Here is the situation on Sunday, August 25, 2024.

Fighting

Russia launched several missiles and drones overnight targeting parts of northern and eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s military claimed on Sunday, adding that their defence systems destroyed most of the weapons before they could reach their targets. The attacks targeted Ukraine’s regions of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Donetsk, the Ukrainian Air Force said on the Telegram messaging app.

Five civilians were killed and 12 others injured after Ukraine shelled the town of Rakitnoye in Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor, said on Sunday. Three children were among the victims, he added.

Ukraine said on Sunday a night-time Russian attack on a hotel in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk wounded two journalists while a third was missing. Vadym Filashkin, head of the Donetsk regional government, said the journalists were British, American and Ukrainian nationals and that a search operation was under way.

On Saturday, Ukraine said five people were killed in a Russian attack on a residential area in the eastern city of Kostyantynivka, near the front line in the Donetsk region.

Five drones were downed over the Voronezh region in Russia’s southwest, bordering Ukraine, wounding two people, regional Governor Aleksandr Gusev said on Saturday. According to local media, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate also claimed to blow up a warehouse storing 5,000 tonnes of ammunition in the same region.

Diplomacy

Russia and Ukraine exchanged 115 prisoners of war from each side on Saturday, both countries confirmed, with the United Arab Emirates an intermediary between them.

Weapons

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that a newly developed Ukrainian “drone missile” called Palianytsia would take the war back to Russia, as he called Russia’s Vladimir Putin a “sick old man from Red Square”. Zelenskyy was speaking in an Independence Day video address, wherein he also said Russia wanted to “destroy” Ukraine but war has “returned to its home”.
Ukraine wants permission from its Western allies to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles to destroy targets deep inside Russia in the belief that this could force Moscow to end the fighting, the Guardian reported.