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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he expects “a powerful September for Ukraine,” including key decisions from Western allies regarding the provision of important weapons and equipment.
The statement came shortly after Kyiv canceled a nationwide overnight air-raid alert and announced the destruction of several Russian cruise missiles.
Writing on Telegram on August 27, Zelenskiy said he expects “new defense packages for Ukrainian soldiers” in the coming weeks.
“Artillery, armored vehicles, air-defense systems and missiles, demining equipment,” he wrote. “Our partners have been informed about our needs. We are expecting decisions.”
“A united world is stronger than any aggressor,” he concluded. “In September, there will be more unity.”
Ukraine destroyed four Russian cruise missiles as Kyiv declared a national air-raid alert during the night of August 26-27, the country’s Air Force wrote on Telegram. Russia also reported two repelled drone strikes on its territory.
Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv municipal military administration, reported that all of the destroyed missiles had been heading for the Kyiv area.
The prosecutor’s office said two civilians were injured and an unspecified number of residential buildings were damaged by missile debris in the Kyiv region.
The Air Force said the missiles were launched from strategic bombers.
The air-raid warning was canceled at about 6 a.m. Kyiv time after about three hours.
The regional military administration in Kherson said the Russian military attacked central Kherson on August 27, killing one woman and injuring a man. Local authorities said the man, aged 51, was hospitalized in serious condition and fighting for his life.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on August 27 that it had shot down two drones during the night. One was shot down over the Bryansk region and a second over the city of Kursk. There were no reports of casualties, but the Kursk drone reportedly crashed into a residential building, the region’s governor wrote on Telegram.
The attacks in Russia came one day after a drone attack in the Moscow region caused three major airports to briefly suspend activities.
The Russian Defense Ministry said later on August 27 that it scrambled a fighter plane to deter a U.S. reconnaissance drone from crossing its borders over the Black Sea.
“As the Russian fighter approached, the foreign reconnaissance UAV made a U-turn away from the state border of the Russian Federation,” the ministry said.
Also in the Black Sea region on August 27, the second vessel blocked by Russia’s withdrawal last month from a UN-brokered deal allowing the safe passage of grain has left Ukraine’s Odesa port, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said.
The Liberian-flagged ship PRIMUS set sail through a temporary corridor set up for civilian vessels.
“The vessel had been in the port since February 20, 2022, with steel products for African countries,” Kubrakov said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The Ukrainian General Staff said in its daily briefing on August 27 that there had been “more than 40 combat clashes” across the country over the previous 24 hours.
“Ukraine continues to conduct an offensive operation in the Melitopol direction and is entrenched at the achieved positions,” the military said referring to the Zaporizhzhya region city that Russia has occupied since March 2022.
Melitopol is a vital transit hub for Russian forces and a key link in its so-called “land bridge” between the occupied Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and the Russia-occupied parts of eastern Ukraine that border Russia.
In a report issued on August 26, the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive has “made further tactically significant gains” in the western part of the Zaporizhzhya region.
Kyiv’s forces were “advancing through what Ukrainian and U.S. sources suggest may be the most challenging series of prepared Russian defensive positions.”
With reporting by Interfax, Reuters, and AFP
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