Here are the key events on day 1,277 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is how things stand on Sunday, August 24:
Fighting
- Russian forces launched a drone attack on a minibus in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, killing a 59-year-old man and wounding five others, according to a Ukrainian official.
- A wave of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Kherson also killed a 69-year-old man, wounded 17 people, and damaged a school and an administrative building in one district, local officials said.
- Russian forces launched 448 attacks on 17 settlements in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region in a single day, according to Ivan Fedorov, the head of the Zaporizhia Regional Military Administration.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed its troops have taken control of two more settlements – Seredne and Kleban-Byk – along the 1,000km (620-mile) front line in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, while the Ukrainian military said its forces had recaptured a settlement further west, on the edge of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
- In Russia, a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, damaged an auxiliary transformer and led to reduction in the operating capacity at one of the plant’s units, officials said early on Sunday.
- Earlier, one person was killed and another injured when they drove over an explosive device dropped by a Ukrainian drone in the village of Kirillovka in the Bryansk region, the local governor said.
- Another Russian civilian was killed in a targeted Ukrainian drone attack in the Krasnoyarsk district of Russia’s Belgorod region, an official said.
- Russian forces also shot down a drone flying towards the Russian capital, Moscow, and intercepted 160 drones and four guided aerial bombs in a 24-hour period, the TASS news agency reported, citing officials.
- The drone barrage forced several airports in central Russia to suspend operations because of concerns over safe airspace, Russia’s air transport agency Rosaviatsia said.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on countries in the Global South to support diplomatic efforts to push Russia to agree to end its war with Ukraine, following talks with his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa.
- Zelenskyy announced new Ukrainian sanctions against 139 individuals and legal entities working for Russia’s war, as well as “28 citizens of different countries, who are equally helping the Russians in maintaining the occupation regime on our land and effectively sponsoring the Russian state”.
- The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the Pentagon has been quietly blocking Ukraine from launching long-range missile attacks on Russia, as the White House tries to get Moscow to agree to peace talks. Al Jazeera could not independently verify the WSJ report, which cited unnamed US officials.