Russia Ukraine war news: Explosion at Moscow factory that supplies Putin’s security services

A blast rocked an optics and optical electronics factory in the town of Sergiev Posad, 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Moscow, on Wednesday, injuring at least 45 people, local authorities said.

Emergency services said the blast appeared to have occurred in a warehouse containing pyrotechnic equipment, the state news agency TASS reported. The popular online news channel Mash said it had been rented by a pyrotechnics firm.

Twenty-three people were admitted to hospital, including six in intensive care, the Sergiev Posad mayor’s office said.

Unverified footage on social media showed a huge column of smoke, and high-rise buildings with windows blown out.

The Zagorsk Optical and Mechanical Plant produces optical equipment for industrial and healthcare applications as well as for the Russian security forces.

However, TASS cited emergency services as saying they did not believe the blast had been caused by a Ukrainian drone attack – many of which have taken place in Moscow and the surrounding area in recent weeks and months.

A Kremlin official involved in what international prosecutors call the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia was associated online as a teenager with white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements, Reuters has found.

The material posted online by Alexei Petrov between 2011 and 2014 remained on his social media account until late July this year when, following questions posed by Reuters, he deleted some videos, unsubscribed from two far-right online groups, and made one of his accounts private.

Petrov is a 27-year-old advisor in the office of Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights. In March, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Lvova-Belova, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin, on charges of committing a war crime by forcibly deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine and taking them to Russia.

Lvova-Belova has denied committing any war crime. She has said vulnerable children were taken to Russia to shelter them from violence and protect them from a leadership in Ukraine that she has described as “Fascists” who have allowed “the virus of Nazism” to make a comeback.

Reuters found that when Petrov was aged between 16 and 19 he made at least three posts on social media containing videos, images or messages from a far-right organization that originated in Russia and promotes white racial supremacy, as well as three images and slogans associated with neo-Nazism.

Petrov’s Skype handle incorporates the name of the white supremacist organization, Wotanjugend, and his Instagram handle contains a coded reference to Adolf Hitler widely used in far-right circles.

He had not changed his Skype handle as of 31 July this year. His Instagram account was disabled but Reuters was able to discern the handle because Petrov linked to it from his account on the VKontakte social media app. He deleted that link the day Reuters submitted its questions about his online activity to his employer.

The Polish government announced Wednesday that it is planning to deploy an additional 2,000 troops to its border with Belarus, twice the number the Border Guard agency had requested, as fears of illegal migration rise.

In an interview with state news agency PAP, a deputy interior minister, Maciej Wasik announced the decision and accused the Belarusian authorities of organizing illegal migration.

He said migration pressure on the Polish-Belarusian border area is growing, although it cannot compare to the situation two years ago.

Since Vladimir Putin rose to power as Russia’s president 23 years ago, few things have rocked his leadership as much as Saturday 24 June when Wagner mercenaries barrelled towards Moscow.

The “army within an army” who had been ruthlessly grinding away for months at the vanguard of some of the bloodiest fighting in eastern flanks Ukraine were now on the verge of triggering a war within a war – this time, against the Kremlin.

But the Russian president was spared that when the mutiny was halted in its tracks about 125 miles from the capital, in a deal between the leader of the mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Putin – brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Prigozhin himself was due to head to Belarus – although he has been pictured in Russia since – with an invitation for Wagner fighters to gather in Belarus. Thousands are set to entered the country since.

A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denied a Russian assertion on Wednesday that Kyiv tried to attack the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) with a drone.

“Undoubtedly, Ukraine did not carry out any kind of drone attack on the ZNPP, was not planning and will not even in theory do so,” Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters in a statement.

A child was killed and two people were injured when a Ukrainian artillery shell hit a two-storey building in Donetsk, the Russian-appointed head of the region, Denis Pushilin, said on Wednesday on his Telegram channel.

The Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine had been partly under the control of pro-Russian separatists since 2014 until Moscow announced last year that it was annexing the province.

Russia, which early last year launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that it calls a “special military operation”, says Ukrainian forces shell the Russian-controlled parts of the Donetsk region on a daily basis.

Separately, the Interfax news agency cited Russian-appointed officials in Ukraine‘s southerly Zaporizhzhia region as saying four civilians had been killed and two wounded by Ukrainian shelling in the village of Trudove, about 15 km (9 miles) east of the town of Tokmak.

Russian security forces said on Wednesday that Ukraine had attempted to attack a spent nuclear fuel storage facility at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant with a strike drone, the state news agency RIA reported, without citing any named source or official.

Russian security forces reached their conclusion by analysing the flight path of the drone, which they downed, RIA said. It distributed a photograph of the purported downed drone, a quadcopter.

A child was killed and two people were injured when a Ukrainian artillery shell hit a two-storey building in Donetsk, the Russian-appointed head of the region, Denis Pushilin, said on Wednesday on his Telegram channel.

The Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine had been partly under the control of pro-Russian separatists since 2014 until Moscow announced last year that it was annexing the province.

Russia, which early last year launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that it calls a “special military operation”, says Ukrainian forces shell the Russian-controlled parts of the Donetsk region on a daily basis.

Workers at a Ministry of Defence missile depot have voted to escalate strike action in a dispute over pay.

GMB Scotland members at the munitions complex in Beith, North Ayrshire, which supplies missiles to Ukraine, will walk out for two weeks from 21 August.

The union warned the strike at the complex, which is run by Defence, Equipment & Support, will disrupt shipments.

However, the Ministry of Defence said the walkout will have “no effect on our ability to provide capability to Ukraine“.

The forthcoming action comes after four days of targeted strikes in recent weeks failed to secure a resolution.

The union claims a “two-tier culture” has developed at the depot and said the pay gap between craft workers who assemble the munitions and non-craft colleagues, who support their work and prepare equipment for transport, has tripled to £18,000.

According to the union, extra payments and bonuses have been made to managers and craft workers in recent years but not to non-craft colleagues earning less than £21,000 a year.

Ukraine has had “partial success” in the south of the country, the deputy defence minister has confirmed.

“Our defenders had partial success in the direction of Urozhayne, Priyutne and Verbove. Now they are fixed at the achieved boundaries,” Hanna Maliar said.

“All the necessary decisions to strengthen our stability were quickly made on the spot by the commanders and command of the eastern group of troops,” Ms Maliar added.

“Both in the east and in the south, the enemy is currently suffering significant losses in personnel, weapons and equipment.”