Tag: military

As the war enters its 826th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Friday, May 31, 2024.

Fighting

• At least three people were killed and 16 injured after Russia struck three sites, including a five-storey apartment building, in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, at about midnight local time (21:00 GMT). Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said at least two children were among the injured. Earlier in the day, at least four people were injured in Russian shelling of the city.
• Ukraine’s top military commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskii said Russia was continuing to send additional regiments and brigades from other areas and training grounds to boost its forces along two main lines of attack in the north of the Kharkiv region, where Moscow launched an offensive earlier this month.
• United States officials, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issues, told multiple media outlets that President Joe Biden had decided to allow Kyiv to use US-supplied weapons at targets inside Russia but only on the border with the northeastern Kharkiv region.
• Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence service said its forces destroyed two Russian patrol boats using naval drones off Crimea, which Russia occupied and annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Moscow said earlier it had destroyed two naval drones “heading for Crimea”.
• Russia fired a total of 51 missiles and drones at “military facilities and critical infrastructure”, across Ukraine, the air force said. Air defences destroyed seven missiles and 32 drones, it added.

Politics and diplomacy

• The 27 members of the European Union agreed to impose “prohibitive” tariffs on grain imports from Russia and Belarus in a bid to cut off Moscow’s funding for its war on Ukraine. Grain in transit to other parts of the world through Europe will not be affected by the tariffs.
• Ukrainian lawmakers and journalists called for an investigation into political pressure on the country’s state news agency Ukrinform. Oleksiy Matsuka, the agency’s head, stepped down this week after being accused of leading an editorial policy exclusively backing the presidential administration. He was replaced by a former army spokesman, Serhiy Cherevaty, deepening concerns about official censorship.
• Tharaka Balasuriya, Sri Lanka’s junior foreign minister, said Colombo would start talks with Moscow to secure the release of hundreds of citizens, mostly former soldiers, who it believes were duped into joining Russian forces in Ukraine. It is also seeking the release of about a dozen men being held as prisoners of war in Ukraine. At least 16 men have been killed in the fighting.
• Russia’s FSB security service said it detained four people in Crimea who were allegedly involved in a series of sabotage attacks planned by Ukrainian special services to destroy railway lines in the occupied peninsula. A fifth man, reported to be the group’s leader by Russian news agencies, was killed when the FSB tried to capture him.

Weapons

• German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius made an unannounced visit to Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa where he held talks with Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov and promised Ukraine a new package of military aid worth 500 million euros ($540m), a spokesperson for the ministry told the AFP news agency. The package includes “artillery, air defence [and] drones”, he added.
• A Czech official said Ukraine would receive between 50,000 and 100,000 shells in June under a Czech-led ammunition supply initiative.

As the war enters its 825th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Thursday, May 30, 2024.

Fighting

• Ukraine reported that nine people were killed in Russian attacks in five regions of the country, including two in Nikopol in southern Ukraine. One of the dead was an ambulance driver whose vehicle was hit by a Russian drone. The man’s wife, who was travelling with him, was injured. Nikopol is located just across the river from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
• Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said search and recovery efforts at a Kharkiv hardware superstore hit by Russian bombs last weekend had ended. The death toll rose to 19 after a man who was severely burned in the attack died in hospital.
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that weapons provided by the United States were helping Ukraine stabilise the front line amid intensifying Russian attacks and that Washington would “adapt and adjust” its approach to military support in line with battlefield developments.

Politics and diplomacy

• US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell accused China of supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine. Campbell said Chinese assistance was helping Moscow reconstitute elements of its military, including long-range missile, artillery and drone capabilities, and its ability to track battlefield movements. European and NATO countries needed “to send a collective message of concern to China about its actions, which we view are destabilising in the heart of Europe”, he said. Beijing says it is neutral in the war but has deepened its relationship with Russia since the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
• Wally Adeyemo, deputy secretary of the US Treasury, met Ukrainian officials in Kyiv to discuss US financial support, enforcing sanctions on Russia and using frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s benefit in its war against Moscow.
• Dmitry Suslov, a senior researcher at the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, a Russian think tank that is close to the Kremlin, said Moscow should consider a “demonstrative” nuclear explosion to cow the West into refusing to allow Ukraine to use its arms against targets inside Russia.
• Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko joined Moscow in suspending the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) that limits the number of tanks, combat aircraft and other military equipment that can be deployed in Europe. Belarus borders Ukraine and Russia and hosted Russian soldiers before Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
• Polish security services arrested a man suspected of trying to obtain photos of military vehicles crossing the border into Ukraine, as well as three men, two of them Belarusian citizens, accused of committing arson on the orders of Russian intelligence.
• Prominent Russian nationalist and former militia commander Igor Girkin lost his appeal against a four-year jail term over his criticism of the conduct of the war in Ukraine, the RIA Novosti state news agency reported.

Weapons

As the war enters its 824th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Wednesday May 29, 2024.

Fighting

• Regional Governor Vadym Filashkin said at least two people were killed after Russian guided bombs struck apartment buildings in the eastern Ukrainian city of Toretsk, which lies to the north of the Russian-occupied regional centre of Donetsk. Filashkin said rescue teams were on site to determine the extent of the casualties, posting photos of the destructions. Donetsk regional prosecutors said a third guided bomb struck Oleksievo-Druzhkivka, a town northwest of Toretsk, injuring six people.
• The governor of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region said one person was killed in Russian shelling of a village north of the city of Kherson.
• Ukraine’s military said Russian forces had launched 25 assaults along the 1,200km (750-mile) front line, with the heaviest fighting in the Pokrovsk sector, northwest of Donetsk.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of “serious consequences”, and stressed his country’s nuclear strength, if Ukraine’s Western allies allowed weapons supplied to Kyiv to be used to attack targets inside Russia. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told The Economist in an interview last week that alliance members should let Ukraine strike deep into Russia with Western weapons, a view supported by some NATO members but not by the United States. Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and currently occupies about 18 percent of the country.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Putin would applaud Joe Biden’s absence if the US president did not attend Kyiv’s Swiss peace summit next month. Switzerland has invited more than 160 delegations and the US has said it will send an official, but not their identity.
• Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily that Warsaw should not exclude the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine and should keep Putin guessing about whether such a decision would ever be made.

Weapons

• Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov told the Reuters news agency that the country will receive its first supplies of F-16 fighter jets “very soon”, but that about half of its desperately needed foreign military aid was arriving late, at a time when Russia was intensifying its front-line campaign with more troops and more equipment.
• Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said a Czech-led initiative to speed up ammunition deliveries to Ukraine had raised 1.6 billion euros ($1.74bn), and the first deliveries of 155 mm (calibre) ammunition would arrive there in a matter of days.
• Portugal will provide military support to Ukraine worth at least 126 million euros ($137m) this year under a security pact signed in Lisbon between Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro.

As the war enters its 823rd day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Tuesday, May 28, 2024.

Fighting

• Three people were killed and six injured in a Russian missile attack on the town of Snihurivka in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region, according to the emergency services and the local governor.

• The Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office said at least one woman was killed and 11 injured in a Russian guided bomb attack that struck a sweet factory in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces had dropped about 3,200 guided aerial bombs on Ukraine this month and that Kyiv did not have enough air defence missiles to stop attacks on such a scale.

• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces captured two villages – Ivanivka in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region and Netailove in eastern Donetsk. There was no comment from Ukraine on the claims.
• Ukraine launched two attacks on the Russian-occupied city of Luhansk in its east, triggering a fire, according to Russian-appointed officials. Ukraine made no official comment on either incident. Ukrainian news outlets said the target of the second strike was an airfield.
• Russia and Belarus will hold joint air force and air defence ministry drills from May 27-31, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence said.

Politics and diplomacy

• Zelenskyy excluded Russia’s participation in next month’s peace summit in Switzerland. “We do not see Russia there, because Russia will block everything. It’s clear,” he said, adding that Moscow “does not benefit from peace. It wants to destroy Ukraine and move on.”
• The European Union imposed sanctions on the media outlet Voice of Europe, its funder Viktor Medvedchuk and “covert head” Artem Marchevskyi, extending penalties imposed by the Czech Republic, which says the Prague-based platform is a Russian influence operation “to undermine the territorial integrity, sovereignty and freedom of Ukraine”. Medvedchuk is a pro-Kremlin oligarch and former Ukrainian lawmaker who was sent to  Russia in 2022 in exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war and stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship.
• A German court jailed Thomas H, a former army captain who was stationed at a military procurement office in Koblenz, for three and a half years after finding him guilty of spying for Russia. Judges found the 54-year-old had handed over internal documents to Russia’s consulate in Bonn last May and offered to provide more material in future.

Weapons

• Spain pledged 1 billion euros ($1.1bn) in military aid, including Patriot missiles and Leopard tanks, to Ukraine as Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Zelenskyy signed a security deal in Madrid. Sanchez said the agreement would boost Ukraine’s capabilities including much-needed air defence.
• Zelenskyy will visit Belgium on Tuesday and sign a security pact with Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, the Belgian government said. The agreements, signed with several European allies, promise long-term security assistance in the form of arms supplies and training for Kyiv’s forces.

• Ukraine’s top commander Oleksandr Syrskii said he had signed paperwork that would allow French military instructors to visit Ukrainian training centres soon, and said he hoped others would join what he described as an “ambitious project”. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said later that discussions on the use of foreign instructors were continuing with France and other countries.

As the war enters its 822nd day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Monday, May 27, 2024.

Fighting

• The death toll in Russia’s weekend attack on a hardware hypermarket in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city, rose to 16, with dozens more injured, according to regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov.
• Ukrainian prosecutors said Russian shelling killed three people in three different towns in the eastern Donetsk region.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Russia was preparing to intensify its offensive along Ukraine’s northern border. He did not go into detail but Ukrainian officials have expressed strong concern about the Sumy region. Both Kharkiv city and Sumy with about 250,000 people are within about 25km (15 miles) of the Russian border.
• Russia claimed to have captured the village of Berestove in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, located on the eastern front line close to the Luhansk region.
• Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces were carrying out offensive attacks across the 1,000-kilometre (620 miles) front line, with pitched battles in the Chasiv Yar direction of the Donetsk region, where “the intensity of the hostilities is quite high” according to a statement from Ukraine’s General Staff.
• Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down 12 missiles and all 31 drones launched by Russia over southern, central, western and northern Ukraine. The air force said Russia launched a total of 14 missiles and 36 drones. It did not say what had happened to those that were not shot down or whether they caused any damage.

Politics and diplomacy

• Zelenskyy appealed to United States President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to personally attend a June 15-16 Ukraine peace summit being convened in Switzerland. Bern has said 160 delegations have been invited, but that Russia will not attend.
• Zelenskyy will meet Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Spain at noon (10:00 GMT) on Monday. It is Zelenskyy’s first official visit to Spain since he was elected in 2019, and comes as he tries to rally Ukraine’s allies to send more military aid to his country.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin, making his third foreign trip since he secured a fifth term in March, arrived in Uzbekistan where he was met by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev ahead of the start of formal talks. Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union before the country broke up.
• Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda was returned for a second term in an election marked by security concerns over neighbouring Russia. Nauseda established himself as a staunch supporter of Ukraine in his first term.

Weapons

• Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni reiterated her opposition to Ukraine using Western-supplied weapons supplied on targets in Russia, after the NATO chief suggested in an interview last week with the United Kingdom’s Economist newspaper that Kyiv should be allowed to strike targets beyond its border.

As the war enters its 819th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Friday, May 24, 2024.

Fighting

• At least seven people were killed and dozens more injured in a Russian missile attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and home to about one million people.
• Nearly 11,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in the Kharkiv region since Russian forces began a cross-border ground offensive there on May 10, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
• Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, said one woman was killed after a destroyed Ukrainian drone fell on her house. The Russian Ministry of Defence said 35 Ukrainian rockets and three drones had been shot down over the Belgorod region, which lies across the border from Kharkiv.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed its forces had recaptured the small village of Andriivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The Ukrainian General Staff said later that its troops were repelling three Russian assaults in the area of Andriivka and nearby Novyi. Andriivka was liberated by Ukrainian soldiers in an offensive last September.
• Sergei Aksyonov, the head of the Russia-annexed Crimea peninsula, said two people were killed in a Ukrainian missile attack near Simferopol, the peninsula’s main administrative centre. Ukraine has not commented on the alleged attack. Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
• Russia said it brought down a Ukrainian drone in its central Tatarstan region, hundreds of kilometres from the two countries’ border.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russia arrested Lieutenant-General Vadim Shamarin, deputy head of Russia’s General Staff, and a high-ranking defence official on corruption and “abuse of power” charges in a widening crackdown on corruption in military contracts. The two are being held in custody pending trial.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Belarus, Moscow’s closest ally, for talks with President Alexander Lukashenko that are expected to focus on security and military exercises involving tactical nuclear weapons.
• Putin signed a decree allowing the confiscation of assets inside Russia belonging to the United States, its citizens and companies, to use as compensation over Western sanctions against Moscow.
• Russia jailed 36-year-old barman Vladimir Malina for 25 years for joining a unit of Russians fighting for Ukraine and carrying out sabotage of railway equipment.

• Russia jailed 20-year-old student Vladimir Belkovich, from Siberia’s Irkutsk region, to 13 years in prison for treason after he agreed to post leaflets on behalf of a pro-Ukraine partisan group.
• Thirteen Ukrainian children returned home from Russia and Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine with the cooperation of Qatar, officials in Kyiv said. Ukraine says about 20,000 Ukrainian children have been sent to Russia without the consent of their families or guardians.
• OVD-Info, a leading Russian rights group and protest monitoring network, said it had received a notice from YouTube threatening to block access in Russia to one of its video channels featuring news on the war in Ukraine.

Weapons

• Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba again called on the country’s Western allies to send seven Patriot air defence systems. “They are needed now, not tomorrow,” he said.
• The US is preparing a new $275m military aid package for Ukraine, which will include high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS), as well as 155mm and 105mm high-demand artillery rounds, Javelin and AT-4 antitank systems, antitank mines, tactical vehicles and small arms.
• Russian jamming has prevented many of Ukraine’s relatively new long-range glide bombs from hitting their intended targets, Reuters reported, citing three people familiar with the challenges.