Here is the situation on Tuesday, October 24, 2023.
Fighting
- Russian forces kept up pressure in the devastated city of Avdiivka as it sought to cut off its only supply routes. The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said its troops repelled about 10 Russian attacks on Avdiivka, while Vitaliy Barabash, head of Avdiivka’s military administration, said there were round-the-clock attacks on Avdiivka’s town centre. “A very difficult situation with supplies, with 22km [15 miles] of road constantly under fire, day and night,” Barabash told United States-funded Radio Liberty. “This complicates evacuation and delivery of aid. The enemy is trying to cut it off. Any movement is a signal to open fire.”
- Ukraine said it shot down 14 attack drones and a cruise missile fired by Russia at its south and east, but debris from one of the drones damaged a warehouse at the Black Sea port of Odesa. Governor Oleh Kiper said no one was reported injured. There was no comment from Moscow, which denies targeting civilian infrastructure.
- Ukraine’s spy service was behind last year’s killing of Darya Dugina, and smuggled the parts of the bomb into Russia inside a cat carrier, according to The Washington Post. Dugina, who was 29, was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow in August 2022. Her father, Aleksandr Dugin, is an outspoken advocate for the invasion of Ukraine and a supporter of President Vladimir Putin.
Politics and diplomacy
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan submitted a bill on Sweden’s NATO membership to parliament, after raising objections over a range of security concerns. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said he welcomed the move and was looking forward to a “speedy vote”.
- A Russian court extended the detention of Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva until early December. Kurmasheva, who works with the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, was arrested on October 18 after returning home for a family emergency.
- The US sought the forfeiture of a $300m superyacht of sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov. Authorities in Fiji seized the 348-foot (106-metre) Amadea in May 2022. Under the court action, the US will seek to secure ownership of the yacht, and then likely auction it off with the proceeds transferred to Ukraine.
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that while Moscow agreed on the need for a “new world order”, the US should not be the country to build it. “… No matter what world order they talk about, they mean an American-centric world order – that is, a world that revolves around the United States. It won’t be that way any more,” Peskov said. He was responding to a speech in which US President Joe Biden had said Washington needed to “unite the world” to forge a new peace.
