Here is how things stand on Sunday, September 28 :

Fighting

• Ukrainian long-range drones hit an oil pumping station in Russia’s Chuvashia region, causing a fire and forcing the suspension of operations, an official from the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, told the Reuters news agency.

• Russian forces had taken over three more villages in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Dnipro regions, amid a grinding Russian advance in the area, Russia’s military said in a post on Telegram.

• Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for attacks on the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has forced the facility off the main power grid for the last four days.

Regional security

• NATO has announced that it is upgrading its mission in the Baltic Sea with an air-defence frigate and other military assets deployed to the region, after several days of unidentified drone sightings at airports in Denmark and military bases.

• Earlier, Latvia and Lithuania called on NATO to increase its military protection of the Baltic States, citing alleged Russian violations of the military alliance’s airspace.
• Norway has launched an investigation into “possible sightings of drones” near its biggest military base, Orland, where its advanced F-35 fighter jets are stationed, a military spokesman said.

Military aid

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced that officials from his country will visit the United States in the coming days for talks on major arms purchases and drone production deals. Ukraine has prepared a list of about $90bn worth of US weapons that it wants to buy.

• Zelenskyy also announced that Ukraine received a US-made Patriot air defence system from Israel a month ago, with two more Patriot systems expected in the coming months.

Advertisement

Politics and diplomacy

• Any aggression against Russia “will be met with a decisive response”, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov warned NATO and the European Union in his address at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on Saturday. He warned that Moscow is prepared to act if provoked.
• In separate remarks to journalists, Lavrov also suggested that Germany is returning to its Nazi past, in what was seen as a personal attack on German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as his government moves to ramp up defence spending amid growing threats from Moscow.
• Russia has fallen short of the 93 votes necessary to get elected to the UN aviation agency’s governing council, in the latest rebuke following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia received 87 votes during the agency’s assembly in Montreal.
• South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun met Lavrov in New York, where he expressed Seoul’s “grave concern” over military cooperation between Russia and North Korea. Thousands of North Korean troops have been sent to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine, and Pyongyang has bolstered Moscow with a huge transfer of weapons.