(COPENHAGEN) – A Russian warship fired two flares at a Danish military helicopter in the Baltic Sea, prompting Denmark’s prime minister to condemn Moscow’s “reckless action” as NATO jets shot down a Russian drone over Lithuania in a separate incident.
The Royal Danish Air Force’s AS500 Fenikk helicopter was conducting routine photographic surveillance of the Russian frigate when flares were launched directly towards it. One flare passed within a short distance of the aircraft. Neither crew members were injured and the helicopter was undamaged. The incident occurred near Gedser, on the southeastern tip of Denmark. The Russian ambassador, Vladimir Barban, was summoned to explain the incident.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the incident “reckless action from Russia,” adding: “Russian actions are meant to intimidate and divide. They will not succeed.” Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen condemned the incident as serious, calling it evidence that Russia is increasingly willing to take risks.
Shortly before the Danish incident, a NATO fighter jet shot down a drone over Lithuania. The weapon entered Lithuanian airspace from neighbouring Belarus and headed west, prompting alerts around Vilnius. The Lithuanian military said Italian jets neutralised the threat shortly after midnight. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said the incident demonstrated the importance of regional readiness. Poland also scrambled fighter jets as a precaution during Russian drone attacks on Ukraine.
Russian attacks on Ukraine continued into the morning, with a petrol station in Kyiv’s southeastern Darnytskyi district hit at approximately 06:00 local time. One person was hospitalised in a critical condition and later died. Kyiv City Military Administration said a second petrol station was hit by a drone at 08:39 local time in the Holosiivskyi district. In total, 11 people were killed and 64 injured across Ukraine on 14th September. Three were killed and 15 injured when agricultural warehouses in Proluki in the Chernihiv Oblast were hit. Other casualties occurred in an arc through Kharkiv and down through the Donbas region into Zaporizhzhia and Odesa in the south.
Andrii Biletskyi, commander of the Third Army Corps, has officially confirmed recent military action in the vicinity of Lyman. He said the Ukrainian army offensive in the north of the Donetsk region is operating under a media blackout. His units have eliminated pockets of enemy infiltration and cleared an area of 75 square kilometres. An additional 10 square kilometres were later deoccupied, bringing the total to 85 square kilometres. Open source material and military bloggers had previously reported approximately 200 square kilometres liberated.
Biletskyi said a devastating blow was dealt to the combat capabilities of the Russian 20th and 25th armies. He said Russia had lost approximately 1,500 soldiers, over 12,000 drones and hundreds of units of armoured vehicles, artillery systems and other motor vehicles. He finished his social media announcement with a tease, saying: “There is currently a lot of information in open sources suggesting that the ultimate goal of our offensive actions is to reach the banks of the Chy Zerbet River, but our operation is called Vivaldi.” He added that Vivaldi, as is well known, has four seasons, “and this is just the first of them. Keep an eye on our official announcements and don’t rush to post spoilers. Good news is coming.”
A strike on a Russian headquarters in occupied Donetsk around 26th August is now thought to have killed Major General Anton Grunis in addition to Lieutenant General Sergey Milchakov. Milchakov was commander of Russia’s 51st Combined Arms Army, while Grunis commanded Russia’s 4th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, which is said to have been fighting in the Bakhmut and Kostiantynivka areas. Grunis is presumed dead after an obituary was published by Russian sites.
The Syzran oil refinery in Samara Oblast was hit overnight. It is part of Russia’s state owned oil giant Rosneft. The AVT6 primary oil refining unit and the facility’s tank farm were hit according to Ukraine’s General Staff. Samara Oblast governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said over 40 Ukrainian drones were shot down. The city of Taganrog was also hit, with strikes thought to have targeted the Beriev aerospace manufacturing complex, a drone production facility. NASA’s FIRMS system detected a major fire burning at the location in the early hours.
A serving member of the British armed forces has died in a road traffic accident in Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence in London has said, adding that the incident was not caused by hostile action. Britain has acknowledged that a small number of military personnel are in Ukraine supporting Ukrainian forces and protecting diplomatic staff.
US President Donald Trump claimed that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to halt strikes on energy targets. Trump posted: “Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian energy targets. Russia has agreed to do likewise.” However, almost 24 hours later, neither side has confirmed that any deal has been struck. Approximately one hour after Trump’s post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was not sure of Russia’s desire to adhere to any such agreement. Moscow delivered the usual platitude celebrating Trump trying to mediate, but gave no indication of change. Christopher Miller of the Financial Times said Trump jumped the gun, with sources in Kyiv saying something is in the works but warning there is no finalised agreement.
Trump has been blaming diesel shortages worldwide on the Russia Ukraine war rather than on events in Iran and the Middle East. Data shows a huge peak in diesel prices in early 2022 when the full scale invasion began, which levelled off in subsequent years. Another spike occurred in February, coinciding with the attack on Iran rather than events in Russia and Ukraine. The data does not support claims coming from the White House as it prepares for the midterms.
Two investigations have been published into members of Trump’s family. ProPublica reported that Oleg Kremlev, a Russian businessman close to the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, heavily financed Trump Jr.’s wedding afterparty on 24th May on private islands in the Bahamas. The event featured dancers in stilettos and sailor caps and a five tier funfetti cake airlifted from Florida. Kremlev, who speaks limited English, attended with a large group of other Russian guests. In the days leading up to Trump Jr.’s wedding, Kremlev was in China as part of the delegation accompanying Putin.
The month before, Putin had bestowed him with the Order of Friendship. The Ukrainian government has imposed sanctions on Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services. Public reporting suggests Trump Jr. could have afforded the event himself, being worth over 300 million US dollars (approximately 225 million pounds sterling). A spokesperson for Trump Jr. told ProPublica that Kremlev is a personal friend, not someone he has a business relationship with, having met through a mutual friend in the hunting world and bonding over their love of boxing and the outdoors.
In 2009, Kremlev did not yet exist under that name. He was in his late 20s with a criminal record for extortion and battery, still going by his old birth name. He is now head of the International Boxing Association, the sports group financed by the Russian state owned energy giant Gazprom. Bettina Trump, wife of Trump Jr., posted a lengthy Instagram caption responding to the report that Kremlev had paid over 170,000 US dollars (approximately 128,000 pounds sterling) for her wedding. She did not deny those figures or his involvement, but said it was not actually the wedding but an afterparty.
“Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us after our wedding,” she said. “It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful. It’s unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from. Friendship doesn’t require a political motive. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda and sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.”
The New Yorker published a detailed account of Jared Kushner’s role as an envoy both in the Middle East and in Europe, highlighting alleged connections between business dealings that have benefited the Trump family and US government agreements in the Middle East, as well as proposed deals in Ukraine and relating to Russia. In Moscow, Kushner and Steve Witkoff greeted Putin like an old friend and allowed their hosts to transport them in a Russian limousine rather than a US embassy vehicle, a security risk that few of their predecessors would have allowed. The article quotes a senior ethics lawyer: “If Kushner wasn’t the son-in-law of the president, he would be under investigation by the FBI. No one else could have got away with this.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, has resigned and fled Ukraine after becoming embroiled in a corruption scandal. His appointment formed part of Zelensky’s ultimately ill fated attempt to bring Ukraine’s independent anti corruption bodies, NABU and SAPO, under firmer presidential control. That strategy collapsed spectacularly last summer, provoking the largest public demonstrations since Russia’s full scale invasion. Kravchenko is under scrutiny from the same agencies which have charged several of his subordinates in the prosecutor general’s office over an alleged fraud scheme. Before resigning and fleeing, he had authorised charges against their directors. Zelensky has urged Parliament to approve his dismissal without delay.
Zelensky has also sanctioned his former press secretary from 2019 to 2021, Yulia Mendel, for allegedly spreading disinformation and Russian propaganda and supporting Russia’s aggressive policy against Ukraine. Mendel had announced she planned to speak on the sidelines of an event hosted by the AfD party in Germany, for which its candidates have sworn to end financial and military support to Kyiv and seek closer ties with Moscow.
Ukrainian officials have accused Mendel of echoing Kremlin propaganda after she claimed without evidence that Kyiv had been willing to surrender the Donbas in 2022 in a May interview with Tucker Carlson. She had previously described Zelensky as a dictator addicted to drugs, with the former head of his office, Andriy Yermak, performing black magic and collecting water from corpses. The measures against Mendel, which will last for a decade, will strip the former spokesman of her state awards, freeze her assets and forbid her from moving capital out of her home country.
The European Union has agreed to postpone its deadline for extending sanctions against Russia, giving officials another seven days to reach an agreement. A spokesperson for the presidency of the Council of the EU speaking to the Kyiv Independent confirmed the delay. Some member states want to take certain Russian figures off the sanctions list, but other countries are pushing back.
A British mother searching for her son who is missing in action in Ukraine was sacked by her employer, the Home Office, for speaking to a journalist. Valerie Stobbart’s son, Nathan Stobbart, is a British citizen fighting for the Russian army. He has been missing since December 2025. Nathan met his Russian wife, Kassenya, on Xbox. He was an electrical contractor in Newcastle and was doing well. He entered Russia permanently for the first time on Christmas Day 2024.
He married Kassenya in February 2025. In April 2025, he was threatened with deportation and told he would not get a visa to stay in Russia with his wife and child unless he signed a year long contract with the army. He signed a contract and began 12 month service with the Russian army. On 17th December 2025, Kassenya texted Valerie to say Nathan had been coerced into joining the Russian army and had gone missing in action. He was last heard on the radio on 10th December 2025 and was formally posted missing in action on 12th December 2025.
Valerie contacted the Foreign Office, the Red Cross, the Ukrainian embassy and the Russian embassy trying to get information, but received nothing. The Foreign Office case worker gets in touch every few weeks to ask if she has heard anything. In May 2026, Valerie contacted The Telegraph asking for help. The Telegraph searched for Nathan on the Ukrainian government’s “I Want to Find” app, but this produced no results. Through other channels, The Telegraph discovered Nathan’s unit, the 33rd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment, had been fighting in the Pokrovsk area of Ukraine. Ukrainian units fighting in the area were similarly unable to identify Mr Stobbart.
Valerie was working as an immigration officer for the British Home Office. After she told her line manager that she had spoken to a journalist, she was immediately sent home. The next day she was told she was suspended pending a disciplinary hearing. She was subsequently sacked for gross misconduct, with the Home Office citing policies about speaking to journalists. A Home Office spokesman said: “We do not comment on individual employment cases.”
The Ukrainian Film Festival is being hosted by the Ukrainian Institute in London from Thursday to Saturday. The theme is healing, exploring what holds people together through a prolonged war, and features Ukrainian films of all genres.
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