As the war enters its 954th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Sunday, October 6, 2024.
Fighting
- Russian air attacks on Ukraine kept the eastern half of the country under air raid alert for more than five hours, Ukraine’s military said early on Sunday.
- Ukraine’s military said on Telegram its air defence units repelled Russia’s air attack on capital Kyiv on Sunday morning.
- Prosecutors in Ukraine’s Donetsk region say two civilians, a 65-year-old woman and an 86-year-old man, were killed in the city of Toretsk and the village of Velyka Novosilka. It was not immediately clear how the two were killed.
- In Zaporizhia region, Governor Ivan Fyodorov said two men aged 44 and 46 were killed by Russian shelling in the village of Mala Tokmachka.
- Prosecutors in Kharkiv region said a 49-year-old man died when a Russian drone hit the car he was driving.
- The Russian-installed authorities in the Ukrainian city of Horlivka and in the Zaporizhia region said several civilians were wounded by Ukrainian shelling and drone strikes.
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Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces took control of Zhelanne Druhe village in the Donetsk region. Moscow’s claim could not be independently confirmed. The village is located close to Pokrovsk, a logistics hub for the Ukrainian army that is threatened by advancing Russian troops.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukraine will present its “victory plan” to its allies in Germany next weekend, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, setting up a test of support for Kyiv’s vision of ending the war with Russia. He will meet US President Joe Biden and other leaders at a regular meeting of key NATO and other allies at the US Ramstein Air Base on October 12.
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Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s envoy to the United States and a Kremlin hardliner, returned to Moscow at the end of his term, which was a time of the most hostile relations between the two nations in decades. The Siberia-born career diplomat had been heading the Russian mission in Washington, DC since 2017.
- Ukrainian prosecutors announced that they were investigating allegations that Russian forces executed four Ukrainian prisoners of war and said a possible suspect for the killings was in custody. The servicemen are alleged to have been killed on the orders of Russian military command over the summer in Vovchansk.
- Russian prosecutors asked for a seven-year sentence in the trial of American man Stephen Hubbard, 72, who is accused of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine against Russia, Russian news agencies reported. Prosecutors asked the court to take into account Hubbard’s age, adding that he has admitted guilt. The offence is typically punishable for a term of seven to 15 years.