As the war enters its 959th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Friday, October 11, 2024.
Fighting
- The death toll from a Russian ballistic missile attack on port infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region rose to eight with nine people injured, Regional Governor Oleh Kiper said. Wednesday’s attack hit a Panama-flagged container vessel that was at the port.
- Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said Russia attacked Ukraine’s port infrastructure almost 60 times in the last three months and is intensifying such strikes.
- At least six people were injured after a series of Russian-guided bomb attacks on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, regional governor, Ivan Fedorov, said. The attack also damaged 29 buildings.
- A Russian drone attack on the central city of Kryvyi Rih injured two people and damaged a five-storey residential building, causing a fire, Dnipropetrovsk regional governor, Serhiy Lysak, said.
- Outmanned Ukrainian forces fended off assaults by Russian troops inside the strategic city of Toretsk, Kyiv’s military said. Military spokesperson Anastasia Bobovnikova told the Reuters news agency that street fighting was raging in the hilltop town, with Russian troops pushing forward and “completely erasing” buildings.
- Russia said its missiles struck two launchers of a US-made Patriot air defence system in central Ukraine, with Kyiv acknowledging the weapon had been hit, but saying it remained operational. A Ukrainian military blogger said the strike took place in Pavlohrad, in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
- The Ukrainian military said it struck an ammunition depot at an airfield in Russia’s Adygeya region in the North Caucasus, about 450km (280 miles) from the front line in eastern Ukraine. Adygeya regional head Murat Kumpilov said that the village of Rodnikovyi had been evacuated after the drone attack started a fire, but there were no casualties.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took a lightning tour of Western European capitals as he details his “victory plan” to Ukraine’s allies. He met British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in London, French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome. He is expected to meet Pope Francis on Friday morning before heading to Germany for talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
- Speaking in Paris, Zelenskyy denied media reports that he was discussing the terms of a ceasefire with Russia. “This is not the topic of our discussions,” he told reporters. “It’s not right.”
- In Rome, Meloni announced Italy would host the next “recovery conference” to help Ukraine’s reconstruction. Meloni said the conference would take place in Rome from July 10-11, 2025.
- Victoria Roshchyna, a Ukrainian journalist who went missing while reporting from occupied east Ukraine in August 2023, has died in Russian detention, a spokesperson from Ukraine’s prison of war coordination headquarters said. Investigations were under way into the circumstances of her death, he added.
- Ukraine’s parliament approved the first major tax hike since Russia’s full-scale invasion as military spending soars. The law imposes measures including an effective tax rate on bank profits of 50 percent, a tax on financial companies of 25 percent, and an increase in the war tax paid by civilians from 1.5 percent to 5 percent.
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected comments from South Korea’s defence minister that North Korean soldiers were likely to be fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine.
- Consumer products giant Unilever exited Russia after selling its Russian operations to Arnest Group, a Russian manufacturer of perfume, cosmetics and household products. It did not disclose the amount Arnest paid. Unilever said the deal also included its Belarus business.
Weapons
- Russia has recruited about 200 young African women to work at a Tatarstan factory producing Iranian-designed drones for use in Ukraine, according to an investigation by The Associated Press news agency. AP said the women were lured to Russia through a social media campaign that offered a free flight and work-study programmes in areas like hospitality and catering only to find themselves at the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) east of Moscow.
- The German-based Kiel Institute warned Western military and financial aid to Kyiv could halve to about 29 billion euros ($31.6bn) in 2025 if Donald Trump wins the November 5 election in the United States. Trump has claimed he would end the war “in 24 hours” if elected. He has not said how.
