Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russia advances on Ukraine city while Kyiv’s push slows

Washington has provided Ukraine with more than $50 billion worth of military aid since 2022, but has limited the use of its weapons to Ukrainian soil and defensive crossborder operations.

Zelensky said guided aerial bombs killed six people and injured 97 in Kharkiv on Friday, with more attacks on Saturday. These could be averted only “by striking Russian military airfields, their bases, and the logistics of Russian terror.”

In his nightly video address, he said, “We talk about this every day with our partners. We persuade. We present arguments.”

He said that clearing the Ukrainian sky of Russian guided aerial bombs would be “a strong step to force Russia to seek an end to the war and a just peace.”

Appealing to the United States, Britain, France and Germany, he said, “We need the capabilities to truly and fully protect Ukraine and Ukrainians.

“We need both the permissions for long-range capabilities and your long-range shells and missiles.”

Without providing specifics, he said his representatives had “provided all the necessary details” to Ukraine’s partners.

Russia’s ministry of defence said that it had captured the town of Pivnichne, also in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

Russian forces have been driving deeper into the partly occupied eastern region, the total capture of which is one of the Kremlin’s primary ambitions.

Russia’s army is closing in on Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub for the Ukrainian defence in the area.

At the same time, Ukraine has sent its forces into Russia’s Kursk region in recent weeks in the largest incursion on to Russian soil since the Second World War. The move is partly an effort to force Russia to draw troops away from the Donetsk front.

Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is legitimate and covered by Kyiv’s right to self-defence, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told German weekly Welt am Sonntag in his first reaction to the advance into Russian territory.

“Ukraine has a right to defend itself. And according to international law, this right does not stop at the border,” Stoltenberg told the paper, adding that NATO had not been informed about Ukraine’s plans beforehand and did not play a role in them.

The NATO chief said Ukraine was running a risk with the advance onto Russian territory but that it was up to Kyiv how to conduct its military campaign.

“(Ukrainian) President (Volodymyr) Zelenskiy has made clear that the operation aims to create a buffer zone to prevent further Russian attacks from across the border,” he said.

“Like all military operations, this comes with risks. But it is Ukraine’s decision how to defend itself.”

Kyiv launched a major cross-border incursion into the Kursk region on Aug. 6, while Moscow’s troops keep pressing towards the strategic hub of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.

The incursion was also discussed at a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine-Council on Wednesday that was requested by Kyiv amid Moscow’s biggest wave of air attacks on its neighbour.

The council, grouping members of the Western military alliance and Ukraine, was established last year to enable closer coordination between the alliance and Kyiv.

Russia has called the Kursk operation a “major provocation” and said it would retaliate.

Five people were killed and 46 injured in Ukrainian attack on the southwestern Russian city of Belgorod late on Friday, the local governor said.

Vyacheslav Gladkov also said 37 people, including seven children, were taken to hospital.

Video from a car dashboard, posted on social media and purporting to demonstrate the attack, showed another car being blown up while moving on the road. Seconds later an explosion is seen on the other side of the road.

Ukraine has staged frequent attacks on Belgorod and other Russian border regions in recent months.

Ukraine and Russia say they do not deliberately target civilians in the war that began when Russia sent thousands of troops into its smaller neighbour in February 2022. Moscow has called the invasion a “special military operation”.

Russia has made vast advances into the Kursk region threatning to undo all Ukrainian advances over recent months.

Ukraine’s armed forces chief Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said Russia was throwing “everything that can move” into its assault.

“The situation is extremely difficult,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky conceded on Wednesday.

“If we lose Pokrovsk,” military expert Mykhaylo Zhyrokhov warned, “the entire front line will crumble.”

An advisor to the Ukrainian president’s office has called out Kyiv’s Western allies for not providing more support to counter Russia’s “genocidal type of war” after Moscow killed at least five people and injured 47 more in a day strike on a playground.

Mykhailo Podolyak, writing on X, formerly Twitter, said that Russia was trying “to test the world to see how long it is prepared to look blankly at unconditional and premeditated war crimes against civilians”.

This will be the Russian president’s first visit to an International Criminal Court (ICC) member state since a warrant was issued for his arrest for war crimes.

An ICC spokesperson told the BBC that Mongolian officials “have the obligation” to abide by ICC regulations, but it did not mean that an arrest had to take place.

“We have an excellent rapport with our partners from Mongolia,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.

“Of course, all aspects of the president’s visit have been carefully prepared.”

Ukraine somberly marked its 33rd Independence Day on Saturday, setting the usual fireworks, parades and concerts aside to commemorate thousands of civilians and soldiers killed in the ongoing war with Russia.

AP news reports scenes in Kyiv of people who traveled from various regions pardaing in “vyshyvankas,” shirts of many colors enhanced with adornments, including the traditional white shirt with red embroidery.

Some posed for pictures in front of the country’s blue-and-yellow flag and an “I Love Ukraine” sign that had been placed near a makeshift memorial to fallen soldiers.

Ukraine declared independence from the former Soviet Union on Aug. 24, 1991.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion on the country on Feb. 24, 2022. Since then more than 11,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the conflict, according to the United Nations, although it has indicated that the toll could be higher.

The 48-year-old journalist and editor at local newspaper Listok, or Leaflet, was arrested in 2022 near Moscow for posting on the publication’s Telegram channel and website about the horrors in the Ukrainian cities of Bucha and Mariupol.

It became a criminal offence in Russia to criticise the war in Ukraine under a new law that was adopted just days after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.

More than 1,000 people have been implicated in criminal cases over their anti-war stance since the law’s inception, OVD-Info, one of Russia’s leading rights groups that tracks political arrests, has said.