullivan says, and Moscow is now "looking to whatever source they can find" for goods like ammunition.
Tuesday, Sept. 5
4:00 a.m. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un plans to visit Russia this month to meet President Vladimir Putin and discuss the possibility of supplying weapons for Moscow's war in Ukraine, The New York Times reports, citing U.S. and allied sources. Kim likely would travel by armored train to Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast.
Such a trip would come as Russia discusses holding joint military exercises with North Korea and after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had tried while visiting North Korea to persuade Pyongyang to sell artillery ammunition to Russia.
The White House did not immediately respond to a New York Times request for comment, but national security spokesman John Kirby said on Aug. 30 that the U.S. was concerned that arms negotiations between the two countries were advancing.
Monday, Sept. 4
10:27 p.m. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov submits his resignation after months of corruption allegations against his ministry. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has proposed Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar and ex-lawmaker who runs the State Property Fund, to replace him.
Reznikov, who took office in 2021, has helped Kyiv secure billions of dollars worth of Western military aid since Russia's invasion in February 2022. "Reznikov did an amazing job building up a relationship with other ministers and other ministries," Andriy Zagorodnyuk, defense minister from 2019 to 2020, tells Reuters. "It saved the country because he was the owner of the process of arranging the shipments of weapons and so on."
Reznikov was not implicated personally by corruption allegations leveled by Ukrainian media at the Defense Ministry, and he portrayed himself as the victim of a smear campaign.
10:21 p.m. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan conclude three hours of talks in Sochi, Tass reports. Putin restates after the meeting that Moscow would be ready to return to the Black Sea grain deal once all agreements relevant to the accord are fulfilled.
Russia quit the grain deal in July -- a year after it was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey -- complaining that its own food and fertilizer exports faced obstacles. Erdogan, who previously helped persuade Putin to stick with the deal, and the U.N. are trying to get Putin to return to the deal.
3:00 p.m. Turkey and Japan will cooperate over the reconstruction of Ukraine, once the fighting ends, according to Turkish and Japanese officials.
Turkey, Ukraine's southern neighbor across the Black Sea, will leverage its unique geography and business ties to help Japanese companies secure contracts in sectors such as energy, transportation, health care and infrastructure. Read more.
2:30 p.m. A Russian drone attack on a major Ukraine grain exporting port damaged warehouses and set buildings on fire, Ukraine says, hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were due to hold talks. A 3 1/2-hour drone assault on the Danube River port of Izmail, in Ukraine's Odesa region, hit warehouses and production buildings, and drone debris set several civilian infrastructure buildings on fire, the governor of the Odesa region said.
5:20 a.m. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has struck a "very important agreement on training our pilots in France" in conversation with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.
"Our coalition of modern fighters is getting more powerful," Zelenskyy says in his nightly video address. He does not elaborate on what the training will entail.
For earlier updates, click here.
