🔴 Live: Ukraine condemns Russia’s ‘sham’ elections in occupied regions

11:53am: Musk says blocked Ukraine attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said that he prevented a Ukrainian attack on a Russian Navy base last year by declining Kyiv’s request to activate internet access in the Black Sea near Moscow-annexed Crimea.

Satellite internet service Starlink, operated by Musk-owned company SpaceX, has been deployed in Ukraine since shortly after it was invaded by Russia in February 2022.

“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk posted Thursday on X, formerly named Twitter.

The city of Sevastopol is the base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet on the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.

“If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” Musk said.

Musk was posting in response to a published excerpt of an upcoming biography of the tech tycoon by Walter Isaacson. Musk had “spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States… (who) had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response,” Isaacson wrote.

Musk “secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”, according to Isaacson.

11:27am: Ukraine condemns Russian elections in occupied territories

Ukraine’s foreign ministry on Friday condemned “sham elections” being staged by Russia in occupied Ukrainian territories, saying they were “worthless” and would have no legal standing.

The ministry called on Ukraine’s international partners to denounce the votes and not to recognise the results. The voting for Russian-installed legislatures in four regions only partly controlled by Russia began on Friday and is set to conclude on Sunday.

11:11am: Several killed in Russian air strike in Kherson region

A Russian air strike killed three civilians and wounded four other people on Friday in a village in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app that the air strike was on the village of Odradokamianka.

10:49am: Russian missiles hit several Ukrainian towns and villages

Russian missiles struck cities in central and eastern Ukraine Friday killing one person and injuring dozens of others, officials said.

In the central city of Kryvyi Rig, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown, a missile attack on a police building killed a policeman, Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said.

“Rescuers of the State Emergency Service pulled out three more from under the rubble. They are in serious condition,” he said.

Photos he shared from the scene showed smoke spewing from the ruins of the building as rescue workers carried an injured person to an ambulance.

Over 40 people were injured, the head of the city administration Oleksandr Vilkul said.

At least three people were injured after Russia also struck the city of Sumy in northeast Ukraine, officials said, while one man was injured by a rocket attack on Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.

“Over the past 24 hours, 93 enemy attacks on 29 towns and villages of the Zaporizhzhia region have been recorded,” said Yuriy Malashko, head of the local administration.

8:52am: At least one person killed in Russian strike on Ukraine’s Kryvyi Rih

A Russian missile attack killed one person and wounded nine others on Friday morning in the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, the regional governor said.

Serhiy Lysak said on the Telegram messaging app that the missile hit an administrative building. 

7:51am: EU’s Michel calls Russian blockade of Ukraine ports ‘scandalous’

Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian seaports after pulling out of a United Nations and Turkey-mediated deal to ensure grain shipments must be stopped, the president of the European Council Charles Michel said Friday.

“It’s frankly scandalous that Russia, after having terminated the Black Sea grain initiative, is blocking and attacking Ukrainian ports. This must stop,” Michel told reporters in India’s capital of New Delhi, ahead of a G20 summit.

6:07am: Russia holds elections in occupied Ukrainian regions

Russian authorities are holding local elections this weekend in occupied parts of Ukraine in an effort to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control.

The voting for Russian-installed legislatures in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions begins Friday and concludes Sunday. It has already been denounced by Kyiv and the West.

“It constitutes a flagrant violation of international law, which Russia continues to disregard,” the Council of Europe, the continent’s foremost human rights body, said this week.

Voters are supposed to elect regional legislatures, which in turn will appoint regional governors. In the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, thousands of candidates are also competing for seats on dozens of local councils.

The balloting is scheduled for the same weekend as other local elections in Russia.

5:34am: Cuba arrests 17 for trafficking young men to fight for Russia in Ukraine

Cuban authorities said they had arrested 17 people on charges related to a ring of human traffickers that allegedly lured young Cuban men to serve in the Russian military amid the Ukraine conflict.

Cuba earlier this week revealed authorities were working to “neutralise and dismantle” the network, which it said operated both on Cuban soil and in Russia.

“As a result of the investigations, 17 people have been arrested so far, among them the internal organiser of these activities,” Cesar Rodriguez, a colonel with Cuba´s interior ministry, said late on Thursday on a TV program.

Those involved could be punished with up to 30 years in prison, a life sentence or the death penalty, depending on the severity and type of crimes, which range from human trafficking, fighting as a mercenary and hostile action against a foreign state.

Cuba says it has no part in the war in Ukraine, and that it rejects the use of its citizens as mercenaries.

5:10am: Russia replies to US criticism of ‘sham’ vote in occupied Ukrainian regions

The Russian embassy in the US said on Friday that Washington was meddling in Russia’s internal affairs by calling elections in the occupied areas of Ukraine that Moscow now considers Russian “illegitimate”, the RIA news agency reported.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the comment on Thursday.

2:05am: Ukraine reports some successes in counteroffensive

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday singled out military units in the east and south for their actions against Russian troops and other officials reported some breakthroughs in a counteroffensive to reclaim Russian-occupied territory.

The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces described a “partial success” near the eastern city of Bakhmut, long a focal point of fighting. And it said Ukrainian troops were making gradual progress in their southward advance to the Sea of Azov.

Russian accounts of the fighting said their troops had beaten back Ukrainian attacks near Bakhmut.

Key developments of Thursday, September 7:

Ukraine is “gradually gaining ground” in its counteroffensive against Russia, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said, noting Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian defences despite “heavy, difficult fighting”.

Russia reacted to the US decision decision to supply depleted uranium anti-tank rounds to Ukraine as “a criminal act”.

Read yesterday’s live blog to see how the day’s events unfolded.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)