Closing summary
Joe Biden, the US president, said Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has failed as he urged the UN to keep supporting Kyiv until it is victorious. “Putin’s war has failed at its core aim. He set out to destroy Ukraine, but Ukraine is still free,” Biden said in his last address as president to the UN general assembly.
Excerpts from a Good Morning America interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and first lady Olena Zelenska have been released. In them, Zelenskyy discussed recent reports that Russia has been using Chinese satellites and taking photos of the details of the objects on nuclear facilities. “In our experience, if Russia takes photos of a certain object then there is a threat of strikes against the nuclear objects. That is a nuclear terror,” he said.
Zelenskyy said his “victory plan” – which he is due to present to Joe Biden during his visit to the US this week – is not about negotiating with Russia, but finding a way of ending the conflict diplomatically. The head of the presidential office Andriy Yermak confirmed that an invitation to join Nato is part of Ukraine’s so-called “victory plan”, details of which have not been revealed yet by Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy said tens of thousands of lives will be lost and thousands of schools destroyed if he is denied permission by the US to use long-range western weapons to strike deep inside Russia.
Zelenskyy will speak at the UN general assembly on Wednesday, and is due to meet US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, as well as Joe Biden during his trip to the US this week.
Zelenskyy said Russian strikes killed three people and injured at least 24 in the north-east Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Tuesday afternoon. He called for the UN general assembly to discuss Russia’s attacks on his country.
Russia plans to maintain defence spending at an historic high in 2025, Bloomberg News reported, suggesting that the Kremlin intend to continue its invasion of Ukraine for the foreseeable future.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser Vladyslav Vlasiuk said that 60% of the foreign parts found in Russian weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine come via China.
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Russian strikes killed three people and injured at least 24 in the north-east Ukrainian city of Kharkiv this afternoon, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.
“The targets of the Russian bombs were an apartment building, a bakery, a stadium. In other words, the everyday life of ordinary people,” the Ukrainian president said in a post on X. “So far, we know of 3 killed and 24 injured,” he said.
Another Russian strike on Kharkiv.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 24, 2024
The targets of the Russian bombs were an apartment building, a bakery, a stadium. In other words, the everyday life of ordinary people. Russia is a terrorist, and it proves this every day with its own actions, with its choice to wage war, and… pic.twitter.com/Jy44H7MRTG
Zelenskyy, who is in the US for the latest round of international diplomacy on the war, called for the UN general assembly to discuss Russia’s attacks on his country.
“We just need to stop the terror. To have security. To have a future. We need Russia to end this criminal and unprovoked aggression that violates all global rules,” he said.
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