As the war enters its 849th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Sunday, June 23, 2024.
Fighting
- Russian guided bombs shattered an apartment building in Ukraine’s Kharkiv on Saturday, killing three people and injuring 52, according to regional officials.
- Two people were injured and scores of residential and other buildings damaged in a Russian missile attack on the Kyiv region overnight, Ukraine’s authorities said.
- Ukraine launched at least 30 drones overnight, targeting Russia’s western region of Bryansk with no reported damage, Russian officials said.
- Russia’s air defence systems destroyed a number of drones over the Smolensk region, said Vasily Anokhin, governor of the region in Russia’s west.
- Russian-installed officials said Ukrainian attack drones also struck Enerhodar, a town near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, wounding one person.
Politics and diplomacy
- Russia’s Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev reportedly said his country’s athletes – mostly barred from the Paris Olympics – will soon take part in more competitions since international fixtures suffer from their absence, according to the Interfax news agency.
- British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said a claim by far-right leader Nigel Farage that the West “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “completely wrong and only plays into [Vladimir] Putin’s hands”.
- Moscow may change the timing for use of its nuclear weapons if threats against Russia increase, the RIA state news agency reported, quoting Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the Russian lower house’s defence committee, as saying.
Weapons
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Russia deployed more than 2,400 guided bombs on Ukraine in June, with about 700 used on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
- Zelenskyy has also called on Ukraine’s Western allies to deliver promised military aid packages “without delay so that the agreements we reached with [US] President Biden can be realised”.
