1 Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 28
Kateryna Stepanenko, Layne Philipson, Angela Howard, and Frederick W. Kagan
August 28, 8:30 ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is
updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed two decrees on August 27 in a reported effort
to assist stateless peoples and residents of Donbas and Ukraine live and work in the
Russian Federation. The first decree allows Donbas residents, Ukrainians, and stateless peoples to
live and work in Russia indefinitely.
The decree also allows Ukrainian and Donbas residents to work
in Russia without a permit so long as they have acquired an identification card within 30 days of the
August 27 decree.
The order also requires that all Donbas and Ukrainian residents arriving to Russia
undergo mandatory fingerprint registration and a medical examination for the use of drugs,
psychotropic substances, infectious diseases, and HIV.
The second decree orders Russian social services to provide social payments to individuals forced to
leave Ukraine and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic (DNR and LNR) for
Russia after February 18, 2022.
The decree mandates that social services provide monthly pension
payments of 10,000 rubles (approximately $167) to all affected peoples, pension payments of 3,000
rubles (approximately $50) to those with disabilities or those over the age of 80, and payments of 5,000
rubles (approximately $83) to World War II veterans.
The decree also orders that social services pay
pregnant women 10,000 rubles during pregnancy and an additional 20,000 rubles (approximately
$332) when the child is born.
The decree excludes refugees and specifies that Russian Federal
Republics must execute the payments to the parties.
Russian and Ukrainian forces continued to trade claims of shelling at the Zaporizhzhia
Nuclear Power Plant, including at the Tenth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-
Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Russia blocked a proposal aimed at strengthening the Treaty
on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons on August 27 in objection to a clause concerning
Ukrainian control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
The Ukrainian Mission to the United
Nations published a statement signed by a large proportion of NPT signatories at the last meeting of
the conference that condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine, nuclear rhetoric, and provocative
statements as “inconsistent with the recent P5 Leaders Joint Statement on Preventing Nuclear War and
Avoiding Arms Races.”
Russia has further begun to implement strategies similar to those used by Iran in attempt
to manipulate and possibly delay an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission
to the plant in the near future. The New York Times reported on August 27 that the IAEA had
assembled a mission consisting of IAEA Chief Rafael Mariano Grossi and 13 experts from “mostly
neutral countries” to visit Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant for observation next week.
The list
notably excludes the United States and the United Kingdom, which Russia views as unfairly biased. The
IAEA stated that the IAEA remained in active consultations for an upcoming mission.
Ukrainian
official sources have reported that Russian special forces are torturing Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power
Plant employees to prevent them from disclosing safety violations to IAEA inspectors, that Russian
