Ukraine war day 977: These are the key developments as the war reaches its 977th day.
Fighting
- On the Telegram messaging service, Mayor Ihor Terekhov announced that Russia had bombed Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, overnight, killing at least four people. About 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Russian border, Kharkiv has been the target of numerous Russian aerial assaults.
- In a previous attack on Kharkiv, the Derzhprom building, one of the city’s most renowned structures from the 1920s, was mostly demolished and six people were injured.
- According to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, a Russian drone attack in the Solomianskyi area of Kyiv, Ukraine, resulted in two injuries and the burning of a residential building.
- In the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kryvyi Rih, a three-story residential building was struck by a Russian missile, resulting in one fatality and eleven injuries.
- Another Russian strike in the city of Chuhuiv injured eight people.
- Ukraine war day 977: According to the RIA Novosti news agency, which cited Russia’s Ministry of Defense, Russian soldiers have seized the town of Tsukuryne in the Pokrovsk district of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
- During a nighttime raid, the Ukrainian Air Force claimed to have destroyed 66 of 100 Russian attack drones. While “several” others had damaged civilian infrastructure and left portions of the Sumy and Poltava districts without power, another 24 were “locationally lost.”
- According to the Defense Ministry, seven Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight by Russia’s air defenses. According to reports, the drones targeted the Ukrainian bordering districts of Belgorod, Bryansk, and Kursk.
- Alexander Gusev, the regional governor of Voronezh in southern Russia, reported that Ukrainian drones targeted ethanol plants in the area, injuring two persons. Two industrial businesses were damaged and a fire was started as a result of the attack.
Politics and diplomacy
- An estimated 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been dispatched to Russia to train and engage in combat against Ukraine in “the next several weeks,” according to the Pentagon.
- North Korean troops have been dispatched to Kursk and transported to Russia, according to confirmation from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. He claimed that this shows the “increasing desperation” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
- US President Joe Biden said that North Korea’s assistance to Russia in Ukraine is “extremely dangerous.”
- According to the Yonhap news agency, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol stated that North Korean forces might be sent to the front lines sooner than anticipated.
- The Pentagon stated that if North Korean forces joined the conflict against Ukrainian forces, Ukraine would not face any additional limitations on the use of US weaponry against them.
- Zelenskyy is in Iceland to talk to Nordic politicians about his “victory plan” to settle the conflict with Russia. According to him, there are currently roughly 3,000 North Korean soldiers in Russia, and four times as many are anticipated in the near future.
- Ukraine war day 977: Andriy Yermak, Ukraine’s president and chief of staff, urged for further arms shipments to his nation and stated that sanctions would not be sufficient to address North Korean involvement.
- According to Russian official media, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui is now in Vladivostok, Russia, and is expected to go to Moscow on Wednesday.
- Viola Amherd, the president of Switzerland, stated that she supports lifting the embargo that now prohibits the re-export of Swiss-made weapons to Ukraine, claiming that it is detrimental to her nation’s business and security.
- Three Russian public relations firms—the state-funded Social Design Agency (SDA), its partner company Structura, and another firm named Ano Dialog—as well as their senior employees have been sanctioned by the UK for allegedly “attempting to undermine and destabilize Ukraine and its democracy.”
- The government said that SDA had tried “to incite protests in half a dozen European countries” and that Structura and SDA had launched “interference operations” against Ukraine.
