As the war enters its 880th day, these are the main developments.
This is where the war stands on Wednesday, July 24, 2024:
Fighting
- One person was killed and four others wounded in Russia’s Krasnodar region when Ukraine launched a drone attack on a cargo ship moored at the Port of Kavkaz, just across from the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula, according to local authorities.
- Russia’s military said it had captured another tiny village in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where its forces are grinding forward. The settlement of Ivano-Dariivka is about 30km (18 miles) northeast of Bakhmut, the Ukrainian town Russian troops captured in 2023 after flattening it with months of artillery fire.
- In Ukraine, a Russian overnight air attack damaged an energy facility in the northern Sumy region, cutting power to 50,400 consumers, officials said. There were no casualties.
Diplomacy
- Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba arrived in China for talks and said it was “very important that Kyiv and Beijing engage in direct dialogue” on ending the Russian invasion and achieving a just peace. Kuleba’s visit is the first by a high-ranking Ukrainian official since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
- Hungary has threatened to block European Union refunds for member states that gave munitions to Ukraine until Kyiv allows the transit of oil from Russia’s Lukoil company through a pipeline over its territory. Hungary and Slovakia said earlier this month that they had stopped receiving oil from Lukoil through the Druzhba pipeline after Ukraine imposed a ban last month on the transit of resources from the Russian company.
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held talks with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin in Kyiv and praised the Holy See’s efforts in seeking peace and releasing prisoners of war.
- US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reaffirmed Washington’s unwavering support for Kyiv in a call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov. It was the first call between the defence heads since United States President Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for the November election.
- Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, spoke by phone with Harris’s national security adviser, Phil Gordon, and discussed the situation at the front and Russia’s campaign of aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure, according to Kyiv.
- Russia called an EU plan to use interest earned on frozen Russian assets to fund military aid to Ukraine “theft” and said it would take legal action against anyone involved in the decision. Moscow also expanded its list of United Kingdom nationals banned from entering the country due to what it called their anti-Russian public statements on Ukraine or their role in training or arming the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
- Estonia’s incoming government will support Ukraine until “victory” in its war with Russia, Prime Minister Kristen Michal told the Reuters news agency, pledging continuity on the issue with the former administration.
Politics
- Nearly a third of Ukrainians would accept some territorial concessions to Russia for a quick end to the war, according to a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. The figure marks a more than three-fold increase over the past year, although most Ukrainians remain opposed to giving up any land.
- A court in Moscow has found Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar guilty in absentia of knowingly distributing false information about the Russian army and sentenced him to eight and a half years in prison. The charges against Zygar stem from an Instagram post he wrote in April 2022 about what he said were war crimes committed by Russian forces in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.
Military
- Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, said Ukraine’s missile programme was showing good momentum. “We are gradually approaching the possibility of using our own missiles and not just relying on missiles supplied by our partners,” he said.
Economy
- The US Treasury Department ordered the country’s banks to start disclosing its holdings of Russian assets, with the goal of eventually seizing those billions of dollars in assets and selling them to aid the devastated Ukrainian economy.
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