As the war enters its 942nd day, here are the top developments.
Here is the situation on Tuesday, September 24, 2024.
Struggle
- At least one person was killed and five wounded in the latest in a series of Russian attacks on the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said. At least 23 people were wounded in Russian attacks on the city early in the day and overnight on Sunday.
- Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said three people were killed and two wounded in the Ukrainian shelling of the village of Arkhangelskoe, about 5 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.
- Russia's Foreign Ministry said at least 56 civilians had been killed and 266 wounded in the seven weeks since Ukraine began its surprise incursion into Russia's Kursk region. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhiy Tykhyi said Ukraine respected international humanitarian law and did not attack civilians. He urged Russia to allow the United Nations and the Red Cross access to the area to verify the situation.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “decisive action” by the United States now could hasten an end to Russian aggression against Ukraine. Zelenskyy is visiting the United States and is seeking approval to use Western-supplied long-range weapons against military targets inside Russia. He spoke after a meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the U.S. Congress. He will meet with President Joe Biden on Thursday.
- A commission set up by the UN Human Rights Council has said Russian prisons were deliberately denying medical care to Ukrainian prisoners, with doctors at one prison even engaging in what it called “torture”. Commission chair Erik Mose told the council that torture had become “common and acceptable practice” and that Russian authorities were acting with “a sense of impunity”. Mose’s information was based on testimony from former Ukrainian inmates at Olenivka prison in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.
- Mariana Katzarova, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Russia, told reporters in Geneva that the human rights situation in Russia has worsened “much” over the past year, amid a tightening of the “state-sponsored system of fear and punishment”. Katzarova said there was a growing number of arbitrary arrests and that prison conditions had worsened. Russia currently holds more than 1,300 political prisoners, she said.
- Katzarova also said there was evidence that Russian convicts who were pardoned or had their sentences reduced so they could fight in Ukraine committed crimes such as rape and murder when they returned home from the front. An estimated 170,000 convicted violent criminals have been recruited to fight in Ukraine.
- Russia and Ukraine have clashed at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague in a long-running case over access to coastal waters around Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
Arms
- The European Union's top foreign policy official, Josep Borrell, said foreign ministers from the Group of Seven major democracies will discuss the issue of allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied long-range missiles to strike inside Russian territory.
