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.
