As the war enters its 891st day, here are the key developments.
Here is the situation on Sunday, August 4, 2024.
Struggle
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Russian shelling of a residential area has killed one person and wounded two in this strategic logistics hub in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, regional governor Vadym Filashkin said. Rescue workers were still putting out the flames as stunned residents watched two hours after the impact, which police on the scene blamed on a UMPB D-30 glider bomb.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised his forces for attacking military targets inside Russia, after his military reported several attacks, including the Morozovsk airfield in the Rostov region and a B-237 submarine in Russian-occupied Crimea.
- kyiv said it had faced several missiles and 29 drones, of which 24 were destroyed. Authorities in the central Vinnytsia region said the strikes damaged infrastructure, without giving further details. Zelenskyy previously said Russia dropped more than 600 guided aerial bombs on Ukraine in the past week alone.
- Kherson region governor Oleksandr Prokudin said Ukrainian air defenses shot down five drones over his region. Russian strikes in the region over the past day hit critical infrastructure, an administrative building and nine residential houses, he said.
- Mykolaiv regional governor Vitaliy Kim said one of the drones shot down by air defences caused a fire in nearby buildings, which has since been extinguished, with no casualties reported.
Politics and diplomacy
- Senegal has summoned the Ukrainian ambassador following a video he posted in support of recent deadly attacks against the Malian army and its Russian allies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Senegalese Abroad said in a statement. The ministry says it maintains a “constructive neutrality in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.”
- Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, released this week from a 25-year prison sentence as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and the West, told reporters in Germany that many Russians were “against [Russian President Vladimir] “Putin’s war in Ukraine”.
- Ukraine's Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets has urged the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations to investigate a widely circulated image on the Internet that he says likely shows a Ukrainian prisoner of war killed and dismembered by Russian forces. Andriy Kostin, Ukraine's prosecutor general, said Russia “systematically repeats the crimes of the Nazis.”
Economy
- U.S. rating agency S&P has downgraded Ukraine’s credit rating to “selective default,” citing the war-torn country’s failure to pay a coupon on an existing bond. S&P said it had downgraded Ukraine’s credit rating to “SD/SD” from “CC/C,” meaning a very high level of default risk.
Sport
- Ukraine won its first gold medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics when its fencers triumphed in the women's sabre team competition, beating South Korea 45-42 in the final at the Grand Palais. The victory was celebrated in the war-torn country, with Zelenskyy declaring on social media that the gold proved “Ukrainians are winning.”
