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Ukraine’s armed forces are making “gradual tactical advances” against Russia’s defensive line east of the town of Robotyne, the British Defense Ministry said Saturday in its daily intelligence update on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The update, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, also indicated that it is “highly likely” Russia has taken forces from other areas of the front line “to replace degraded units” near Robotyne. The redeployments, the ministry said, are “likely limiting” Russia’s capacity for executing offensive operations in other frontline areas and are “highly likely” indicative of pressure on Russia’s defensive lines, especially around Robotyne.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a letter last month that Russia would be eligible to apply for membership and access to the SWIFT banking system for food and fertilizer transactions.

The Russian Agricultural Bank subsidiary in Luxembourg could immediately apply to SWIFT to “effectively enable access” for the bank to the international payments system within 30 days, the United Nations told Russia in a letter, seen by Reuters on Friday.

In an effort to persuade Moscow to return to the U.N.-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative that had allowed the safe export through the Black Sea of Ukrainian grain, Guterres outlined four measures the United Nations could facilitate to improve Russia’s grain and fertilizer exports.

Guteres told Lavrov the U.N. was immediately ready to move on all measures “based on the clear understanding that their application would lead to the Russian Federation’s return to the Black Sea Initiative and the full resumption of operations.”

A key Russian demand has been the reconnection of the Russian Agricultural Bank, Rosselkhozbank, to the SWIFT system. It was cut off by the European Union in June of last year after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed skepticism in a statement Wednesday at the U.N. chief’s proposals.

“Instead of actual exemptions from sanctions, all Russia got was a new dose of promises from the U.N. Secretariat,” it said. “These recent proposals do not contain any new elements and cannot serve as a foundation for making any tangible progress in terms of bringing our agricultural exports back to normal.”

Russia exited the deal in July, a year after it was brokered by the U.N. and Turkey to combat a global food crisis the U.N. said was worsened by Russia’s invasion. Ukraine and Russia are both leading grain exporters.

In other developments, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin masterminded the death of Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in an unexplained plane crash with his top lieutenants last month.

Zelenskyy did not provide evidence to back up the claim he made in passing during a conference in Kyiv when he was asked a question about the Russian president.

“The fact that he killed Prigozhin — at least that’s the information we all have, not any other kind — that also speaks to his rationality, and about the fact that he is weak,” Zelenskyy said.

The Kremlin says all possible causes of the crash will be investigated, including the possibility of foul play. It has called the suggestion that Putin ordered the deaths of Prigozhin and his men an “absolute lie.”

Prigozhin led a short-lived mutiny in Russia in June that Putin characterized as treasonous and a “stab in the back.”
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A multinational rail and ports deal linking the Middle East and South Asia will be announced Saturday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi, a White House official said.

The pact comes at a critical time as U.S. President Joe Biden seeks to counter China’s Belt and Road push on global infrastructure by pitching Washington as an alternative partner and investor for developing countries at the G20 grouping.

The deal will benefit low and middle-income countries in the region and enable a critical role for the Middle East in global commerce, Jon Finer, the U.S. deputy national security adviser, told reporters at the bloc’s annual summit in New Delhi.

It aims to link Middle East countries by railway and connect them to India by port, helping the flow of energy and trade from the Gulf to Europe, U.S. officials have said, by cutting shipping times, costs and fuel use.

A memorandum of understanding for the deal will be signed by the European Union, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and other G20 partners, Finer said.

“Linking these key regions, we think, is a huge opportunity,” said Finer. No immediate details of the value of the deal were available.

The move comes amid U.S. efforts for a broader diplomatic deal in the Middle East that would have Saudi Arabia recognize Israel.

From the U.S. viewpoint, Finer added, the deal helps “turn the temperature down across the region” and “address a conflict where we see it.”
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Britain on Friday marked one year since the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, polls show her successor, King Charles III, faces a challenge to keep the monarchy relevant and popular among younger generations. Camera: Henry Ridgwell.
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An international team of at least 150 rescuers gathered at a Turkish cave Friday and prepared to try to bring out a U.S. explorer who fell ill nearly a week ago while exploring more than 1,000 meters underground.

Mark Dickey, 40, was exploring Morca Cave near Anamur, Turkey, in the Taurus Mountains with a team of about 12 others last Saturday when he fell ill with what was determined to be internal bleeding.

At a depth of 1,040 meters, Dickey was unable to climb out on his own. The Turkish Caving Federation said the team alerted the European Cave Rescue Association.

A Hungarian rescue team that includes a doctor reached Dickey this week, was able to get him medicine and blood infusions, and was monitoring him at a base camp.

Dickey appeared in a video message that the rescuers recorded and released Friday. He appeared to be in good spirits but said he “was not healed on the inside yet” and would need a lot of help climbing out of the cave.

The head of the Turkish search-and-rescue team, Recep Salci, told the Reuters news agency Friday that Dickey was stable enough to be moved but that the operation would likely take several days.

Salci said that getting to Dickey’s location involves many narrow passages and descents where a rope must be used. Some areas can be accessed only by crawling.

Salci said it takes a healthy caver 12 hours to get down to the location and 16 hours to climb up. He said some areas would require explosives to widen.

Salci said many of the operations were already being carried out.

In his video message, Dickey thanked the Turkish government and others who reached him initially with medical supplies, which he said saved his life. He also thanked the international community of cave explorers who have responded.

The European Cave Rescue Association said teams from Turkey, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Poland arrived at the scene over the course of the last week. How long the rescue mission will take depends on whether Dickey will require a stretcher on the way out, Werner Zegler, the association’s vice president, told VOA in an interview.

Zegler estimated that it would take three or four days if Dickey did not need a stretcher and up to two weeks if he did. According to Zegler, there were more than 100 rescuers on site. If initial extraction efforts fail, more might be necessary, he said.

Ivana Konstantinovic of VOA’s Serbian Service contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Rescue crews have begun airlifting hundreds of people trapped in dozens of Greek hamlets after four days of cataclysmic rainfall left at least 7 people dead and an unknown number missing.

Rains from Daniel, the worst storm to hit Greece in 75 years, turned small streets in the country’s farming heartland of Thessaly into waterways that uprooted village huts. Rivers swelled, dams burst, and bridges broke.

Hardest hit has been the region of Karditsa, where six people, all elderly women and shepherds, were found under mounds of debris, washed away by floodwaters in their attempt to evacuate their homes. 

Officially, six people remain missing, but locals and crew contacted by VOA predict greater numbers. In the village of Palamas alone, on the outskirts of Karditsa, residents phoning into local TV stations spoke of more than 60 villagers missing on Friday.

Authorities liken the storm to what they call a “biblical catastrophe,” placing several parts of the Thessaly plain in a state of emergency, and allowing the country’s military to be called in to help on Thursday.

But by then, Daniel had wreaked unprecedented damage, and left the nation angry about the government’s delayed response. 

Emergency services on Friday were seen using divers, lifeboats and 80 all-weather military helicopters to reach stranded people across Thessaly, mainly in Karditsa.

Sofia, an elderly woman who managed to escape to a relative’s home, described the horror of her ordeal.

“I was left on the rooftop of my home for days before someone came with a plastic life raft and helped me down,” she said. “I would have drowned, because the water had reached 2 meters high.”

Like thousands of others in the region, Sofia said she received no notification to evacuate and seek safety on higher ground. 

“I am left with nothing. Zero,” she said. “The government now has to help us.”

Other farmers, including Christos Theodoropoulos, are mad.

“Nothing is left. Nothing,” he shouted. “No official has come to help us. I am embarrassed that this is 2023 and this has happened.”

In 2020, the region was hit by a ferocious cyclone. 

But since then, locals say authorities have failed to build necessary infrastructure to shield the region — leaving it, thousands of residents and livestock at the mercy of nature.  
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London’s Metropolitan Police on Friday reported the first confirmed sighting of a terror suspect who escaped Wednesday from a London medium-security prison and is now the subject of a nationwide manhunt. 

A former British soldier, 21-year-old Daniel Abed Khalife, is believed to have escaped from HMP Wandsworth by leaving the prison kitchen, where he was working, and fastening himself to the bottom of a food delivery van. 

In a release, the Metropolitan Police said they received information from a member of the public who said they saw a man fitting Khalife’s description walking away from a food delivery van that had stopped not far from the prison shortly after his escape. The man was then seen walking toward Wandsworth town center.

London police also confirmed Friday they were carrying out an extensive search of Richmond Park in London’s southwest. The search included 150 officers, The Independent newspaper reports, quoting Metropolitan Pollice Commissioner Mark Rowl.

Discharged from the British army in May, Khalife was awaiting trial on offenses related to terrorism and violations of the Official Secrets Act. He is accused of planting fake bombs at an army base in England and, the BBC reported, collecting sensitive personal information about soldiers from a British Defense Ministry database. 

He is also charged with obtaining information that might be “directly or indirectly useful to an enemy.” The BBC reported that enemy was Iran. Khalife has denied the charges.

British Justice Minister Alex Chalk briefed Parliament on the escape Thursday and promised an immediate investigation into the prison’s protocols and the decision about where Khalife was held. He said a second independent investigation will take place at a later date.

“No stone must be left unturned in getting to the bottom of what happened,” Chalk said.

Some information in this report was provided by Reuters and The Associated Press. 
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It’s never been easy for the leaders of the world’s largest economies to find common ground, but Russia’s war on Ukraine has made it even harder for the Group of 20 meeting to reach meaningful agreements this year.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this year’s host, has pledged Ukraine won’t overshadow his focus on the needs developing nations in the so-called Global South, but the war has proved hard to ignore.

“New Delhi will not want to distract from the main agenda, which is to address issues of concern for the Global South,” said Nazia Hussain, an associate research fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

“So while there will be discussions on the emerging issues as a fallout of the war — supply chain security and decoupling, energy security, and food supply — the focus must remain on how to mitigate the fallout rather than debate the geopolitical/security aspects of the war.”

As leaders began arriving Friday, Indian diplomats were still trying to find compromise language for a joint communique.

Russia and China, which has been Moscow’s most important supporter in the war against Ukraine, have rejected drafts over a reference to Ukraine that said “most members strongly condemned the war,” the same language they signed off a year ago at the G20 summit in Bali

The European Union, meanwhile, has said compromise language suggested by India is not strong enough for them to agree to, while the U.K. said that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak planned to press G20 members to take a tougher line against Russia’s invasion.

Ending the summit without a communique would underscore how strained relations are among the world’s major powers.

European Council President Charles Michel told reporters Friday that it was important to give India space as it worked “actively, maybe sometimes discreetly, to maximize the chance for a communique.”

He said Russia had isolated itself from the world with the invasion of Ukraine, and that the EU and others were working to “encourage China to play a positive role at the global level and to defend the UN charter and to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the Bali summit by video last year, but Modi has made a point of not inviting Ukraine to participate in this year’s event.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised Zelenskyy to keep Ukraine in the discussions, telling him in a video call that the leaders posted on Instagram: “I’m disappointed that you won’t be included but as you know, we will be speaking up strongly for you.”

Founded in 1999, the G20 was initially a response to global economic challenges, but since then, geopolitical tensions have introduced more politics into the discussions, complicating its ability to work effectively, said Ian Lesser, vice president of the German Marshall Fund and director of its Brussels office.

The G20 encompasses the world’s wealthiest countries in the Group of Seven, including the U.S., Canada, Britain, Japan, Germany and the European Union as a bloc, along with Russia, China and others.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine and China’s growing assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region have added friction, pitting some of the most powerful G20 countries directly against each other diplomatically, Lesser said.

“Having China and Russia in the room now is a very different question than it would have been a decade ago,” he said. “It is very difficult now for any of these large-scale summits to avoid the major issues of the issues of the day, and these major issues are very polarizing — the war in Ukraine, tensions in the Indo-Pacific, even climate policy — the things that are both at the top of the global agenda but also very difficult to address.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will not be attending the G20 themselves, instead sending lower-level officials.

Russia and China did not indicate why their leaders were not attending, but neither have traveled much recently and both seem to be putting a greater emphasis on the more like-minded BRICS group of nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. That group agreed at its summit last month to expand to include Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Egypt and Ethiopia.

China’s relations with India continue to be strained over ongoing border disputes, but despite the decision to send Premier Li Qiang instead of Xi, Modi and Xi did discuss the issue face-to-face at the BRICS summit and China’s Foreign Ministry said Beijing considers India-China relations “generally stable.”

India also has historic ties with Moscow, but is on good terms with the U.S. too. Modi is hoping to use his country’s influence to bridge gaps between the wealthy nations that have been standing together to sanction Russia over the Ukraine war and the Global South.

About half of the G20 countries are found in the Global South — depending on how one defines it — and Modi hopes to add the African Union as a bloc member.

In preparation, he held a virtual “Voice of the Global South” summit in January and has emphasized issues critical to developing nations, including alternative fuels like hydrogen, resource efficiency, developing a common framework for digital public infrastructure and food security.

“For the Global South, India’s presidency is seen as an opportunity with immense potential to address developmental needs, particularly as Brazil and South Africa are set to take over the presidency of the G20 from India in 2024 in 2025 respectively,” Hussain said.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters before Biden’s departure that the president supported adding the African Union as a permanent member and that the president hoped this summit “will show that the world’s major economies can work together even in challenging times.”

The U.S. will also focus on many of Modi’s priorities, including reforming multilateral development banks, especially the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, to help developing countries, Sullivan said. Biden will also call for “meaningful debt relief” for low- and middle-income countries, and seek to make progress on other priorities including climate and health issues.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday dismissed suggestions that the proposals are designed to counter China’s global lending and investment through its so-called Belt and Road Initiative.

Michel, the EU council president, said he had hope the summit would be productive.

“I do not think the G20 will resolve in two days all the problems of the world,” he said. “But I think it can be a bold step in the right direction and we should work to make it happen and support the Indian presidency.”
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Friday marks the first anniversary of the death of England’s Queen Elizabeth.  She died a year ago at her beloved Balmoral Castle in Scotland at age 96.  

Upon her death, her son, Charles, immediately became king.  

Charles says he and his wife, Camilla, will spend the day quietly at the Scottish royal castle.  

“In marking the first anniversary of Her late Majesty’s death and my Accession, we recall with great affection her long life, devoted service and all she meant to so many of us,” King Charles posted in an online statement.  

On the anniversary of her death, the royal family shared a rarely-seen photograph of the queen taken in 1968 by famed photographer Cecil Beaton. The photo had previously appeared in an exhibition of Beaton’s photographs. 
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Rescuers from across Europe rushed to a cave in Turkey on Thursday, launching an operation to save an American researcher who became trapped almost 1,000 meters below the cave’s entrance after suffering stomach bleeding.

Experienced caver Mark Dickey, 40, suddenly became ill during an expedition with a handful of others, including three other Americans, in the Morca cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains, the European Association of Cave Rescuers said.

While rescuers, including a Hungarian doctor, have reached and treated Dickey, it could be days and possibly weeks before they are able to get him out of the cave, which is too narrow in places for a stretcher to pass through.

In a video message from inside the cave and made available Thursday by Turkey’s communications directorate, Dickey thanked the caving community and the Turkish government for their efforts.

“The caving world is a really tight-knit group and it’s amazing to see how many people have responded on the surface,” said Dickey. ” … I do know that the quick response of the Turkish government to get the medical supplies that I need, in my opinion, saved my life. I was very close to the edge.”

Dickey, who is seen standing and moving around in the video, said that while he is alert and talking, he is not “healed on the inside” and will need a lot of help to get out of the cave. Doctors will decide whether he will need to leave the cave on a stretcher or if he can leave under his own power.

Dickey, who had been bleeding and losing fluid from his stomach, has stopped vomiting and has eaten for the first time in days, according to a New Jersey-based cave rescue group he’s affiliated with. It’s unclear what caused his medical issue.

The New Jersey Initial Response Team said the rescue will require many teams and constant medical care. The group says the cave is also quite cold — about 4-6 degrees Celsius.

Communication with Dickey takes about five to seven hours and is carried out by runners, who go from Dickey to the camp below the surface where a telephone line to speak with the surface has been set up.

Experts said it will be a challenge to successfully rescue Dickey.

Yusuf Ogrenecek of the Speleological Federation of Turkey said that one of the most difficult tasks of cave rescue operations is widening the narrow cave passages to allow stretcher lines to pass through at low depths.

Stretcher lines are labor intensive and require experienced cave rescuers working long hours, Ogrenecek said. He added that other difficult factors range from navigating through mud and water at low temperatures to the psychological toll of staying inside a cave for long periods of time.

Marton Kovacs of the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service said that the cave is being prepared for Dickey’s safe extraction. Passages are being widened and the danger of falling rocks is also being addressed.

Turkish disaster relief agency AFAD and rescue team UMKE are working with Turkish and international cavers on the plan to hoist Dickey out of the cave system, the European Cave Rescue Association said.

The rescue effort currently involves more than 170 people, including doctors, paramedics who are tending to Dickey and experienced cavers, Ogrenecek said, adding that the rescue operation could take up to two to three weeks.

The operation includes rescue teams from Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Turkey.

Dickey was described by the association as “a highly trained caver and a cave rescuer himself” who is well known as a cave researcher, or speleologist, from his participation in many international expeditions. He is secretary of the association’s medical committee.

Dickey was on an expedition mapping the 1,276-meter-deep Morca cave system for the Anatolian Speleology Group Association (ASPEG) when he ran into trouble about 1,000 meters down, according to Ogrenecek. He initially became ill on Saturday, but it took until Sunday morning to notify others who were above ground.

Justin Hanley, a 28-year-old firefighter from near Dallas, Texas, said he met Dickey a few months ago when he took a cave rescue course Dickey taught in Hungary and Croatia. He described Dickey as upbeat and as someone who sees the good in everyone.

“Mark is the guy that should be on that rescue mission that’s leading and consulting and for him to be the one that needs to be rescued is kind of a tragedy in and of itself,” he said.

A team of rescuers from Italy’s National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Team will be flying to Turkey on Thursday night. A total of around 50 rescuers will be at the entrance of the cave early Friday ready to participate in the operation directed by Turkish authorities.

The rescue teams hope that the extraction can begin on Saturday or Sunday. Kovacs said that lifting Dickey will likely take several days, and that several bivouac points are being prepared along the way so that Dickey and rescue teams can rest.

The cave has been divided into several sections, with each country’s rescue team being responsible for one section.

The Hungarian Cave Rescue Service, made up of volunteer rescuers, was the first to arrive at Dickey’s location and provided emergency blood transfusions to stabilize his condition. 
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South Korean officials say North Korea has likely been invited to join Russia and China for the first time in trilateral naval exercises that experts see as a response to the newly cemented strategic cooperation among South Korea, Japan and the United States.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is believed to have proposed the joint naval drills during a visit to Pyongyang in July, according to South Korean lawmaker Yoo Sang-bum. Yoo said National Intelligence Service Director Kim Kyou-hyun briefed about the proposal at a closed-door meeting on Monday.

China and Russia have held annual joint naval exercises for over a decade, but this would mark the first time that North Korea has been invited to participate. The development followed reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin this month to discuss possible weapons transfers.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a press briefing on Thursday that she did not have information about the proposed drills with Russia and North Korea.

David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, told VOA the proposal for naval drills appeared to be “a direct response” to what he called “JAROKUS,” or “the new Japan-ROK-US security arrangement,” using an acronym for South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.

He said that arrangement, sealed at a mid-August summit at the Camp David presidential retreat outside Washington, is “arguably the most important security arrangement in Northeast Asia in the 21st century and probably in the last seven decades.”

‘Authoritarian axis’

Maxwell said members of the Moscow-Beijing-Pyongyang “authoritarian axis” may also feel a need to counter other U.S.-led security alliances, including AUKUS (Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.), the QUAD (Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.) and NATO.

The United States, South Korea and Japan have conducted several joint ballistic missile defense drills of their own this year in response to North Korea’s missile launches.

At Camp David, the three countries agreed to hold annual multidomain trilateral exercises and exchange real-time missile warning data. They also committed to consult as necessary on military responses to common threats.

Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, said joint drills by Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang “will be pretty preliminary” in the beginning as the three militaries learn how to share information and communicate with each other.

“That doesn’t mean that’s where they’re going to end,” he said. “This would be the beginning of a whole sequence of naval drills and ground and air drills” in which the countries would most likely cooperate.

China and Russia have held annual naval drills since 2012, according to the Chinese Defense Ministry. The militaries of the two countries began training together in 2005, and in 2018, Beijing sent its ground troops and aircraft to join Russia’s Vostok exercises, according to the RAND Corporation.

In July, Beijing and Moscow held Northern/Interaction-2023 military exercises in the Sea of Japan. It was the first drill they had conducted near Japan.

Reports of the trilateral naval drills came just days before Kim is expected to travel to Russia’s far eastern port city of Vladivostok to attend the September 10-13 Eastern Economic Forum. While there, he is expected to meet Putin to discuss potential arms deliveries.

The New York Times, citing U.S. and allied officials on Monday, said Putin is likely to ask Kim for artillery shells and antitank missiles for use in his war in Ukraine, while Kim will probably ask for satellite technology and nuclear-powered submarines.

On Friday in North Korea, the state-run KCNA news agency said the country had held a “submarine-launching ceremony” on Wednesday that it said would bolster its naval force. Kim said equipping the navy with nuclear weapons is an urgent task as he inspected what KCNA described as tactical nuclear submarine “Hero Kim Kun Ok” on Thursday.

Assist to Russian army

Patrick Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, said the North Korean weapons could “help the Russian army persevere in a primarily stalemated war in Ukraine.”

But even without the North Korean weapons, he said, Putin is likely to benefit from the trilateral naval drills because they would “help divert international attention from Ukraine” by “elevating security concerns for the United States and its allies in Asia.”

Mao, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said at a press briefing on Thursday that the potential arms negotiations between Moscow and Pyongyang are matters that relate to the two countries, and she declined to comment further.

But other experts said China also stands to benefit from anything that prolongs the war in Ukraine.

“The upside for Beijing … is that it depletes U.S. weapons stockpiles and makes it harder for the U.S. to fulfill weapons commitments to Taiwan,” said Dennis Wilder, who served as the National Security Council director for China in 2004-05.

“It also keeps significant U.S. forces focused on Europe and away from the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

Bennett at RAND said the U.S. and its allies had “depleted a lot of our weapons stocks, sending them off to Ukraine without adequately replacing anything.”

“We no longer have a two-major-theater war capability,” he said. “What do we do if all of a sudden we have three major wars?” including the war in Ukraine and potential conflicts over Taiwan and in the Korean Peninsula.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at a press briefing Tuesday that Russia’s weapons were depleted as well.

Describing Russia’s outreach to North Korea as an act of desperation, he said Moscow finds it necessary only because the U.S. and its allies “have continued to squeeze Russia’s defense industrial base.”
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Russia’s cyber operations may not have managed to land the big blow that many Western officials feared following Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but Ukrainian cyber officials caution Moscow has not stopped trying.

Instead, Ukraine’s top counterintelligence agency warns that Russia continues to refine its tactics as it works to further ingrain cyber operations as part of their warfighting doctrine.

“Our resilience has risen a lot,” Illia Vitiuk, head of cybersecurity for the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said Thursday at a cyber summit in Washington. “But the problem is that our counterpart, Russia, our enemy, is constantly also evolving and searching for new ways [to attack].”

Vitiuk warned that Moscow continues to launch between 10 and 15 serious cyberattacks per day, many of which show signs of being launched in coordination with missile strikes and other traditional military maneuvers.

“These are not some genius youngsters in search for easy money,” Vitiuk said. “These are people who are working on day-to-day basis and have orders from their military command to destroy Ukraine.”

Vitiuk said Russia has launched 3,000 cyberattacks against Ukraine so far this year, after carrying out 4,500 such attacks following its invasion in 2022.

In addition, he said Russian officials are targeting Ukraine with about 1,000 disinformation campaigns per month.

Last month, for example, the SBU uncovered and blocked a Russian malware plot that sought to infiltrate critical Ukrainian systems by using Android mobile devices captured from Ukrainian forces on the battlefield.

Russian officials routinely deny any involvement in cyberattacks, especially those aimed at civilian infrastructure.

But Russian denials have been met with skepticism in the West, and in the United States, in particular.

“The Russians are increasing their capability and their efforts in the cyber domain,” said CIA Deputy Director David Cohen, who spoke at the same conference in Washington.

“This is a pitched battle every day,” Cohen added, noting that the fight in cyberspace is far from one-sided.

“The Russians have been on the receiving end of a fair amount of cyberattacks being directed at them from a sort of a range of private sector actors,” he said. “There have been attacks on Russian government, some hack and leak attacks. There have been information space attacks on the TV and radio broadcasts.”

Both Washington and Kyiv agree Ukraine’s cyber defenses are holding, at least for now.

Vitiuk, though, expressed caution.

“This war is not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” he said. “Our enemy is evolving, and [there are] a lot of things we still need to do, and a lot of things we still need to adopt in order to make this victory come faster.”

Vitiuk also warned that Russia’s determination should not be taken lightly, pointing to Ukrainian intelligence showing that Moscow is looking for ways to expand the reach of its cyber operations against Kyiv.

“We clearly see that there is a national cyber offensive program,” Vitiuk said. “Now they implement offensive [cyber] disciplines in their higher education establishments under control of special services.”

“They start to teach students how to attack state systems, and it is extremely, extremely dangerous,” he said.
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