As the war enters its 921st day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Tuesday, September 3, 2024.
Fighting
- Russia struck Kyiv with dozens of drones and missiles in the early morning, in a bombardment that coincided with the first day of school. At least three people were injured in the attack and there was damage to a boiler house at a Kyiv water plant and to the entrance to a metro station being used as an air raid shelter.
- Other parts of the country also came under Russian aerial attack. Ukrainian forces said they destroyed 22 out of 35 missiles and 20 out of 23 attack drones over the capital as well as the Kharkiv, Dnipro, Poltava, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia regions.
- Dnipropetrovsk regional Governor Serhiy Lysak said one person was killed and three injured in a Russian missile attack on Dnipro, while Kharkiv regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said at least 13 people were injured after four Russian guided bombs hit a residential area.
- Fighting remained fierce on the front line in eastern Ukraine, with Russia claiming to have taken the village of Skuchne, part of the district of Pokrovsk, a strategically important town that Russia aims to capture. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine faced difficulties in confronting “the most combat-focused Russian brigades” on the eastern front, but that Russia had made “no advance for two days”.
- Russia advanced on 477 sq km (184 sq miles) of Ukrainian territory in August, Moscow’s biggest monthly increase since October 2022, according to data supplied by the Institute for the Study of War and analysed by the AFP news agency.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin, on a trip to Russia’s Tuva region, said Russian forces were reclaiming territory in the Kursk region “by square kilometres” and that Kyiv’s August 6 incursion into the territory had failed in its aim of stopping Russia from advancing in Urkraine’s Donetsk region.
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Belgorod regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that some kindergartens in Russia’s city of Belgorod near Ukraine’s border would close for a week, while several schools would hold classes online after a childcare centre was destroyed in a Ukrainian attack.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticised Mongolia for failing to arrest Putin who arrived in the country on Monday. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin on war crimes charges last year. It obliges the court’s 124 member states to arrest the Russian president and transfer him to The Hague for trial if he sets foot on their territory. Mongolia is an ICC member. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said Mongolia’s failure to detain Putin was “a heavy blow to the International Criminal Court and the system of criminal law”.
- Rights group Amnesty International said Mongolia must arrest Putin and surrender him to the ICC. “Mongolia’s international legal obligations are clear,” Altantuya Baldorj, executive director of Amnesty International Mongolia, said in a statement.
- Russia detained Major General Valery Muminjanov on suspicion of bribery, the latest in a string of arrests linked to alleged corruption in the Ministry of Defence. Investigators allege he accepted bribes for helping arrange state contracts for private companies that supplied army uniforms. He is the ninth top military figure to be arrested on charges of fraud, bribery or abuse of office in recent months.
- Zelenskyy said he would meet Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Kyiv. The meeting will take place after Grossi visits the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that was occupied by Russian forces soon after Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Weapons
- Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s Western allies should not only allow their weapons to be used for strikes deep inside Russia but also supply Kyiv with more long-range weaponry. Speaking after a meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, Zelenskyy said Kyiv was “more positive” about the prospects of getting such permission.
- Romania’s coalition government approved a draft law on the donation of a Patriot missile defence system to Ukraine. Bucharest said in June that it would donate one of its two operational Patriot systems to Ukraine providing its allies replace it with a similar air defence system. Parliament now needs to vote on the law.