Tag: Russia-Ukraine war

  • Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,025

    Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,025

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    Here is the situation on Sunday, December 15:

    Fighting

    • Russia has begun using North Korean troops in significant numbers for the first time to conduct assaults on Ukrainian forces battling to hold an enclave in the country’s Kursk region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

    • Ukraine’s air defences shot down 58 of 132 Russian drones, the Ukrainian air force said. It said 72 Russian drones were “lost” due to the use of electronic warfare interference tactics. There were no immediate reports of damage.

    • Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 15 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Ministry of Defence announced. Thirteen of the drones were downed over the Black Sea and one each over the Russian border regions of Kursk and Belgorod, it added.

    • A nine-year-old child was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on Belgorod, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Two other people, including another child, were injured in the attack.

    epa11777719 Ukrainian serviceman of the 12th Special Operations Brigade 'Azov', drone pilot 'Scout' inspects a Ukrainian 'Furia' unmanned aerial system (UAS) prior to conduct an aerial reconnaissance mission at an undisclosed location near the frontline city of Toretsk, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, 14 December 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA-EFE/MARIA SENOVILLA
    A Ukrainian serviceman and drone pilot of the 12th Special Operations Brigade ‘Azov’ inspects a Ukrainian unmanned aerial system before an aerial reconnaissance mission in Donetsk [Maria Senovilla/EPA]

    • Ukrainian drones carried out an attack on the Steel Horse oil facility in Russia’s Oryol region which is a crucial source of fuel supplies for Russian troops, Ukraine’s military announced.

    • Ukrainian drones struck a “fuel infrastructure facility” in Orlov, the local governor said, causing a fire to break out. Governor Andrei Klychkov said 11 drones had been shot down over the region. No casualties were reported.

    Politics and diplomacy

    • Zelenskyy said he had instructed his government to set up mechanisms to supply food to Syria in the aftermath of the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. Since al-Assad’s fall, Russia’s wheat export to Syria has been suspended.
    • Ukrainian General Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, 54, has been appointed to head the operational and tactical group Donetsk, replacing General Oleksandr Lutsenko, the military announced, as Russia makes swift advances in the Donetsk region.

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  • Russia, Turkiye, Iran want ‘immediate end’ to fighting in Syria: Lavrov

    Russia, Turkiye, Iran want ‘immediate end’ to fighting in Syria: Lavrov

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    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said he, along with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts, are calling for “an end to hostile activities” in Syria, where opposition fighters have made a rapid advance in a major challenge to President Bashar al-Assad.

    Speaking to Al Jazeera at the Doha Forum in the Qatari capital on Saturday, Lavrov said Russia, Iran and Turkiye expressed support for “dialogue between the government and legitimate opposition” in Syria.

    The three countries have been involved since 2017 in the so-called Astana Format talks seeking a political settlement in Syria, and their top diplomats – Lavrov, Iran’s Abbas Araghchi and Turkiye’s Hakan Fidan met in a trilateral format on the sidelines of the Doha Forum.

    “We called for [an] immediate end to hostile activities. We stated, all of us, that we want the [United Nations] Resolution 2254 to be fully implemented, and for this purpose, called for the dialogue between the government and legitimate opposition,” Lavrov said.

    Syria-led process

    Resolution 2254 (PDF) outlines a commitment to the “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity” of Syria and says the only solution to the years-long conflict will be through “an inclusive and Syrian-led political process”.

    Asked whether Moscow – a key backer of al-Assad and the Syrian army – believes the Syrian president can hang on to power, Lavrov said he was “not in the business of guessing”.

    “We agreed today with Iran and Turkiye to issue a strong call, which I described, and we will be doing some specific steps to make sure that this call is heeded,” he said.

    Lavrov’s comments came as fighters led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) armed group have made a lightning advance in Syria over days, taking control of key cities, including Aleppo and Hama.

    Late on Friday, the rebels said they had reached the edge of Homs, a strategic city linking the capital Damascus to coastal parts of the country where al-Assad enjoys support from the Alawite community.

    In a post on Telegram on Saturday afternoon, an opposition commander said the HTS-led group’s forces had begun “operations” inside Homs.

    Opposition fighters have also made gains in Deraa and Sweida, in southwestern Syria near the border with Jordan, and taken control of some towns in the Damascus countryside.

    ‘Much weaker’

    Reporting from Kilis, near Turkiye’s border with Syria, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar said the Syrian government has lost control of a majority of the country’s territory.

    “We are seeing a Syrian government that is much weaker than in 2016, when it was backed strongly by Russia, by Iran, by [Lebanese group] Hezbollah on the ground,” he said.

    “Russians are extremely busy in Ukraine. They have withdrawn a majority of their military equipment and personnel from the Khmeimim airbase [in Syria] to Ukraine,” Serdar explained, while Iran and Hezbollah have also been embroiled in fighting against Israel.

    “All of these factors have created such a vacuum.”

    At Saturday’s Doha Forum, Lavrov said Russia was “absolutely convinced of the inadmissibility to use terrorists like HTS to achieve geopolitical purposes”.

    “We’re trying to do everything not to allow terrorists to prevail; even if they say they are no longer terrorists,” he said.

    Downplaying fears

    Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said the Russian foreign minister “was trying to project an image of strength and being in control”.

    “He was trying to downplay fears that al-Assad’s regime in Syria is on the imminent brink of collapse, instead talking about how he’s doing all he can to promote the sovereignty of Syria and to try to stabilise the situation,” he told Al Jazeera.

    Ramani said the opposition forces’ rapid advance appears to have caught Moscow off-guard.

    “They have been watching and they have been spectators just like us to what’s unfolding in Syria, and they don’t really seem to have a very clear game plan to keep al-Assad in power.”



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  • Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 991

    Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 991

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    As the war enters its 991st day, these are the main developments.

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  • Ukrainian prosecutor general resigns amid scandal over draft exemptions

    Ukrainian prosecutor general resigns amid scandal over draft exemptions

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    Andriy Kostin steps down after corruption scheme involving false disability diagnoses for draft exemptions is uncovered.

    Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin has announced his resignation amid a scandal involving dozens of officials alleged to have abused their position to receive disability status and avoid military service.

    In early October, it emerged that dozens of public prosecutors in the western region of Khmelnytskyi had falsely been awarded disability permits and were receiving special pensions.

    Kostin said on Tuesday he was taking responsibility for the scandal and announced his resignation. He called the situation around the false disability diagnoses “clearly amoral”.

    “In this situation, I believe it is right to announce my resignation from the position of prosecutor general,” Kostin said.

    The announcement followed a meeting of the National Security and Defence Council.

    After the meeting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree to dismantle the current system of medical and social commissions responsible for registering individuals as disabled by the end of the year, eliminating a loophole that allowed draft evasion through bribery.

    ‘Hundreds’ of cases

    After the scandal erupted earlier this month, Kostin ordered an investigation, which he said had discovered the number of prosecutors in the Khmelnytskyi region with disabilities was 61, and that 50 of them had been registered disabled before the war.

    “It is very important to establish why they were granted disability status, because the share of such employees in Khmelnytskyi region is very high,” he said.

    The chief prosecutor’s resignation still needs to be approved by parliament, where Zelenskyy’s party holds a majority. Following the president’s public call for accountability, it is widely expected that parliament will endorse it.

    In his evening address, Zelenskyy told the nation that such corruption extended much wider than just to prosecutors.

    “There are hundreds of such cases of obviously unjustified disabilities among customs, tax, pension fund and local administration officials,” he said.

    “All of this needs to be dealt with thoroughly and promptly,” he said. The whole process must be digitalised, he added, saying that currently “people who have received a real disability, particularly in combat, often cannot get the appropriate status and fair payments”.

    The Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) had earlier issued a statement saying 64 officials within the Medical and Social Expert Commissions had been notified they were being investigated for illegally issuing disability certificates.

    “Another nine people have already been convicted,” the SBU said in their statement, adding that 4,106 disability certificates “were cancelled”.

    Mobilisation in Ukraine is a hotly contested and controversial issue that has polarised society after a large-scale military recruitment drive earlier this year to bolster Ukraine’s struggling forces as they fight against Russia’s invasion. Since the president signed a renewed mobilisation law in April 2024, men between the ages of 25 and 60 are now eligible. Previously, the range was 27 to 60.

    Soldiers have reported difficult conditions including relentless days of heavy fire without relief due to a lack of reinforcements. Front-line troops have shared with the media that they have been moving from one battle to the next with minimal rest.

    Prosecutions for desertion from Ukraine’s army are thought to have hit at least 30,000 already this year. This is several times the number in 2022, the year the war began when citizens and foreigners voluntarily poured into the military.

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  • Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 958

    Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 958

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    As the war enters its 958th day, these are the main developments.

    Here is the situation on Thursday, October 10, 2024.

    Fighting

    • At least six people were killed and eight injured after a Russian ballistic missile attack on the port infrastructure of Ukraine’s southern Odesa region. Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said a Panamanian-flagged container ship, the Shui Spirit, was damaged in the attack, the third in the region in the past four days.
    • Ukraine’s military said it struck a base in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region where Shahed drones were being stored. A statement by the General Staff said the attack was carried out jointly by naval forces and the SBU intelligence service. There was no official comment from Russia, although emergency services reported a large fire around the location of the alleged attack.
    • Ukraine said it also hit a Russian weapons arsenal in the Bryansk region where ammunition for missile and artillery weapons, including those delivered from North Korea, was stored. Bryansk authorities later declared a state of emergency following “detonations of explosive objects”.
    • Russia’s air defence units destroyed 47 Ukrainian drones targeting its western regions, the Ministry of Defence said. Regional officials said there were no reports of casualties.
    • Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had retaken the villages of Novaya Sorochina and Pokrovsky in its Kursk region after they were captured by Ukraine in a surprise August offensive.

    Politics and diplomacy

    • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a summit of southeast European leaders in Croatia that there was an “opportunity” to take “decisive action” to end the war in 2025. The Ukrainian president did not spell out how and why he saw such an opportunity.
    • Zelenskyy, who is urging Ukraine’s Western allies to allow it to use long-range weapons on military targets deep inside Russia, is due to hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as well as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in meetings across Europe on Thursday.
    • European Union envoys approved a plan to loan Ukraine as much as 35 billion euros ($38bn) backed by frozen Russian central bank assets.
    • European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Hungary was putting European security at risk as a result of its close ties with Russia. Speaking at a debate with populist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the European Parliament, von der Leyen took aim at Budapest’s reluctance to join EU partners in helping Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. “The world has witnessed the atrocities of Russia’s war. And yet, there are still some who blame this war not on the invader but the invaded,” she said.
    • Ukrainian investigators said they arrested 24-year-old Serhiy Gnezdilov, a soldier who fled his army unit in protest over the lack of term limits for long-serving troops, for desertion. Gnezdilov faces as many as 12 years in prison if found guilty.
    • A Russian court found Trevor Reed, a former US Marine who was freed in a 2022 prisoner swap, guilty in absentia of serving as a mercenary for Ukraine and handed him a 14.5-year prison sentence. Investigators said Reed had joined Ukraine’s military in July 2023.
    • A Russian court sentenced activist Yevgeny Mishchenko to 12 years in a penal colony for allegedly planning to join the Freedom of Russia Legion, a banned unit of Russians supporting Ukraine. Mishchenko was one of a handful of volunteers guarding a makeshift Moscow memorial to Boris Nemtsov, an opposition politician killed in 2015. The case was based on evidence from a security agent who posed as a volunteer at the memorial and recorded conversations with Mishchenko.
    • Ukraine aims to organise a new peace summit by the end of this year and wants Russia to attend this time, Vasyl Bodnar, its ambassador to Turkey said. He ruled out any direct bilateral talks with Moscow at the meeting, saying any discussions were likely to take place through third-party intermediaries.

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  • Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 904

    Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 904

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    As the war enters its 904th day, these are the main developments.

    Here is the situation on Saturday, August 17, 2024.

    Fighting

    • At least two people were killed and more injured after Ukrainian shelling hit a shopping centre in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, Russian state news agencies cited local authorities as saying. Earlier, Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed governor, said that a series of Ukrainian attacks wounded at least seven people.
    • Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine will evacuate residents from five villages and close access to them, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said, as the area comes under heavy attack from invading Ukrainian forces.

    • The heaviest fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops was reported in the strategic Ukrainian hub of Pokrovsk. Officials said Russian forces were 10km (6.2 miles) from the outskirts of Pokrovsk and about 6km (3.7 miles) from nearby Myrnohrad. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

    • Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskii said that Kyiv’s forces were advancing 1-3km (0.6 and 1.8 miles) in some areas in Russia’s Kursk region. Kyiv has claimed to have taken control of 82 settlements over an area of 1,150sq km (444 square miles) in the region since August 6.

    • Ukraine’s Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram that aviation was an active part of the operation in Kursk, targeting Russian supply routes and logistics centres. He posted a video of a strike on a bridge.
    • Kursk regional Governor Alexei Smirnov later said that Ukraine had destroyed a road bridge over the Seym river in the region’s Glushkovsky district. The strike is hindering civilian evacuations by land, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported, citing local security services. An estimated 20,000 people are reportedly evacuating from the area.
    • Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its troops repelled Ukrainian attacks in several areas, including near the villages of Gordeevka, Russkoe Porechnoe and others.
    • Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage unit, which was armed with weapons from NATO countries, in the Kursk region, Russia’s RIA state-run media agency reported on Friday, citing unidentified security sources.

    Politics and diplomacy

    • Ukraine has set up storage facilities in its northern Sumy region to hold and send humanitarian aid to Russian civilians in the Kyiv-held part of Russia’s Kursk region, Ukraine’s Minister of the Interior Ihor Klymenko said.

    • Nikolai Patrushev, an influential aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the Izvestia newspaper in an interview that the West and the United States-led NATO alliance had helped to plan Ukraine’s surprise attack on Russia’s Kursk region. Without “direct support” from the West, Kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory, he said.

    • Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had summoned Italy’s ambassador in Moscow to launch “a strong protest” over what it said was “illegal border crossing” by a team of correspondents from the Italian state broadcaster RAI, who reported from Ukrainian-held parts of Russia’s Kursk region this week.
    • Baza, a Telegram channel close to Russian law enforcement, reported that the country’s Interior Ministry was planning to open criminal cases against two RAI journalists for crossing the Russian border.
    • The Italian Foreign Ministry told the Reuters news agency that Italy’s ambassador to Russia, Cecilia Piccioni, had explained to the Russian authorities that RAI and its news teams “plan their activities in a totally independent and autonomous way” from the government.
    • The US is set to announce more security assistance for Ukraine in the coming days, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby told US television news media on Friday. He did not give details.

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  • Russia says it eliminated Ukrainian unit, as Kyiv claims advances in Kursk

    Russia says it eliminated Ukrainian unit, as Kyiv claims advances in Kursk

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    Ukrainian official says incursion into Russian territory aims to push Moscow to enter ‘fair negotiation process’.

    Russia has said its forces have destroyed a Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage group in its western region of Kursk, where Kyiv has launched a daring incursion into Russian territory.

    The RIA Novosti state-run news agency state-run media agency reported on Friday that the Ukrainian troops were carrying weapons supplied by NATO countries.

    “Samples of small arms manufactured by the United States and Sweden have been seized at the liquidation site of a Ukrainian sabotage group near the village of Kremyanoe in the Kursk region,” RIA reported a Russian security official said.

    Russia’s state news agency TASS also quoted the country’s defence ministry as saying that Ukraine lost 220 soldiers and 19 armoured vehicles on Friday as Russian forces repelled Ukrainian advances in several areas of Kursk.

    However, Ukraine’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskii said Kyiv’s forces were advancing one to three kilometres in the Kursk region.

    Kursk regional governor Alexei Smirnov said Ukraine had destroyed a road bridge over the Seym river in the region’s Glushkovsky district. Russian security officials told TASS that the attack could hinder a continuing evacuation of the frontier district’s roughly 20,000 inhabitants.

    The Ukrainian military, which has been battling a Russian invasion since February 2022, launched the Kursk offensive earlier this month. The push has been described as the first incursion by a foreign army into Russia since the second world war.

    On Thursday, Ukraine said it captured the Russian town of Sudzha, a strategic natural gas hub in the Kursk region.

    Kyiv has stressed that it does not intend to hold on to Russian territory. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Ukraine had to force Russia to start talks on Kyiv’s terms.

    “We need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia,” Podolyak wrote on Telegram. “In the Kursk region, we clearly see how the military tool is objectively used to convince the Russian Federation to enter into a fair negotiation process.”

    Al Jazeera’s defence editor Alex Gatopoulos said the Kursk campaign has been an important “morale boost” for Ukraine.

    He added that the incursion serves as a message to Russians that their government may not be telling the truth about the war efforts.

    “Ordinary Russians are seeing Russian civilians under Ukrainian control, Ukrainian military units on Russian soil, which has been a real shock,” Gatopoulos said.

    Nikolai Patrushev, an influential aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Friday that the West and NATO have helped plan Ukraine’s surprise attack, something Washington has denied.

    “Without their participation and direct support, Kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory,” Patrushev told the Izvestia newspaper.

    Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 after a months-long standoff that saw Moscow demand an end to NATO expansion into former Soviet republics.

    Ukrainian forces pushed back successfully against the initial Russian assault that appeared to be aimed at capturing Kyiv. Since then, the fighting has mostly taken place in the eastern regions of the country.

    Russia had made slow advances in eastern Ukraine in recent months as the war appeared to turn into a protracted conflict. A Ukrainian counteroffensive last year failed to make significant changes on the battlefield.

    On Friday, Russian state news agencies said at least two people have been killed and more injured when Ukrainian shelling hit a shopping centre in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

    The US and its Western allies have provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Kyiv while imposing heavy sanctions against the Russian economy over the invasion.

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