As the war enters its 944th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Thursday, September 26, 2024.
Fighting
- At least two people were killed and 19 injured in a Russian-guided bomb attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, regional governor Vadym Filashkin said.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces had captured the Ukrainian villages of Hostre and Hryhorivka in the eastern Donetsk region, not far from the town of Vuhledar, a longtime Ukrainian stronghold that had a population of 14,000 before the war. The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, in a late evening report, said there had been eight armed clashes in the Vuhledar area. Filashkin, the governor for the region, said Russian reconnaissance groups were in Vuhledar, but its forces had not captured the town.
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The Ukrainian air force said it shot down 28 out of 32 Russian drones and four out of eight missiles during an overnight attack. Four of the missiles targeted the southern region of Odesa, its regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said. One hit an open area causing a fire, while two trucks were also damaged. No casualties were reported.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged world leaders at the UN General Assembly to stand with his country and back a “real, just peace” more than two and a half years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Zelenskyy singled out China and Brazil for promoting what he called “half-hearted settlement plans”, accusing them of playing to their own interests “at Ukraine’s expense”. Zelenskyy’s plans for peace require Russia to withdraw from the Ukrainian territory it has occupied and justice for war crimes.
- US President Joe Biden said the United States would announce initiatives to accelerate support for Ukraine and help the country rebuild from the damage of Russia’s invasion. Biden and Zelenskyy are due to meet at the White House later on Thursday.
- Making his first speech at the UNGA, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said 600,000 Russian soldiers had been “killed or wounded” in its invasion of Ukraine, and questioned how Russia could “show its face” at the UN after treating its own citizens “as bits of meat to fling into the grinder”.
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that “forcing” Russia into peace would be a “fatal mistake”. He was responding to Zelenskyy’s comments on Tuesday that Russia needed to be forced into a peace settlement. Peskov reiterated that Russia would only talk peace on the condition that its “stability is ensured and the objectives of the special military operation are fulfilled”, referring to the war using Moscow’s official language.
- Former US President Donald Trump, who is campaigning for another term in November, said Ukraine should have made concessions to Russian President Vladimir Putin instead of going to war when it was invaded by its neighbour. The Republican presidential candidate claimed at a rally in North Carolina that even “the worst deal would’ve been better than what we have now”.
Weapons
- Putin lowered the threshold for a Russian nuclear response saying Moscow would consider any attack by a non-nuclear country supported by a nuclear power as a joint attack by both. Putin did not directly refer to Ukraine, which is urging its Western allies to allow it to use their conventional long-range weapons to attack military targets deep inside Russia.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $375m in new military aid for Ukraine including HIMARS rocket launchers, Javelin missiles and light tactical vehicles. Blinken said the weapons would be deployed as quickly as possible. The Biden administration is also expected to notify Congress on Thursday of its intent to spend $5.5bn in additional military assistance to Ukraine in the coming months.
- IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned arms company Almaz-Antey, has established a weapons programme in China to develop and produce long-range attack drones for use in the war against Ukraine, according to the Reuters news agency, which cited two sources from a European intelligence agency and project documents. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Reuters it was not aware of such a project, adding that Beijing had strict control measures on the export of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Kupol, Almaz-Antey and the Russian Defence Ministry did not respond to the news agency’s requests for comment.