As the war enters its 439th day, we take a look at the main developments.
Here’s what it looks like on Monday, May 8, 2023:
struggle
- Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, said he had received “promises” of more ammunition from the Russian army after threatening to pull his frontline troops out of Bakhmut, Ukraine.
- The Russian Defense Ministry claims its troops have captured two more “neighborhoods” to the northwest and west of the ruined city in eastern Ukraine.
- The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses detected and destroyed 22 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea on Saturday night.
- Multiple bombings were reported in Russian-occupied Crimea as Moscow-appointed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozaev accused Kiev of launching more than 10 drone attacks on the peninsula attack.
- Ukraine said it used a newly acquired US Patriot defense system to shoot down a Russian hypersonic missile over Kiev.
- As of Sunday, more than 1,500 people had been evacuated from the Zaporozhye region, including towns where many work at the Zaporozhye nuclear plant, because of safety concerns at the plant.
- Six members of Ukraine’s state emergency service have been killed in Russian shelling of the southern Kherson region, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General has revealed.
- Russia’s FSB said it had thwarted an attempt by Ukrainian intelligence to strike a military airfield in central Russia using a drone loaded with explosives.
- Russia is preparing for its annual Victory Day military parade on Moscow’s Red Square amid security concerns following a series of drone strikes on Russian territory.
- Russian writer and politician Zakhar Prilepin has emerged from an induced coma after being seriously injured in a car bomb attack that Russia blames Ukraine on, officials said.
diplomatic
- Russian President Vladimir Putin has yet to respond to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ proposal for a Black Sea food deal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by the TASS state news agency as saying.
- According to the MoD, Russia is facing a labor shortage that could “result in a slowdown in the underlying growth of the Russian economy and potentially trigger inflation”.
- A Polish border guard plane patrolling the Black Sea near Romania for EU border agency Frontex narrowly avoided a collision with a Russian fighter jet on Friday, Romania and Poland have revealed.
- Russia returned to international judo for the first time in almost a year at the world championships; Ukraine boycotted a crucial Olympic qualifier.
arms
- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevrut Cavusoglu said Turkey had rejected Washington’s call to send a Russian S-400 missile defense system to Ukraine.
