As the war enters its 442nd day, we take a look at the major developments.
Here is the situation as it stands on Thursday, May 11, 2023:
Conflict
- A plan by Russian forces to move more than 3,000 workers from the city that serves the occupation Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plantwill result in a “catastrophic lack” of personnel, warns the Ukrainian public company Energoatom.
- Russian troops shelled the city of Vovchansk in the Kharkiv region, killing one person and wounding three others.
- Two armed drones attempted to attack a military installation in Russia’s Voronezh region but failed, the Russian regional governor has said.
- Two Russian soldiers from Kamchatka, in Russia’s Far East, have been sentenced to two and a half years in prison each for refusing to fight in Ukraine, human rights group OVD-Info reported.
- The leader of the Russian Wagner Mercenary Force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, continued to complain that his fighters were not getting enough shells from the Russian Defense Ministry.
- The war in Ukraine will increasingly be a battle between large numbers of poorly trained Russian troops with outdated equipment and a smaller Ukrainian force with better Western weapons and training, said Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of the NATO military committee.
- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told German daily Bild that the international community should not think about the long-awaited Kiev crisis. counteroffensive against Russia as the last such offensive.
- Tributes poured in for Arman Soldin, journalist at Agence France-Presse, who was killed by Russian rocket fire near Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine. The 32-year-old is the 15th journalist killed in the Ukraine war so far.
“Hoping for the best but expecting the worst Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?
Die young or live forever
We don’t have the power but we never say never Sitting in a sandbox life is a short journey”@ArmanSoldin during his first trip to the Donbass, April 2022 pic.twitter.com/sEEFeAym7i— Daphne Rousseau (@daphnerousseau) May 10, 2023
Diplomacy
- Turkey’s foreign minister said he believed Ukraine Black Sea Grains Agreement could be extended for at least another two months.
- European Union states held an initial discussion on proposed new sanctions that would target Chinese and Iranian companies linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine and allow restrictions on exports from third countries for ignoring trade restrictions imposed on Moscow.
- China’s Director-General for European Affairs, Wang Lutong, tweeted: “While China is doing its utmost to promote peace which is in Europe’s interest, Europe is stabbing back in the back, bullying China on economic issues. I don’t understand what Europe is doing.
- The Russian Foreign Ministry said Poland would receive “a strong protest with an appropriate response” for failing to prevent demonstrations that aimed to disrupt Victory Day commemorations at the Russian Embassy in Warsaw this week.
- The Kremlin said Poland’s decision to rename the Russian city of Kaliningrad in its official documents was a “hostile act”. Poland has declared that Kaliningrad will henceforth be officially called Königsberg (“Krolewiec” in Polish).
- Poland has summoned the Russian ambassador after a Polish border patrol plane “narrowly avoided a collision” with a Russian fighter jet over the Black Sea.