Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 397 of the invasion

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged each Ukrainians to stay engaged with developments successful the war, adjacent though warring has mostly been concentrated successful the east. “Now, conscionable arsenic it was a twelvemonth ago, 1 cannot beryllium mentally acold from the war, though acknowledgment to our soldiers, existent hostilities are taking spot geographically acold from many,” said the Ukrainian president successful his nightly address.

Zelenskiy said helium had been holding high-level meetings with the information sector, quality and defence discussing reinforcements and “preparing respective steps”. Meanwhile, “we received €1.5bn successful macro-financial assistance from the European Union – the funds are already successful the nationalist bank’s accounts”.

Zelenskiy said the Croatian authorities had adopted a programme to dainty wounded Ukrainian soldiers.

Heavy Russian shelling is turning the Ukrainian municipality of Avdiivka into a “place from post-apocalyptic movies”, according to the city’s subject medication head, Vitaliy Barabash. Reuters reported astir 2,000 civilians were near successful the metropolis that Ukrainian forces said past week could go a “second Bakhmut”.

The fig of Russian troops successful Belarus has decreased to astir 4,000, according to Ukraine. Andriy Demchenko, spokesperson for the State Border Guard Service, said determination had been 10,000 successful January. The bulk of those remaining were training, with the remainder transferred backmost to Russia.

Nato has criticised Russia for its “dangerous and irresponsible” atomic rhetoric aft Vladimir Putin said Russia would presumption tactical atomic weapons successful Belarus.

Ukraine has reacted to Russia’s plans for Belarus by calling for an emergency gathering of the UN information council. Kyiv’s overseas ministry said it was “another provocative step” by Moscow that undermined “the planetary information strategy arsenic a whole”. Oleksiy Danilov, the caput of Ukraine’s nationalist information and defence council, said the Kremlin had taken Belarus arsenic a “nuclear hostage”. Ukrainian statesmanlike adjutant Mykhaylo Podolyak accused Putin of violating the atomic non-proliferation pact and resorting to scare tactics.

Josep Borrell, the EU overseas argumentation chief, has cautioned Belarus against hosting Russian atomic weapons. “Belarus hosting Russian atomic weapons would mean an irresponsible escalation and menace to European security. Belarus tin inactive halt it, it is their choice. The EU stands acceptable to respond with further sanctions.”

The US nationalist information assembly spokesperson, John Kirby, said connected Sunday: “We person not seen immoderate denotation that helium [Putin] has made bully connected this pledge oregon moved immoderate atomic weapons around.”

Three radical were reported injured and 3 residential buildings were damaged aft an detonation successful the municipality of Kireyevsk successful Russia’s Tula region. Local instrumentality enforcement attributed the blast to a Ukrainian Tu-141 Strizh UAV drone “packed with explosives”. None of the radical wounded successful the blast were believed to person suffered life-threatening injuries, Reuters reported, citing Russian quality agencies.

Russia and China are not creating a subject alliance, Putin has said successful a televised interrogation broadcast. Putin said the 2 countries’ subject cooperation was transparent, news agencies reported.

The UK Ministry of Defence says that since the commencement of March 2023, Russia is apt to person launched astatine slightest 71 Iranian-designed Shahed bid one-way onslaught uncrewed aerial conveyance (OWA-UAVS) against targets crossed Ukraine. It says Russia is apt launching Shaheds from 2 axes: Krasnodar Krai successful the eastbound and Bryansk oblast successful the north-east, some wrong Russia.

Ukraine volition nary longer edifice to “dangerous” monetary financing to money the warfare against Russia, its cardinal slope governor, Andriy Pyshnyi, has told the Financial Times.

Ukrainian refugees are increasingly being targeted for intersexual exploitation with an summation successful involvement successful pornography claiming to diagnostic them, according to probe by Thomson Reuters.

Ukraine’s lawman curate of defence, Hanna Maliar, went connected Facebook to impulse Ukrainians not to openly sermon details astir the upcoming offensive. “On unrecorded broadcasts, don’t inquire experts questions [in the vein of] ‘how is the counter-offensive going?’, don’t constitute blogs oregon posts connected this topic, and don’t sermon subject plans of our service publically astatine all. We person 1 strategical program – to liberate each our territories. And arsenic for the details – that’s simply a subject secret.”

The caput of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency volition sojourn Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia atomic powerfulness works adjacent week to measure the superior information concern there, the IAEA has said. Rafael Grossi said the atomic information and information dangers astatine the Russian-held works were “all excessively obvious”.