Day 174: Putin Accuses US of Trying to Prolong Ukraine War, More Blasts Reported in Crimea

Facts

• Speaking at an annual security conference on Tues., Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin accused the US of trying to prolong the war in Ukraine, claiming the country was using the people of Ukraine "as cannon fodder while running the anti-Russia project." He also alleged that Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan was a "thoroughly-planned provocation."
• Meanwhile in Crimea - an area controlled by Russia since 2014 - fresh explosions were reported from the Black Sea island on Tuesday. Russian media reported that an ammunition depot in the Dzhankoy region was struck, causing live rounds to detonate. Two civilians were reportedly injured. The news comes a week after blasts rocked the Saky air base on Aug. 9.
• A fire also broke out at a nearby transformer substation, but it was not immediately clear whether it was struck in a separate attack or whether the fire was caused by initial shelling on the ammunition depot. Russia's energy ministry said the fire was soon localized and there was no disruption to local power supplies.
• Blasts were also recorded in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region on Tues., reportedly cutting off transmission of Russian-language television channels in the area. A day prior, Melitopol's mayor Ivan Fedorov also reported that local guerillas damaged a railway bridge near the city, preventing military Russian trains arriving from Crimea.
• Meanwhile, Russian shelling continued to be reported in villages near Bakhmut, Sloviansk and Avdiivka in the Donetsk region, as well as in the regions of Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia. Two civilians were reported injured in the Kryvyi Rih district of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
• Elsewhere, Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy again fired the head of the country's security service (SBU), Serhiy Zaiats, after less than a month in the post. Zaiats was dismissed and replaced by Artem Bondarenko, the head of the SBU's office in Lviv. Yuriy Boreychuk was also dismissed from his role as the head of the SBU in the Ternopil region.

Sources: Reuters, Ukrinform, Interfax, and Pravda.

Narratives

• Anti-Russia narrative, as provided by Daily Mail. Putin's tyrannical rant, and his cosying up to China, is no surprise given the Kremlin's disastrous miscalculation to invade Ukraine. Russia is as isolated as ever and Putin is desperately turning to other dictators for support – not only in China, but also in Iran and North Korea.
• Pro-Russia narrative, as provided by Tass. America and the West are simply using Ukraine as a pawn to maintain their hegemony on the world stage. If they cared about human rights, why did they not speak out when Ukrainians carried out atrocities against Russian-speaking natives in the Donbas?

Predictions