As the war enters its 845th day, these are the key developments.
This is the situation on Wednesday, June 19, 2024.
Fighting
- Ukrainian forces launched a nighttime drone attack that set fire to several oil storage tanks in Russia’s southern Rostov region, defense sources in Kiev told AFP and Associated Press news agencies. Local governor Vasily Golubev said there was a fire at a storage facility, while video from Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations showed thick smoke and flames coming from what appeared to be several oil storage tanks at an undisclosed location. .
- Ukraine’s national grid operator Ukrenergo said the country would face rolling electricity blackouts on Wednesday to try to secure supplies following a series of Russian attacks on Ukrainian power plants.
- Ukraine’s Air Force said air defense systems destroyed all 10 drones Russia launched overnight targeting the Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions. There were no reports of damage or injuries.
Politics and diplomacy
- Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Pyongyang for his first visit in 24 years, amid concerns that North Korea is supplying weapons to Moscow for use in Ukraine. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Putin at the airport and state media said the two countries were committed to creating a “new multipolar world”.
- Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said his office was investigating the suspected beheading of one of its soldiers by Russian forces in an occupied part of the eastern Donetsk region after aerial reconnaissance showed what appeared to be a head. severed in an armored vehicle.
- Ukraine has jailed a man in the eastern region of Donetsk for 15 years after he was found guilty of passing sensitive military information to Russian forces. The regional prosecutor’s office said the man, who was not identified but lived in a village close to the front line, committed high treason by passing information about the location of Ukrainian troops in the area to Russian forces.
- An Estonian court sentenced Viacheslav Morozov, a former professor of political theory at the University of Tartu and a Russian citizen, to six years and three months for spying for Moscow, the country’s public broadcaster ERR reported. Morozov was arrested in January and accused of collecting information about Estonia’s internal, defense and security policy, as well as people and infrastructure related to it, ERR said.
- The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said authorities have begun preparatory work to organize a second peace summit, following last weekend’s first conference in Switzerland. More than 90 delegations participated in the event, but Russia was not invited. Some non-aligned countries refused to sign the final declaration.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
