As the war enters its 870th day, these are the main developments.
Here’s where the war stands on Sunday, July 14, 2024:
Fighting
- Russian fire killed five civilians in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, with one missile attack carried out after emergency services had arrived at the scene of an earlier attack, officials said. A police officer and an emergency rescue official were killed in that second strike in the village of Budy. Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said it was not the first time that Russia attacked emergency services while they were “rescuing civilians”.
- Regional Governor Oleg Synegubov said 22 people were injured in the twin attacks, including five railway workers. He accused Russia of “deliberately” targeting the area twice.
- In the southern Kherson region, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said three people were killed in Russian shelling. The victims were two women, aged 72 and 50, and a 41-year-old man, he said. Prokudin said Russian forces shelled Ukrainian-held positions throughout the day.
- Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin said an attack by multiple rocket launchers hit a multistorey apartment building, killing one person in Chasiv Yar – a town targeted by Russian forces as a staging point in advancing through Ukraine’s east.
- A guided bomb, increasingly used in Russian attacks, also killed one person near the town of Kurakhove, where some of the heaviest fighting is taking place along the 1,000km (600-mile) front.
- Two bombs dropped on a village further west near the town of Komar killed two people. Ten buildings and a shop were damaged, according to reports.
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A fire, which broke out on Saturday morning after a drone strike, was extinguished at an oil depot in Russia’s southern Rostov region, Governor Vasily Golubev said in statements on messaging app Telegram. He said the fire in Tsimlyansky district, had covered 200 square metres (2,150 square feet) and burned for at least six hours.
Politics and diplomacy
- The Kremlin has warned that the deployment of US missiles in Germany could make European capitals targets for Russian missiles in a repeat of Cold War-style confrontation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also hinted that such a confrontation could undermine Europe as a whole in the same way the Cold War ended with the Soviet Union’s collapse.
- The new United Kingdom government said the “arc of conflict and instability” threatening Europe’s borders will be the focus of the upcoming European Political Community (EPC) meeting near London. Prime Minister Keir Starmer will welcome more than 45 European leaders to Blenheim Palace, west of London, on Thursday, to discuss Europe’s security concerns, including the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, said tensions had subsided at his country’s border with Ukraine and extra troops deployed there were being sent back to their bases. He was quoted by the official BelTA news agency as saying Belarusian intelligence had determined that Ukraine had withdrawn troops from sensitive areas.
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Poland will spend 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence in 2025, its foreign minister told Bloomberg Television. Warsaw has been ramping up its defence spending in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk had told private broadcaster TVN24 earlier that Poland would increase its defence budget by about 10 percent in 2025 to a record high.
- Swiss prosecutors announced that they were investigating a Russian diplomat and suspected agent alongside two others reported to have tried to procure weapons and other potentially dangerous material. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) said it had been conducting an investigation into the two accused people without diplomatic immunity, suspected of violating laws, including Switzerland’s War Material Act and Embargo Act.
Source
:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
