As the war enters its 938th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Friday, September 20, 2024.
Fighting
- At least one person was killed and 13 injured after Russia bombed a nursing home in the northeastern city of Sumy, the region’s military administration said.
- Russia also attacked energy infrastructure in the northeastern region causing temporary disruption to supplies, Ukraine’s national grid operator Ukrenergo said.
- An elderly woman was killed and two other people injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Governor Ivan Fedorov said. Russian forces had shelled the region 161 times in the previous 24 hours, damaging infrastructure facilities and residential buildings, he added.
- The Ukrainian air force said it shot down all 42 Russian drones and one of four missiles used in attacks on Thursday.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s surprise offensive into the Russian border region of Kursk in early August had led to the diversion of about 40,000 Russian troops from eastern Ukraine, reducing its potential for attack there. Zelenskyy added that the situation on the eastern front remained “extremely challenging”.
- Russia claimed to have taken control of the village of Georgievka, which lies about 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Russian-occupied Donetsk city in Ukraine’s east.
Politics and diplomacy
- The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) said Russian air attacks on Ukraine’s electricity generation, transmission and distribution facilities probably violated international humanitarian law.
- European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen is expected to announce 160 million euros ($179m) in new funding for Ukraine’s energy needs when she travels to Kyiv on Friday. Most of the money is expected to come from Russian assets frozen in the EU since Moscow’s 2022 invasion.
- Daria Kozyreva, an 18-year-old girl who stuck a 19th-century Ukrainian poem on a statue to protest against Moscow’s invasion, went on trial in Saint Petersburg. She is charged with “discrediting the Russian army” and faces up to five years in prison if found guilty.
- In Russia’s far eastern Primorye region, authorities jailed a 19-year-old student for almost two months for “publicly justifying” a banned Ukrainian paramilitary group online.
- Authorities in Russia’s Tyumen region opened a treason case against a local programmer accused of taking orders from an unnamed “foreign organisation”.
- Russia also opened a criminal case against Kirill Martynov, the exiled chief editor of newspaper Novaya Gazeta, for creating an “undesirable” group. Moscow labelled Novaya Gazeta Europe, which operates from outside Russia, “undesirable” in June last year.
- The White House said Zelenskyy will have separate talks on September 26 with US President Joe Biden and with Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic candidate for president. The two will “emphasise their unshakeable commitment to stand with Ukraine until it prevails in this war”, Biden’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
- Separately, Zelenskyy’s office said he will also meet Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. There was no immediate confirmation from Trump’s campaign team.
Weapons
- President Vladimir Putin said that Russia was ramping up drone production by about 10 times to produce nearly 1.4 million drones this year.
- Germany is set to approve nearly 400 million euros ($450m) in extra military aid to Ukraine, according to a Ministry of Finance letter seen by the Reuters and AFP news agencies. The funds are in addition to the roughly eight billion euros ($8.9bn) budgeted for Ukraine this year, and would be used to buy arms and equipment including ammunition, fighting vehicles and drones.
- The European Parliament adopted a nonbinding resolution calling on EU countries to allow Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons to strike military targets inside Russia.
- Following the vote, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament and a close ally of Putin, warned Western governments of nuclear war if they approved the weapons’ use.
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