15 September 2022

September 2022 in brief

After the Russian withdrawal from Izium, Ukrainian authorities found a burial site with about 440 graves and later reported 436 bodies exhumed, most of them civilians according to police, while the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission had by early September verified 5,718 civilians killed across Ukraine, a minimum. ^[1][2] A missile strike on a civilian convoy on the edge of Zaporizhzhia killed 30 people and wounded 88, according to Ukraine's national police; Russian officials blamed Ukraine. ^[1] Strikes on power infrastructure caused a near-total blackout in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said, and cruise missiles hit a dam in Kryvyi Rih, where the local military administration said 112 homes were flooded. ^[1][2] A Ukrainian counteroffensive retook Balakliia, Kupiansk and Izium in Kharkiv oblast as Russia said it was regrouping its troops, and the largest prisoner exchange of the war freed 215 Ukrainians for 55 prisoners and the politician Viktor Medvedchuk. ^[1][2] Putin ordered a partial mobilisation, with Defence Minister Shoigu saying about 300,000 reservists would be called up, and Al Jazeera put the number of Russians entering Georgia, Kazakhstan and Finland at more than 194,000 in a week. ^[1][2] An IAEA mission reached the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and left staff in place, and underwater explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines near Bornholm, with responsibility still contested. ^[1][2] After votes held under occupation in four regions, which UN Secretary-General Guterres said could not be called a genuine expression of the popular will, Putin signed treaties claiming to annex them, and Zelenskyy announced Ukraine's application for accelerated NATO membership. ^[1][2]

Written from the records it cites; every figure appears in a cited record.