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Russian drone attacks early on Wednesday killed one person and damaged agricultural infrastructure in Izmail, a port district in the Odesa region, its governor Oleg Kiper said. Ukrainian air defence systems shot down Russian missiles that targeted Kyiv in another early morning attack. Read our liveblog for the latest updates on the war in Ukraine. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).
9:31am: Ukraine’s GDP has grown by 2.2 percent so far in 2023, says economy ministry
Ukraine’s gross domestic product grew by 2.2 percent year-on-year in the first seven months of 2023, the economy ministry said on Wednesday.
The ministry said in a statement the economy had started to recover after an extremely difficult 2022, when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
9:02am: Moscow-appointed official says Russian army ‘tactically abandoned’ Ukraine’s Robotyne
A Russian-appointed official has acknowledged that Moscow’s forces have abandoned the Ukrainian village of Robotyne, more than a week after Kyiv announced its recapture.
Yevgeny Balitsky, the top Moscow-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, said in a television interview that the Russian army had withdrawn for what he called tactical reasons.
“The Russian army abandoned – tactically abandoned – this settlement because staying on a bare surface when there is no way to completely dig in … doesn’t generally make sense… Therefore the Russian army moved off into the hills,” news outlet RBC quoted him as saying.
Russia has not previously acknowledged the loss of Robotyne, whose recapture was announced by Ukraine on August 28. In its daily update on Tuesday, the Russian defence ministry said its forces had repelled two Ukrainian attacks near Robotyne.
More than 18 months after Russia’s invasion, Ukraine says it is gaining ground and has broken through Russia’s first line of fortifications in several places on the front line, despite…
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