Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Ukraine is hoping to rally a wide array of support from the international community at a Saudi-hosted summit for talks in Jeddah this weekend aimed at finding solutions to end the conflict.

The summit, which is being organized by the Saudis and does not include Russia, could see representatives from some 40 countries in attendance, including Ukraine and its allies as well as emerging market and Global South countries that have stayed neutral throughout the war.

Those countries include major economies like India, Brazil, and China, although China has not yet confirmed its attendance. Russia and Ukraine are still unwilling to talk directly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week that he hoped the gathering would result in a “peace summit” of world leaders that would support Ukraine’s ten-point plan for a peace settlement. With many leaders in the invited emerging market countries having important trade and political relationships with Russia, achieving a united front may prove challenging for Kyiv.

— Natasha Turak

The Security Service of Ukraine accused Russia on Friday of preparing to stage a “false flag” attack at the Mozyr oil refinery in Belarus in order to blame Ukrainian saboteurs as part of an effort to draw Minsk into the war in Ukraine.

The attack, it said in a statement on the Telegram app, would be carried out by military and intelligence forces sent by Moscow to Belarus disguised as Wagner mercenaries who were exiled after staging a mutiny in Russia in June.

“Russia plans to accuse Ukraine of what they have done in order to try once again to draw Minsk into the full-scale war against our state,” it said in a statement, without providing evidence.

It said its assertions were based on information obtained from several sources, including a captured Russian serviceman.

— Reuters

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 19 more years in prison after being found guilty of a series of charges, his team confirmed on Friday.

Navalny had been facing charges of inciting and financing “extremist activity” and “rehabilitating Nazi ideology,” charges he and his supporters reject.

Navalny, who is already serving a nine-year prison sentence on charges of embezzlement and fraud which he and his supporters say are false and politically motivated, has been held in a remote penal colony since he was jailed in 2021.

In a tweet on Thursday, Navalny said that he expected to receive a “Stalinist” prison term. He has also condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, calling it “the most stupid and senseless war of the 21st century.”

Read the full story here.

— Sam Meredith

The Kremlin expressed distrust of U.S. pledges to meet its conditions if it rejoins the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a pivotal deal brokered by the U.N. that allowed Ukrainian grain to be exported safely via its Black Sea ports.

Russia withdrew from the deal last month after expressing displeasure that its demands for the allowance of Russian agricultural exports had not been met. It has since launched multiple drone and missile attacks against Ukrainian ports and grain supplies.

“If they want to contribute to fulfilling the part of the grain deal that is due to Russia, the Americans must fulfil it, not promise that they will think about it,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

“As soon as this is done, this deal will immediately be renewed.”

Peskov’s comments were in regard to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s remarks one day earlier, when he told reporters, “In the event of return to the agreement, of course, we’ll continue to do whatever is necessary to make sure that everyone can export their food and food products freely and safely to include Russia.”

— Natasha Turak

Ukrainian soldiers from the 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade testing new military equipment, including FPV (first-person view) drones, at a training area amid the Russia-Ukraine war in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, on August 3, 2023. 

— Wojciech Grzedzinski | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Videos circulating online show a ship resembling the “Olenegorsky Gornyak” warship listing to one side and being towed back to the Novorossiysk port, which the Moscow administration said had been attacked by unmanned Ukrainian vessels.

Using satellite imagery and marine ship tracking data, NBC News was able to confirm that the video was filmed in Novorossiysk and showed the same class of warship as the “Olenegorsky Gornyak.”

Earlier on Friday, the Russian defense ministry reported an attack at major oil export hub Novorossiysk, with the city’s mayor saying two vessels repelled the attack. Neither Russian authority mentioned damage to Moscow ships at the time.

CNBC could not independently verify developments on the ground.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Iranian Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian is set to visit Japan this weekend to meet Japan’s foreign minister as well as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Reuters reported.

The news agency cited Japanese broadcaster TBS as saying that Japan will tell Iran to stop supplying weapons to Russia. TBS attributed the information to unnamed government officials.

Russia has been heavily using lethal Iranian-made Shahed drones to strike targets in Ukraine, weapons analysts and Ukrainian and Western officials say. Tehran says it sold the drones to Russia before the full-fledged invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, but denies that it sold the country more weapons in the time since then.

The U.S. and EU have placed more sanctions on Iran as a result.

— Natasha Turak

Russia’s recent wave of strikes against Ukrainian ports near the border of NATO member Romania signals a new boldness from Moscow about where it is willing to attack, the U.K. Ministry of Defence wrote in its daily intelligence update.

“In the last two weeks, Russia has conducted several waves of strikes against Ukrainian ports on the Danube River using Iranian-produced one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles (OWA UAVs),” the ministry wrote in a tweet.

“OWA UAVs have struck targets as close as 200 metres from the Romanian border, suggesting that Russia has evolved its risk appetite for conducting strikes near NATO territory.”

There is also a possibility that Russia is using the drones because they may be deemed less escalatory than cruise missiles, the MoD wrote.

— Natasha Turak

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon named the war in Ukraine as one of two things happening in the world today that give him “heightened concern.”

“The humanitarian crisis in Ukraine is extraordinary,” Dimon told CNBC in an interview.

“The impact on oil and gas and food and migration, it could expand, there’s nuclear proliferation, there’s nuclear blackmail … this is serious stuff which we have not really faced since World War Two,” he said.

“Hopefully that all will sort out and the world will be safe again, but I hope people learn, the world is not that safe. It will never be that safe, and we have to be very very careful.”

Dimon’s other top concern in current events, he said, is the U.S.’s fiscal spending and quantitative tightening, which he warned “might bite at some point.”

— Natasha Turak

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Russian forces in Ukraine, inspecting the military’s forward command center in an unspecified part of territory that Russia is currently occupying, which the defense ministry simply referred to as the “special operation zone.”

Shoigu was briefed by the battlegroup’s commanding officers about “the general situation, the adversary’s maneuvers and the fulfillment of combat tasks in tactical directions,” Russian state news agency Tass reported.

“The Russian defense minister particularly emphasized the need of conducting effective preemptive strikes on adversary troops while pushing them out of their positions. Such measures will allow to save as many lives of Russian servicemen as possible,” Tass cited Russia’s defense ministry as saying.

— Natasha Turak

Kyiv shot down 15 Iranian-made Shahed drones deployed by Russia over the past day and carried out 11 airstrikes against sites holding Russian troops, weapons and anti-aircraft missile systems, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Facebook.

The Ukrainian troops said that 40 clashes with Russian forces took place on Thursday, reporting shelling and airstrikes against swathes of Ukrainian territory.

CNBC could not independently confirm those developments.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces attempted an overnight attack against its naval base at the Russia’s key oil export hub Novorossiysk.

In Google-translated comments on Telegram, the ministry said the offensive was carried out by unmanned sea boats, which were detected and destroyed. Novorossiysk Mayor Andrey Kravchenko said on Telegram that the vessels “Olenegorsky Miner” and “Suvorovets” thwarted the Ukrainian offensive, according to a Google translation.

Novorossiysk is a main export outlet for Russian and Kazakh seaborne crude.

CNBC could not independently verify developments on the ground.

Attacks against Black Sea ports have picked up since Russia withdrew from the Ukraine grain deal in July, with Moscow also attacking several key Ukraine sites that included the Odesa port in recent days.

— Ruxandra Iordache

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged Russia to give up its “blackmail” over the Black Sea Grain Initiative — a deal that Moscow allowed to lapse in July and that created a humanitarian corridor for the export of Ukrainian agricultural goods into the global markets.

Since then, clashes have intensified near Black Sea ports, particularly at key Ukrainian hub Odesa.

“Every member of this council, every member of the United Nations, should tell Moscow: Enough; enough using the Black Sea as blackmail; enough treating the world’s most vulnerable people as leverage; enough of this unjustified, unconscionable war,” Blinken said on Thursday at a U.N. Security Council debate on famine and conflict.

“Strengthening food security is essential to realizing the vision of the United Nations Charter. To save generations from the scourge of war and reaffirm the dignity and worth of every single human being.”

— Ruxandra Iordache

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will chair a U.N. Security Council meeting at 10 a.m. ET on famine and global food insecurity exacerbated by war and conflicts.

Earlier in the week, the United States took the helm of the United Nations Security Council for the month of August, a scheduled presidency that comes as the international body looks to mitigate the collapse of the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters on Tuesday that the Biden administration will prioritize the world’s mounting food crisis triggered in part, by the collapse of the Black Sea Grain Initiative and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

— Amanda Macias

Ukraine’s prosecutor general is investigating Russian attacks on its agriculture infrastructure since July as potential war crimes, the office told Reuters on Thursday.

— Reuters