Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 979

Rescuers work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian air strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on October 31, 2024 [Sofiia Gatilova/Reuters]

Here is the situation on Thursday, October 31, 2024:

Fighting

• A Russian guided-bomb has struck a high-rise apartment block in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing a child and injuring at least 29 people, according to local officials.
• Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Kruhliakivka, near the key town of Kupiansk in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the Russian Ministry of Defence has said. Ukraine’s military has not acknowledged Kruhliakivka falling into Russian hands, but officials said nine villages are gripped by fighting in the area, with 15 Russian attacks repelled and nine clashes still ongoing.
• Nine people have been injured, several apartments set ablaze and a kindergarten damaged as Russia carried out its 19th attack on Kyiv this month. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 62 drones overnight, but its air defences destroyed 33 of them over Kyiv and other regions, while 25 were unaccounted for.

A Red Cross worker takes a picture of an apartment building damaged by a Russian drone strike in Kyiv on October 30, 2024 [Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters]

North Korean troops in Ukraine

• Russia’s United Nations envoy Vassily Nebenzia questioned, at a UN Security Council meeting, why its allies cannot help Moscow in its war against Ukraine if Western countries claim the right to help Kyiv, adding that Russia’s military interactions with North Korea do not violate international law.
• Ukraine’s UN envoy Sergiy Kyslytsya responded that no countries providing assistance to Ukraine are “under Security Council sanctions”, adding that “receiving assistance from the fully-sanctioned North Korea is a brazen violation of the UN Charter”.
• At the meeting, North Korea did not acknowledge the deployment of troops to Russia, but said any such move would be in compliance with international law, adding that “Pyongyang and Moscow maintain close contact with each other on mutual security and development of the situation”.
• Deputy US ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un his troops will “return in body bags” if they enter Ukraine.
• South Korea’s Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun has said there is a “high chance” North Korea will seek tactical nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile technology from Russia in exchange for the deployment of its troops to Ukraine.
• South Korea is considering sending a team of military monitors to Ukraine to observe and analyse any deployment of North Korean troops, a presidential official has said.

Sanctions

• The United States has imposed sanctions on nearly 400 entities and individuals from more than a dozen different countries, in renewed actions against Russia to counter sanctions evasions.
• The action, the most concerted push so far against third-country evasion, included sanctions on dozens of Russian, Chinese, Hong Kong and Indian companies, as well as entities in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Switzerland and elsewhere.
• The Swiss government has said it has approved more sanctions against Belarus, bringing it into line with measures the European Union adopted in late June, as it aims to prevent the circumvention of existing sanctions against Russia.
• The Finnish Enforcement Authority has said it is executing an order by a Finnish court to seize $4.25bn in assets owned by Russia in Finland. Russia summoned Finland’s ambassador to Moscow to protest the ruling – done at the request of Ukrainian state firm Naftogaz, which is seeking compensation for Moscow’s expropriation of Naftogaz property when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

International relations

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the next meeting of the Ramstein group, which coordinates military support for Ukraine, should be held in the coming weeks.
• Zelenskyy also said the West should admit Russia has “won” in Georgia, after a pro-Russian party won its elections last weekend, and is on its way to doing the same in Moldova, which will hold a presidential election run-off on Sunday after a pro-European incumbent failed to secure more than 50 percent of the vote.
• Ukraine has received only 10 percent of a $61bn US military aid package approved by Congress in April, according to Zelenskyy, calling the hold-up “not funny”. In the same statement, the Ukrainian president strongly hinted that he has requested supplies of long-range US Tomahawk missiles.
• Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico has told Russian television he wants to visit Moscow for next year’s World War II anniversary and criticised the EU’s approach to the Ukraine war, in remarks that have stirred ire at home.
• The Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a Russian-led post-Soviet military bloc, plans to hold exercises in Belarus in September 2025, the Belarusian Defence Ministry has said.
• Britain’s finance minister, Rachel Reeves, has promised the UK’s annual three-billion-British-pound ($3.88bn) support for Ukraine will continue for “as long as it takes”.
• Russia has accused Britain of using a Black Sea grain corridor to deliver arms to Ukraine, after denying allegations that Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports had disrupted crucial grain supplies for other countries.