As the war enters its 785th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Friday, April 19, 2024.
Fighting
- Two people were killed and two injured by Russian shelling in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region near the front line. Russian shelling in the southern Kherson region, meanwhile, injured at least 16 people, officials said.
- Two people were injured after a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
- The death toll from a Russian attack on Chernihiv in northern Ukraine rose to 18. A further 78 people were injured after three missiles struck the city centre on Wednesday.
- Ukraine’s military spy agency said its attack on Wednesday on Russia’s Dzhankoi airfield in occupied Crimea seriously damaged four missile launchers, three radar stations and other equipment. It said it was still assessing damage to aircraft. Russia has not commented on the attack.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said air defences brought down what it described as five Ukrainian balloons – three over the Voronezh region and two over the Belgorod region. According to Russian news reports, the balloons are equipped with a GPS module and carry explosives.
- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that officials at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant reported a new attempted drone attack on the facility’s training centre. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said that no damage or injuries were reported.
Politics and diplomacy
- Polish prosecutors said they arrested a man on suspicion of working with Russia’s military intelligence on an alleged plot to assassinate Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
- Germany arrested two men on suspicion that they were working with Russia to plot sabotage attacks on United States military sites in Germany as a way to undermine support for the war in Ukraine. The men are both dual nationals of Germany and Russia.
- China’s Eurasian Affairs envoy Li Hui held talks on the Ukraine war and bilateral relations with the Ukrainian ambassador to China, Pavlo Riabikin, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. It did not elaborate.
Weapons
- NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a meeting of G7 foreign ministers that Ukraine had an “urgent, critical need for more air defence”, as Kyiv’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, pressed allies for more Patriot systems.
- Valdis Dombrovskis, executive vice president of the European Commission, said the European Union sees signs that China is supplying dual-use components to Russia that could be used to make weapons.
