Russia-Ukraine war updates: Nine residential buildings destroyed in Kursk

Go here for a look at the Ukraine war plan presented by former US President Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance.

You can read about Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) halting its work in Russia here.

And you can find our in-depth coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here’s a recap of the day’s most important developments:

• Russian forces captured the Ukrainian city of Ukrainsk in the eastern Donetsk region, according to a source in the military cited by Russian state-run RIA news agency.
• At least six people, including four rescuers, were injured in a Russian-guided air bomb attack on Ukraine’s Kharkiv city, according to its mayor Ihor Terekhov.
• Russia repelled five new attempts by Ukrainian forces to smash through its border into the Kursk region, bringing the total number of reported attacks on the border to 26 in just the past six days.
• Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced during a visit to Moldova that Germany will provide an additional 100 million euros ($111m) in aid for Ukraine this winter.
• Russian air defence systems have shot down six Ukrainian Armed Forces missiles in the region since dawn, according to Alexey Smirnov, the governor of Russia’s Kursk region.

An update from the Ukrainian army’s general staff says Russian forces are most active near the town of Kurakhove in the Pokrovsk district of Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

The operational report said a quarter of all Russian attacks were in that area, and intense battles were also reported near the cities of Pokrovsk and Lyman in Donetsk.

The report added that Russia also carried out 14 air strikes with anti-aircraft missiles in the populated areas of the Sumy and Chernihiv regions, as well as 17 strikes on the Russian region of Kursk, where the Ukrainian incursion is ongoing.

Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu has held talks with his Iranian counterpart in Tehran, Russian and Iranian media said, days after he met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang.

Russia has deepened ties with Iran and North Korea, both of which are hostile to the United States, since the start of its war in Ukraine. Washington says both countries are supplying Russia with ballistic missiles for use in the conflict, something Moscow denies.

The Nour news agency, affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Shoigu met Iranian National Security Council Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian.

Alexey Smirnov, the governor of Russia’s Kursk region, says the air defence systems have shot down three more Ukrainian Armed Forces missiles in the region.

He reported one missile being shot down in the morning and two more later in the day.

In the latest announcement on Telegram, he cautioned residents not to approach the debris.

“I remind you that you must not approach the debris or touch it. It may cause harm. You must report the find by calling 112,” Smirnov wrote.

Oleksandr Pavlyuk, the commander of the Ukrainian army’s ground forces, has released a video on Telegram showing the Russian troops surrendering.

He said four of the 13 Russian soldiers captured by the Ukrainian soldiers during their incursion into the Russian region of Kursk were seriously wounded.

Pavlyuk also said a separate group of Ukrainian troops raised a white flag after five days of fierce fighting left them without water and ammunition.

A Russian man convicted of criticising the Ukraine conflict in a street interview had his sentence changed from five years of hard labour to five years in prison, state media reported.

Yuri Kokhovets, 38, accused Russian soldiers of shooting civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha “for no reason at all” in a spontaneous interview he gave to US-funded news outlet Radio Liberty in July 2022.

He was sentenced to five years of correctional labour in April 2024 for spreading “false information about the Russian army”, but prosecutors appealed, asking for a tougher sentence.

“The court has decided to change the sentence of Yuri Kokhovets and sentence him to five years of imprisonment in a general regime penal colony,” a Moscow City Court judge was quoted as saying by the state TASS news agency.

Russian forces have captured the Ukrainian city of Ukrainsk in the eastern Donetsk region, according to a source in the Russian military cited by Russian state-run RIA news agency.

Russian troops raised their flag on a mine ventilation shaft on the outskirts of the city, the report added.

Reuters news agency was unable to immediately verify battlefield reports.

Here are the latest developments:

• Russia’s FSB security service says it shot dead a Ukrainian agent who attempted to plant explosives under the car of a senior defence industry official, according to the AFP news agency.
• An investigation has been launched into the alleged execution of a Ukrainian serviceman with a sword by Russian forces in the city of Novohrodivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office.
• Russia says it repelled five new attempts by Ukrainian forces to smash through its border into the Kursk region, bringing the total number of reported attacks on the border to 26 in just the past six days.
• Over the past 24 hours, Russian forces have shelled Ukraine’s Donetsk region 17 times, injuring five people, according to Vadym Filashkin, the regional governor.
• At least six people, including four rescuers, have been injured in the Russian-guided air bomb attack on Ukraine’s Kharkiv city, according to its mayor Ihor Terekhov.

Ihor Terekhov, the mayor of Ukraine’s Kharkiv city, says the attack was carried out at 3:50pm (12:50 GMT) with a KAB guided bomb.

“There are six victims of the impact of the occupying KAB at this moment. Four of them are rescuers. Now they are all receiving medical assistance,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.

According to Oleh Syniehubov, the governor of the Kharkiv region, one of the Russian air bombs landed in a forest strip near the shopping centre, where the rescuers were extinguishing fire.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has met his North Korean counterpart Choe Son-hui, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Lavrov and Choe exchanged views on how to develop bilateral relations “in accordance with the current level of comprehensive strategic partnership” between Moscow and Pyongyang, it said.

Choe is currently visiting Russia, which has deepened its ties with North Korea since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Russia says it repelled five new attempts by Ukrainian forces to smash through its border into the Kursk region, bringing the total number of reported attacks at the border to 26 in just the past six days.

On August 6, Ukraine launched the biggest foreign attack on Russia since World War II, bursting through the border into the region of Kursk with thousands of troops supported by swarms of drones and heavy weaponry, including Western-made arms.

Russia, which sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, began a major counteroffensive against the Ukrainian forces in Kursk on September 10, pushing Kyiv’s forces back towards the Snagost River.

But Ukrainian forces have been trying for about a week to pierce the Russian border towards Veseloe and Medvezhe in an attempt to threaten the Russian counteroffensive about 15 km (9.3 miles) to the west of the main theatre of battle in Kursk.

“With the support of army aviation and artillery fire, five attempts by the armed forces of Ukraine to pierce the border of the Russian Federation in the direction of Veseloe and Medvezhe were repelled,” Russia’s Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

The ministry said that Russian forces were attacking in Lyubimovka, Malaya Loknya and a host of other settlements in Kursk.

Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates says the richest governments should increase support for African countries that have been overshadowed by development funding increasingly going towards the humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine.

“There’s less money going to Africa at a time when they need it”, whether it’s for debt relief, vaccinations or to reduce malnutrition, Gates told The Associated Press in an interview. As a portion of aid money, the funds going to Ukraine are “substantial”, he said.

Gates was speaking in the context of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual Goalkeepers Report, published on Tuesday.

The report holds a mirror to countries’ promises to achieve the development goals they set in 2015 and calculates progress for a subset of the Sustainable Development Goals that reflect the priorities of the foundation, which is one of the largest global health funders in the world.

The administration of United States President Joe Biden said on Saturday that it was preparing a large aid package for Ukraine in the coming weeks.

According to Vladimir Zaitsev, head of the Bolshoe Soldatskoe district, nine buildings in the Bolshoe Soldatskoe village in the Kursk region have been shelled over the past 24 hours.

He said on Telegram that the Ukrainian military also scattered mines along the Dyakonovo-Sudzha highway in the vicinity of the shelled village.

The head of the district called on citizens to refrain from travelling to the district centre.

Oleg Sinegubov, the governor of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, says the Russian artillery fire has injured at least three elderly people in the Kupyansk district in the past 24 hours.

He also said the latest attacks were reported this morning in the village of Senkove in the Kupyansk district and the village of Bohuslavka in the Izyumskyi district.

A private house was damaged in each of the villages as a result of this morning’s attacks, he said on Telegram.

Zelenskyy says since the war began, the State Emergency Service (SES) has responded to more than 170,000 calls related to Russian attacks.

“Today, we congratulate all those whose job and calling is to save lives,” he said on X to mark today’s holiday for SES workers.

“They have extinguished more than 20,000 fires caused by enemy strikes on our cities and villages.”

Today, we congratulate all those whose job and calling is to save lives.

Over more than two years of this war, employees of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine have responded to over 170,000 calls to mitigate the consequences of Russian attacks. They have extinguished more… pic.twitter.com/iEfcD5tb99

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 17, 2024

Over the past 24 hours, Russian forces have shelled Ukraine’s Donetsk region 17 times, injuring five people, according to Vadim Filashkin, the regional governor.

He said at least two people were injured, and blocks of flats, as well as 23 private homes, were damaged in the city of Kurakhove in the Pokrovsk district.

In the city of Pokrovsk, three people were injured, and an administrative building was damaged, Filashkin said.

Damage was also reported in the Kramatorsk, Bakhmut and Volnovasky districts, he added.

More than 520 people were evacuated from the front line, including 144 children, Filashkin concluded.

Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s justice minister and deputy PM for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, has discussed with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg the initiative to create “a security belt” over the western regions of Ukraine.

The ministry said in a statement that Stefanishyna also emphasised “the critical importance of strengthening” Ukraine’s air defence system.

Russia’s FSB security service says it shot dead a Ukrainian agent who attempted to plant explosives under the car of a senior defence industry official, AFP news agency reported.

The suspect, whom it did not name, allegedly worked for Ukraine’s GUR intelligence agency and targeted a “senior employee of a defence enterprise in the Sverdlovsk region”, the FSB said.

He was detained while “placing an improvised explosive device in a hiding place, put up armed resistance and was neutralised by return fire,” the FSB added.

A pistol with ammunition was found at the scene, while law enforcement seized components used for making explosives during a search of his residence, it continued.

There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.

Ukraine has often targeted Russian officials it believes are complicit in the Kremlin’s full-scale military assault on its territory, which began in 2022.

In December 2023, pro-Russian Ukrainian defector Illia Kyva was shot dead near Moscow in an attack claimed by Kyiv’s security services.

An investigation has been launched into the alleged execution of a Ukrainian serviceman with a sword by Russian forces in the city of Novohrodivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office.

The office said that the probe came after a message was published on Telegram about the incident.

“The released photos show that the occupiers stuck a sword into the body of a serviceman of the Defense Forces of Ukraine. In the picture, the slain serviceman is missing his equipment and has a sticky tape on one of his hands,” it said.

The investigation is being conducted by the State Security Service of Ukraine in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Meta has said it is banning Russian state media outlets from its apps around the world, prompting an angry reaction from the Kremlin.

The ban comes after the United States accused RT and employees of the state-run outlet of funneling $10m through shell entities to covertly fund influence campaigns on social media channels including TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube, according to an unsealed indictment.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets,” Meta said on Monday in response to an AFP inquiry.

“Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” said Meta, whose apps include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.

Russia is the biggest source of covert influence operations disrupted by Meta at its platform since 2017, and such efforts at deceptive online influence ramped up after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to threat reports released routinely by the social media giant.

The Kremlin on Tuesday slammed the decision as “unacceptable”.

“With this action Meta discredits itself,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Here are the latest developments:

• The Ukrainian Air Force says it shot down 34 out of 51 Russian drones overnight in five Ukrainian regions.
• The Russian Defence Ministry claims that its forces have attacked the Ukrainian energy infrastructure that supports “the activities of enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine”.
• Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced during a visit to Moldova that Germany will provide an additional 100 million euros ($111m) in aid for Ukraine this winter.
• Russia orders the evacuation of villages close to the Ukrainian border in the Kursk region as Moscow ramps up efforts to regain control of land seized in Kyiv’s incursion.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry says 15 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight over the territory of the Bryansk region and one over the territory of the Kursk region.
• At least two people have been injured in the Russian air attack on the town of Hlukhiv in Ukraine’s Sumy region, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

According to Ukrainian officials and international war crimes monitors, Russian fighters have killed hundreds of civilians and robbed, raped and tortured thousands more.

Decimated by the killings, migration and mobilisation, residents in Bucha described a community reeling from a collective post-traumatic stress disorder and itching for revenge.

Since April, dozens of women have signed up to become a “Bucha witch” to find solace and fulfilment.

Read our full story here.

The Russian army has attacked the town of Hlukhiv in Ukraine’s Sumy region with aerial bombs, injuring two people, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

The office said on Telegram that the attack came at 10am (07:00 GMT) this morning.

The Russian forces used “methods of warfare prohibited by international law” in the incident that saw three guided aerial bombs dropped on the civilian infrastructure in the town, it added.

“As a result of the enemy attack, a father and son were wounded, who are 64 and 34 years old,” the office said. At least 20 private homes were also damaged.