Here is the situation on Friday, October 4, 2024.
Fighting
- At least three people, including a six-year-old girl, were killed after Russian drones hit a truck delivering gas cylinders to houses in a border village in the northern Chernihiv region, Ukraine’s national police force said on Telegram. Four people, including two children, were injured.
- At least 12 people, including a three-year-old girl, were injured after a Russian glide bomb struck a five-storey apartment block in northeastern Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. The bomb struck late on Wednesday night, starting a fire, the regional governor said.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its army had taken full control of the strategic hilltop town of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s military said on Wednesday that it was withdrawing troops from the front line town, which occupies a key location in the Donetsk region, to “protect military personnel and equipment”.
- Following the fall of Vuhledar, Ukraine’s armed forces commander General Oleksandr Syrskii said he had ordered defences to be strengthened in the eastern Donetsk region.
- Ukraine’s General Staff, in a late evening update on the situation on the battlefield, said the Pokrovsk sector remained the location of the fiercest fighting. It said Russian forces had launched 28 attacks on Ukrainian forces in that sector and a further 23 in the nearby Kurakove sector over the previous 24 hours.
- Russia launched a major drone attack on 15 Ukrainian regions, damaging energy infrastructure and residential buildings. The Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 78 out of 105 Russian drones during the assault, with 23 more thought to have been affected by active electronic jamming.
- Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces intercepted 113 Ukrainian drones over four Russian regions on the border with Ukraine – Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk and Voronezh.
Politics and diplomacy
- A court in Moscow sentenced 59-year-old nurse Olga Menshikh to eight years in a penal colony after she criticised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on social media. The court found Menshikh guilty of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army.
- A court in the Russian city of Penza sentenced 40-year-old Maksim Zotov to 15 years in a strict-regime penal colony for treason and “attempted cooperation with a foreign state on a confidential basis”, regional prosecutors said on Telegram. Zotov “tried to make contact with representatives of a foreign state with the intention of cooperating against Russia’s security interests” in July 2022, prosecutors said.
- A Moscow court ordered that the trial of 72-year-old US citizen Stephen Hubbard, accused of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine, take place in secret. Russian news agencies said the verdict would be announced on October 7. Hubbard faces as many as 15 years in prison.
- NATO’s new Secretary-General Mark Rutte visited Kyiv and met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Standing alongside Zelenskyy, he said it was his “priority” in his new role to “ensure that Ukraine prevails”.
- In its closing arguments to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Ukraine said the court must order Russia to dismantle its bridge built to connect occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland because it has impeded international shipping. Russia will present its closing arguments on Saturday. The court often takes months, if not years, to reach a decision.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law new measures to allow defendants in criminal cases to avoid prosecution by joining the military.
- Ukraine opened its first military recruitment office in Poland aiming to enlist citizens for its fight against Russia’s invasion. The office is in Lublin, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
Weapons
- Czech arms maker Czechoslovak Group said it had signed an agreement with Ukraine’s Ukrainska Bronetekhnika (Ukrainian Armor) to cooperate on producing 155mm and other large-calibre ammunition in Ukraine from next year.
- Thousands of people joined a far-left demonstration in Berlin against Germany’s military support for Ukraine and urged it to stop sending weapons to Kyiv.
