Here is the situation on Wednesday, October 16, 2024.
Fighting
- Russia launched a drone attack on Kyiv, according to officials in the Ukrainian capital. There was no information immediately available about casualties or damage.
- Ukraine launched a series of drone attacks on Russia’s southern border region of Belgorod, injuring at least eight people and damaging cars and property, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
- Ukrainian authorities ordered the evacuation of Kupiansk and Borova in the northeastern Kharkiv region amid the advance of Russian forces. Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said the evacuation order was mandatory.
- The White House said it was “concerned” by claims made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that North Korean soldiers were fighting for Russia in Ukraine. The Kremlin has dismissed the allegation as “fake news”.
Politics and diplomacy
- European Council President Charles Michel said Zelenskyy has been invited to attend a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday to “take stock of the latest developments of Russia’s war against Ukraine and present his victory plan”.
- Four-fifths of Ukrainians support a new law banning Russia-linked religious groups accused of being a tool of Moscow, according to a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
- A Russian man who was released from a penal colony after being jailed over an antiwar picture drawn by his daughter told a Russian human rights group that he had endured terrible conditions, including two months in an isolation cell he described as a “torture chamber”.
Economy
- Russian natural gas deliveries to the EU have been “significantly higher” than long-term contracts should see delivered, despite the bloc’s efforts to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels from the country, the bloc’s Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson told a news conference.
- Russian energy giant Gazprom said it would sell 14 hotels and resorts after suffering an annual loss of nearly $7bn, its first such loss in almost a quarter-century.
