Here is the situation on Saturday, August 10, 2024.
Fighting
- A Russian missile struck a supermarket in the Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka in the front-line Donetsk region, killing at least 14 people and injuring 43 others, Ukrainian officials said. “Russian terrorists hit an ordinary supermarket and a post office. There are people under the rubble,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X.
- Russia has moved extra tanks, artillery and rocket systems to its southern Kursk region and imposed “anti-terrorism measures” in border areas as it battled a shock incursion by Ukraine’s military.
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Ukrainian forces posted a video purporting to show them in control of a town near the border, the first pictorial evidence of their cross-border advances. Another video posted on social media showed a convoy of about 15 burned-out Russian military trucks spaced out along a highway in the Kursk region. Some contained bodies.
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The acting governor of Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, said drone debris had fallen on a power substation near Kurchatov, the site of one of Russia’s largest nuclear power stations with four reactors. Power to the area was cut for a time.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence has released its own video which it said showed a drone destroying a Ukrainian tank and howitzer near Sudzha, located about 10km (6 miles) from the Ukrainian border. The location could not be immediately verified.
- The ministry said that over the last 24 hours, Russian troops, air strikes and artillery had “suppressed raid attempts by enemy units deep into Russian territory in the Kursk direction”. It claimed Ukraine had lost up to 945 soldiers and 102 armoured vehicles in total, while mentioning no Russian losses.
- Ukrainian special forces conducted an amphibious raid on the Russian-occupied Kinburn Spit in the Black Sea’s northwest, destroying six Russian armoured vehicles and about three dozen personnel, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said.
Politics and diplomacy
- The United States has announced a new $125m package of aid for Ukraine, including Stinger missiles, artillery ammunition, and anti-armour systems. Zelenskyy said the package was “vital for our forces to counter Russian assaults”.
- The head of the United Nations’s International Atomic Energy Agency urged both Russia and Ukraine to show restraint in the fighting in the Kursk region near Kurchatov, given the proximity of the conflict to a nuclear power station in the area.
Weapons
- Dozens of Russian military personnel are being trained in Iran to use the Fath-360 close-range ballistic missile system, two European intelligence sources told the Reuters news agency, adding that they expected the imminent delivery of hundreds of the satellite-guided weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine.
- Poland has signed a deal with the United States to buy hundreds of air-to-air missiles, the national armament agency said on Friday. The AIM-120C AMRAAM missiles will be delivered between 2029 and 2033 for the air force’s fighter jets, the agency said on X. Security concerns have been raised in Poland after neighbouring Russia invaded Ukraine.
Economy
- Ukraine has kicked off the formal creditor approval process of its offer to restructure some $20bn of international bonds, a key step in the war-torn country’s effort to rework its debt.
- Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4 percent year on year from April to June, according to the Rosstat statistics agency, the lowest quarterly result since the start of 2023, but still a sign that the economy is expanding.
