Russia-Ukraine War: List of main events, day 821 | Russia-Ukraine war news

As the war enters its 821st day, these are the key developments.

This is the situation on Sunday, May 26, 2024:

Fighting

• The death toll from a Russian attack on a hardware superstore in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has risen to 11, the regional governor says, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemning the attack as “vile”.
• The governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleg Synegubov, reported on Telegram that around 40 people were injured and 16 missing after two Russian guided bombs hit the store.
• Another attack hit central Kharkiv, wounding 14 people in an area with a post office, a hairdresser and a cafe, said the city’s mayor, Igor Terekhov.
• Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday it destroyed 12 missiles and all 31 drones launched by Russia during its last night air strike. He said missiles and drones were shot down in parts of southern, central, western and northern Ukraine. Two Kinzhal hypersonic missiles remained missing.
• In the eastern region of Donetsk, shelling killed a 40-year-old woman and injured four other people, according to regional governor Vadym Filashkin.
• Ukraine said Russia also shelled the village of Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, a railway hub in the Kharkiv region, wounding five people, the regional prosecutor’s office said. Two vehicles were attacked: a car with two passengers and an ambulance with a driver, a paramedic and a 64-year-old patient.
• Prosecutors reported that a factory and residential buildings were damaged in separate Russian airstrikes in the Kupiansk district.
• Moscow accused Ukraine of shelling a small town in the Belgorod region, killing two people and injuring 10 others.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russian President Vladimir Putin will be on an official visit to Uzbekistan, where he will meet with President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and other senior officials.
• The war in Ukraine will be on the agenda as French President Emmanuel Macron travels to Germany on Sunday for a three-day state visit, followed by a bilateral cabinet meeting between the European Union’s two biggest powers.
• Nuclear-armed France has been pushing for a more self-reliant Europe in defense matters and has been offended by Germany’s decision to buy mainly US equipment for its European Sky Shield Initiative air defense initiative.
• Germany says there is no credible alternative to the US military umbrella and that Europe has no time to wait for a local defense industry to be prepared for threats such as Russian hostility.

• Lithuania holds presidential elections on Sunday, with incumbent Gitanas Nauseda expected to win after a campaign dominated by security concerns in the post-Soviet state. The Baltic nation of 2.8 million people has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022. Like other countries in the region, the NATO and EU member fears it could be Moscow’s next target.

• Ukraine’s Zelenskyy is expected to travel to Portugal on Tuesday after his planned visit to Spain, according to news reports, as Kiev seeks to bolster Europe’s support amid a more aggressive military push by Russia.

• The Group of Seven will explore ways to use future revenue from frozen Russian assets to boost financing for war-torn Ukraine, the finance chiefs of the G7 industrial democracies said, but offered no details on how to do so. The G7 and its allies froze between $300 billion and $350 billion in Russian financial assets, such as major currencies and government bonds, shortly after Moscow invaded Ukraine.

• President Joe Biden reiterated his position that he does not intend to send troops to Ukraine, praising US leadership in a speech to the graduating class of the prestigious West Point Military Academy.