Here is the situation on Monday, September 16, 2024.
Fighting
- At least one person was killed and 42 injured after a Russian-guided bomb struck a multistorey apartment building in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, starting a fire. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said three children were among the injured.
- At least one person was killed in Russian shelling of Pokrovsk, the eastern Ukrainian city that Russian troops have been advancing towards for months. Russian strikes over the past two weeks have cut off water and electricity to many of the strategically important city’s remaining residents.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told US broadcaster CNN that Ukrainian forces were suffering high losses because Western arms were arriving too slowly. Zelenskyy said the situation in the east was “very tough” and that half of Ukraine’s brigades fighting there were not fully equipped.
- Ukraine’s Air Force said air defence units destroyed 10 out of 14 drones that Russia launched overnight into Sunday. It also said that Russia launched two Iskander M-ballistic missiles and one Kh-59 guided air missile targeting the southern region of Odesa. The guided air missile was destroyed, the Air Force said. It did not say what happened to the Iskander missiles or whether there was any damage as a result of the attack.
- Zelenskyy said that Russia had used about 30 missiles of various types, more than 800 guided aerial bombs and almost 300 attack drones against Ukraine over the past week.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defence units destroyed 29 Ukrainian drones targeting seven Russian regions. Fifteen of the drones were brought down over the Bryansk region that borders Ukraine.
Politics and diplomacy
- United States National Security adviser Jake Sullivan said President Joe Biden would use the remainder of his term in office “to put Ukraine in the best possible position to prevail“ against Russia.
Weapons
- Following the attack on Kharkiv, Zelenskyy again urged Ukraine’s Western allies to allow it to attack military targets deep inside Russia, especially air bases. “Only a systemic solution makes it possible to oppose this terror: the long-range solution to destroy Russian military aviation where it is based,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.
- United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Lammy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “bluster” over his warning that letting Ukraine use long-range weapons to strike inside Russia would put NATO “at war” with Moscow.
- Ukraine’s spy chief said that increased Russian production of guided bombs, as well as shipments of artillery ammunition from North Korea, were posing problems for Ukrainian forces on the battlefield.
