Here is the situation on Saturday, August 31, 2024.
Fighting
- Five people have been killed and 46 injured in a Ukrainian attack on the southwestern Russian city of Belgorod, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said, adding that 37 people, including seven children, were taken to hospital.
- A Russian attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Friday has killed at least six people, including a 14-year-old girl, and wounded dozens of others, according to Ukrainian officials.
- Russia hit Ukraine with more than 400 missiles and drones this week, the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
- Zelenskyy has fired the commander of the country’s air force, Mykola Oleshchuk, four days after an F-16 warplane that Ukraine received from its Western partners crashed during a Russian bombardment and killed the pilot. Anatolii Kryvonozhko was appointed the acting air force commander.
- The commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Oleksandr Syrskii, said his soldiers had advanced up to 2km (1.2 miles) in Russia’s Kursk region in the past day, in their continuing cross-border incursion that they launched about three weeks ago.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is legitimate and covered by its right to self-defence, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told German weekly Welt am Sonntag.
- A court in Russia has sentenced journalist Sergei Mikhailov to eight years in prison for “intentionally spreading false information” about the Russian army.
- Ukraine has urged Mongolia to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant when he visits the country on September 3. The ICC has a warrant out for Putin’s arrest over the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.