Here is the situation on Wednesday 18 September, 2024.

Fighting

At least two people were killed and five injured in Russian shelling of the town of Komyshuvakha in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhia region, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov.

Russia fired at least four missiles at energy infrastructure in the northeastern city of Sumy, Regional Governor Volodymyr Artiukh said, disrupting supplies to some 281,000 people. The Ukrainian Air Force said it shot down 34 of 51 Russian drones that targeted five regions of the country.

Russian state-run RIA news agency and pro-Russian war bloggers reported that Russian forces had captured the town of Ukrainsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The General Staff of Ukraine’s military did not confirm Russia taking Ukrainsk in its evening update, saying only that it was one of several areas under Russian attack. It said 34 assaults had been recorded near the strategically important town of Pokrovsk.
Russia said it had repelled five new attempts by Ukrainian forces to push through its border into the Kursk region, bringing the total number of reported attacks on the border to 26 in the past six days. Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into Kursk on August 6, taking swaths of Russian territory.
Russia said it destroyed multiple Ukrainian drones targeting several western Russian regions, including Smolensk near the Belarus border and Bryansk. Local governors reported no damage or casualties. Kyiv says it targeted military, energy and transport infrastructure seen as key to Moscow’s war efforts.

Politics and diplomacy

United States State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Secretary of State Antony Blinken was briefed on elements of a Ukrainian plan to push Russia to end the war when he was in Kyiv last week.
Russia’s foreign minister alleged in a meeting with the visiting head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that Ukraine had made “numerous” breaches of international humanitarian rights, “including in the context of treatment of prisoners of war and civilians”. ICRC chief Mirjana Spoljaric said she restated the need for all states “to fulfil their obligations under international humanitarian law”, including visits to prisoners of war.

The Prosecutor General’s Office in Ukraine said it was investigating the suspected Russian execution of a Ukrainian soldier found dead with a sword in his body in the latest criminal investigation since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The latest incident allegedly took place in the eastern town of Novohrodivka.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country was committed to deeper ties with Russia to counter Western sanctions, state media reported, as he met Russia’s top security official Sergei Shoigu. The US is concerned that Iran is supplying missiles to Moscow for use in Ukraine. Tehran has denied sending ballistic missiles to Russia.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general said that a Ukrainian defence industry worker who collected sensitive military information and passed it on to Russia was jailed for 15 years. Prosecutors did not name the man who allegedly passed sensitive details about the results of artillery and rocket attacks on Kyiv and the surrounding area to an intermediary of the Russian Defence Ministry.
Russia’s FSB security service said it shot dead an alleged Ukrainian agent who attempted to plant explosives under the car of a senior defence industry official in Ukraine’s Sverdlovsk region. The FSB did not name the man.
Maria Ponomarenko, a 46-year-old journalist from Siberia serving a six-year prison sentence for speaking out against the war in Ukraine, has gone on hunger strike, according to RusNews, the publication she worked for.
Yuri Kokhovets, a 38-year-old Russian man convicted of criticising the Ukraine conflict during a street interview in July 2022, had his sentence toughened after prosecutors appealed. He will now serve five years in prison rather than five years of hard labour, state media reported.
Russia lashed out at Facebook and Instagram owner Meta after the company banned RT and other Russian state media from its platforms. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the decision was “unacceptable” and that Meta had discredited itself.