Here is the situation on Sunday, August 11, 2024.
Fighting
- Explosions rang out on Saturday night in the centre and east of Kyiv, according to the AFP news agency, after Ukraine’s air force said Russian missiles were headed towards the city.
- A 35-year-old man and his four-year-old son were killed in the district of Brovary near the Ukrainian capital during the overnight attack, the emergency services said. Three other people including a child were seriously injured.
- The Ministry of Defence in Moscow says its forces destroyed 14 Ukraine-launched drones and four missiles over Kursk, the Russian region in which Ukrainian troops are trying to gain a foothold after last week’s cross-border incursion.
- More than 76,000 people have been evacuated from the border region. Struggling to contain the incursion, Russia has launched “counter-terror operations” in the nearby Belgorod and Bryansk regions, as well as Kursk.
- Ukraine announced that it has evacuated 20,000 people from the Sumy region, which sits across the border from Kursk, as the fighting in the area intensifies.
Politics and diplomacy
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged for the first time that Ukrainian forces had launched an offensive in Kursk. He said Kyiv is “proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor”.
- Zelenskyy suggested that his country was moving towards effectively banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a disputed branch of the Church that has links to Moscow.
- Belarus has sent more troops to reinforce its border with Ukraine, saying Ukrainian drones violated its airspace in the course of the incursion into Kursk.
