As the war enters its 958th day, key developments include:
Here’s the situation for Thursday, October 10, 2024:
go for it
- At least six people have been killed and eight injured in a Russian ballistic missile attack on port infrastructure in southern Ukraine’s Odessa region. Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said the Panama-flagged container ship Shui Spirit was damaged in the attack. This was the third case in the area in the last four days.
- The Ukrainian military said it had attacked a base in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region where Shahed drones were stored. The General Staff said in a statement that the attack was carried out jointly by the Navy and the SBU Intelligence Service. There was no official comment from Russia, but emergency services reported large-scale fires around the site of the attack.
- Ukraine said it also attacked a Russian arsenal in the Bryansk region that stored missile and artillery ammunition, including weapons delivered from North Korea. Authorities in Bryansk later declared a state of emergency following the “explosive explosion.”
- The Ministry of Defense said that Russian air defense forces destroyed 47 Ukrainian drones targeting the country’s western region. Local officials said no casualties were reported.
- The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had recaptured the villages of Novaya Sorochina and Pokrovsky in the Kursk region, which were captured in a surprise offensive by Ukraine in August.
politics and diplomacy
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told a summit of Southeastern Europe leaders in Croatia that there was an “opportunity” to take “decisive action” to end the war in 2025. The Ukrainian president did not say how or why he saw such an opportunity.
- Zelenskyy, who is urging Ukraine’s Western allies to allow the use of long-range weapons against military targets inside Russia, is scheduled to hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. . Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is holding meetings across Europe on Thursday.
- The European Union’s special envoy has approved a plan to loan up to 35 billion euros ($38 billion) to Ukraine using frozen Russian central bank assets as collateral.
- European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Hungary was putting European security at risk due to its close ties with Russia. During her debate with populist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in the European Parliament, von der Leyen took aim at Budapest’s reluctance to join EU partners in helping Ukraine against Russian aggression. “The world witnessed the brutality of the Russian war. Despite this, there are still people who blame this war on the invaded rather than the invaders,” she said.
- Ukrainian investigators said they arrested Serhiy Gnezdilov, 24, a soldier who left the army in protest of the lack of term limits for long-serving soldiers, on charges of desertion. Gnezdilov could face up to 12 years in prison if convicted.
- A Russian court sentenced former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, who was released in a prisoner exchange in 2022, to 14.5 years in prison for serving as a Ukrainian mercenary. Investigators said Reed joined the Ukrainian military in July 2023.
- A Russian court sentenced activist Yevgeny Mishchenko to 12 years in a penal colony for plotting to join the Russian Free Corps, a banned unit of pro-Ukrainian Russians. Mishchenko was one of a small number of volunteers guarding a makeshift memorial to opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered in 2015. The case was based on the evidence of a security guard who posed as a volunteer at the memorial and recorded his conversation with Mishchenko.
- Ukraine aims to organize a new peace summit by the end of the year and this time wants Russia to attend, said Vasil Bodnar, Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey. He ruled out any direct bilateral talks with Moscow during this meeting. He said all discussions would likely take place through a third-party intermediary.
