As the war enters its 824th day, these are the key developments.
This is the situation on Wednesday, May 29, 2024.
Fighting
- Regional governor Vadym Filashkin said at least two people were killed after Russian guided bombs hit apartment buildings in the eastern Ukrainian city of Toretsk, which is north of the Russian-occupied regional center of Donetsk. Filashkin said rescuers were at the scene to determine the extent of casualties, publishing photos of the destruction. Donetsk regional prosecutors said a third guided bomb struck Oleksievo-Druzhkivka, a town northwest of Toretsk, injuring six people.
- The governor of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine said one person was killed in Russian shelling of a village north of the city of Kherson.
- The Ukrainian military said Russian forces launched 25 attacks along the 1,200 km (750 mile) front line, with the heaviest fighting in the Pokrovsk sector, northwest of Donetsk.
Politics and diplomacy
- Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of “serious consequences” and highlighted his country’s nuclear strength if Ukraine’s Western allies allowed weapons supplied to Kiev to be used to attack targets inside Russia. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told The Economist in an interview last week that alliance members should let Ukraine go deep into Russia with Western weapons, a view supported by some NATO members but not the United States. . Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and currently occupies around 18% of the country.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Putin would applaud Joe Biden’s absence if the US president did not attend the Swiss peace summit in Kiev next month. Switzerland invited more than 160 delegations and the US said it would send an official, but not his identity.
- Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the daily Gazeta Wyborcza that Warsaw should not rule out the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine and should keep Putin guessing whether such a decision would ever be made.
Weapons
- Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov told the Reuters news agency that the country would receive its first supplies of F-16 fighter jets “very soon” but that about half of the desperately needed foreign military aid was arriving late at a time. in which Russia was intensifying its frontline campaign with more troops and more equipment.
- Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said a Czech-led initiative to speed up ammunition deliveries to Ukraine had raised 1.6 billion euros ($1.74 billion) and that the first deliveries of ammunition 155 mm (caliber) would get there in a matter of days.
- Portugal will provide military support to Ukraine worth at least 126 million euros ($137 million) this year, under a security pact signed in Lisbon between Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
