Here is the situation on Thursday, August 15, 2024.
Fighting
- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s forces were advancing in the Russian region of Kursk with Kyiv claiming control of at least 1,000 square kilometres (386sq miles) of Russia. Ukraine said the week-old offensive was creating a strategic buffer zone to protect its border areas from Russian attacks.
- Moscow said the area under Ukraine’s control was about half that claimed by Kyiv and that it had thwarted their attempts to push deeper into five areas in the Kursk region.
- Ukraine said its army would allow the evacuation of civilians from the Kursk region into Russia and Ukraine and admit international humanitarian organisations to the area.
- Russia’s Belgorod border region declared a state of emergency amid what the governor said was daily Ukrainian bombardment.
- Ukraine’s General Staff said Kyiv hit four Russian military airfields overnight in the Russian regions of Voronezh, Kursk and Nizhny Novgorod, targeting fuel stores and aerial weapons. Zelenskyy called the attack “timely” and “accurate”. Moscow said it shot down 117 of the Ukrainian drones as well as four missiles.
- Police said two medics were killed and three civilians injured in a Russian drone attack on a medical battalion vehicle in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.
- At least two people were injured in a Russian missile attack on port infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa, officials said.
Politics and diplomacy
- Germany issued a European arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor over his alleged involvement in the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in 2022.
- Hackers linked to Russian intelligence are targeting the Kremlin’s critics and Western diplomats with phishing emails, according to new research from digital rights groups Citizen Lab and Access Now. The attacks began in 2022 with victims in the double digits, the groups said. The former US ambassador to Ukraine was among those targeted.
- Russia has launched more than 10,000 cases against people accused of “discrediting” the army since it began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to the Mediazona website, which monitors the country’s courts.
- Polish prosecutors said that they formally indicted Pavel Rubtsov, better known as Pablo Gonzalez, on charges of espionage. The dual Russian-Spanish man was part of a prisoner swap between Russia and the West last month.
- China said its special envoy on Eurasian affairs had a phone call with Pope Francis’s special envoy on Ukraine and discussed the conflict.
