Here is the situation on Saturday, September 7, 2024.
Fighting
- The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched a total of 67 long-range drones in a mass overnight attack, 58 of which it was able to shoot down. In a statement on Telegram, it said air defence units were scrambled into action in 11 regions across Ukraine.
- Russian attacks on the central Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad killed one person and wounded more than 60 others, including several children, officials said. Five Iskander ballistic missiles were fired from Russian territory towards Pavlohrad in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, according to Ukraine’s air force.
- Hundreds of residents in Lviv mourned three sisters and their mother who were killed in a Russian strike that hit their home in the western Ukrainian city near the border with NATO member Poland.
Arms and weapons
- The United States announced another $250m in military aid for Ukraine. Germany pledged to supply an additional 12 self-propelled howitzers and Canada said it planned to send 80,840 surplus small unarmed air-to-surface rockets as well as 1,300 warheads in the coming months.
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The US warned that any Iranian transfer of ballistic missiles to Russia would mark a “dramatic escalation” in the war, following reports that Moscow is planning an arms transfer of hundreds of Iranian short-range ballistic missiles.
- White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said: “We have been warning of the deepening security partnership between Russia and Iran since the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and are alarmed by these reports.”
Politics and diplomacy
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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Italy that Ukraine needed the full support of its allies to be in a strong position for any future negotiations with Russia. He called on Western allies to help Ukraine conduct long-range strikes into Russia, specifically on military airfields at a range of up to 300km (186 miles).
- US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin cautioned that there was “no one capability” that would turn the war in Ukraine’s favour, after Zelenskyy urged the West to let his forces use its long-range weapons to strike deep into Russian territory.
- William Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, wrote in a joint Financial Times op-ed that “staying the course” in backing Ukraine’s fight against Russia was more important than ever. They promised to further their cooperation there and on other challenges.
- France has announced that it will use a share of $1.5bn in revenues from frozen Russian assets to finance the purchase of military equipment for Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement. More than $200bn of Russian assets have been frozen across the 27-nation European Union since Russia launched its invasion in 2022.
- Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), held talks with Russian officials over safety concerns at two nuclear power plants in Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia and in Kursk, which are threatened by the fighting.
Arts and culture
- Ukrainian politicians and cultural figures criticised the screening of a Russian-Canadian filmmaker’s war documentary, Russians at War, at the Venice Film Festival, calling it propaganda.
- Director Anastasia Trofimova, who embedded with a Russian battalion as it advanced across eastern Ukraine, said: “The suggestion that our film is propaganda is ludicrous … I unequivocally believe that Russia’s invasion on Ukraine was unjustified, illegal and acknowledge the validity of the International Criminal Court investigation of war crimes in Ukraine.”
