Victory Chronicles-DAY 1303

A Russian aircraft dropped a guided bomb on a residential neighborhood in Kostyantynivka, a city, which had a pre-war approximate population of 67,000 people in Ukraine’s easternmost Donetsk region, on Sept. 18, killing five civilians, local prosecutors said.

The strike occurred at about 9:55 a.m. and involved a Soviet-designed FAB-250 bomb fitted with a glide module, according to regional officials. The weapon slammed into a street lined with apartment buildings, leaving three men and two women, all between 62 and 74 years old, dead on the spot.

Authorities said the victims had been outside when the bomb hit. The blast shattered facades on four apartment blocks, scattering debris across the neighborhood.

Ukraine’s prosecutors opened a war crimes investigation into the attack, calling it another strike deliberately targeting civilians in across Ukraine, including the Donetsk region where hot spot conflicts have raged since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Ukraine repatriates 1,000 bodies of fallen soldiers. Kyiv has recovered the remains of another 1,000 military personnel who were killed in the war, officials said on Sept. 18. They the operation as one of the largest repatriations since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in early 2022.

The corpses, handed over by Russia under a negotiated arrangement, are believed to be Ukrainian soldiers, according to the government’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The remains were transferred to specialized state facilities and will be examined by law enforcement and forensic experts for identification.

Officials said DNA testing and other forensic procedures will take place before the bodies are returned to families for burial.

Russian drone strike kills Ukrainian rescue worker on professional holiday. A Russian drone strike on the northerneastern Ukrainian city of Nizhyn in the Chernihiv region killed a 45-year-old rescue worker and injured two of his colleagues on Sept. 17, officials said.

The city has suffered the largest Russian airborne assault in mid-September since the full-blown invasion of early 2022. 

Viacheslav Chaus, head of the Chernihiv regional administration, said the attack targeted a State Emergency Service facility using Iranian-designed Shahed drones, also known in Russia as Geran. “Cynical and cruel: on the Day of Emergency Workers, they struck those who save lives,” Chaus wrote.

Two other responders, ages 31 and 36, were hospitalized with injuries. 

Ukrainian rescuers are often killed during so-called Russian double-tap shellings when after the initial aerial strike, a second strike occurs shortly after first responders rush to help victims. 

Ukrainian drones strike major oil refinery deep inside Russia. Long-range drones launched by Ukraine’s Security Service hit the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat petrochemical complex in Russia’s Bashkortostan region on Sept. 18, setting off a massive fire more than 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) from the Ukrainian border, a Ukrainian security source told the Kyiv-based Ukrainska Pravda.

The strike reportedly damaged the refinery’s primary processing unit, known as ELOU-AVT-4, which removes water and salts from crude oil before turning it into gasoline, diesel, kerosene and fuel oil. Video from the scene showed black smoke billowing from the plant. Local Russian authorities confirmed damage and the blaze.

Key Takeaways

1. The U.S. presidential administration of Donald Trump reportedly approved its first European-financed foreign military sales to Ukraine through the Prioritized Ukrainian Requirements List (PURL) initiative.
2. Senior Russian officials continue to publicly signal the Kremlin’s unwillingness to engage in negotiations that result in anything less than full Ukrainian capitulation.
3. The Kremlin is using the threat of aggression to try to prevent European states from committing troops to postwar Ukraine as part of Western security guarantees.
4. Senior Kremlin officials, likely with Kremlin ruler Vladimir Putin’s approval, pushed Kremlin Deputy Chief of Staff Dmitry Kozak out of his senior Kremlin position following years of disagreement with Putin’s policies about the war in Ukraine.
5. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) identified the base and commander of Russia’s Rubikon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies.
6. Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) command and staff military exercises are occurring in Kyrgyzstan from Sept. 17 to 20.
7. Ukrainian forces recently advanced in the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area. Russian forces recently advanced near Pokrovsk and in western Zaporizhia Oblast.

• Three arrested in Essex on suspicion of assisting Russian intelligence service
• The Lynx PRO ground drone helped the 47th Magura OMBR evacuate a wounded man from the front line
• Ukrainian drones hit Volgograd oil refinery, operations suspended
• Putin sacks close adviser Kozak who called for talks with Ukraine, preferring to prolong war
• Zelenskyy reports on new counteroffensive