Here is the situation on Tuesday, August 27, 2024.
Fighting
- At least seven people were killed and 47 injured, including four children, as Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure across 15 regions with waves of drones and missiles, causing severe damage and disrupting supplies. Russia confirmed the attacks, which it said targeted facilities supporting the military-industrial complex.
- Mykola Oleshchuk, Ukraine’s Air Force commander, said the country’s forces brought down 102 of the 127 missiles and 99 of the 109 drones Russia launched. He called the attack “the most massive” since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
- Poland said that an object, probably a drone, had entered its airspace during the Russian bombardment, and may have come down on Polish territory.
- United States President Joe Biden condemned what he called an “outrageous attack” and reiterated his country’s “unshakable” support for Kyiv.
- At least one person was killed and four injured after a Russian missile struck a building in the central Ukraine city of Kryvyi Rih, Oleksandr Vilkul, head of Kryvyi Rih’s military administration said. Five people were still thought to be trapped in the rubble.
- The Reuters news agency said its journalist Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey was in a critical condition in hospital after a missile hit a Kramatorsk hotel where he was staying with a team of six people from Reuters. Safety adviser Ryan Evans was also killed in the attack, while another journalist, Daniel Peleschuk, was treated for his injuries in hospital and discharged. The three others were safe.
- Russia said it struck Ukrainian forces in at least 12 different places in its Kursk region with air strikes, artillery and infantry. Moscow said it also repelled attacks at seven additional places in Kursk, where Kyiv launched a surprise cross-border assault on August 6. It added that it had also struck Ukrainian forces at 16 other locations in Ukraine’s neighbouring Sumy region.
- The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said he would personally lead the mission to inspect the Kursk nuclear power plant in Russia during a visit on Tuesday, noting the “serious situation”.
- Local officials in Russia’s Saratov region said four people were injured in the cities of Saratov and Engels in a Ukrainian drone attack. Engels is the location of a military airfield that Ukraine has targeted before.
Politics and diplomacy
- Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the war in Ukraine, the White House said in a statement. Modi visited Kyiv last week in the first visit by an Indian leader to Ukraine since the country got its independence in 1991. Modi posted online that he “reiterated India’s full support for early return of peace and stability”.
- A Russian court said the trial of Laurent Vinatier, a French citizen accused of unlawfully collecting information on military issues, will start on September 3. If convicted, Vinatier faces up to five years in prison. The researcher for the Geneva-based NGO Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue was arrested in June.
- Russia was the only member of the United Nations Security Council to skip an informal meeting in Switzerland during which the 14 members present reiterated their commitment to international humanitarian law. Russia’s envoy in New York described the meeting as a “waste of time”.
Weapons
- Ukraine says it has developed a new long-range weapon – the Palianytsia – to strike deep into Russia. Minister of Defence Rustem Umerov said it would provide “answers” to a wave of Russian bombings.
