Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 885

Here is the situation on Monday, July 29, 2024.

Fighting

At least eight people, including a toddler and a 10-year-old girl, were injured after Moscow’s forces struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Nikopol, according to local Governor Serhiy Lysak. Eight people, including a 10-year-old and two teenagers, were injured in Russian shelling of a village in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, according to the regional head Roman Mrochko. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged his country’s forces were under pressure in the eastern Donetsk region after Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed its forces had taken control of the villages of Prohres and Yevhenivka. Speaking in his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said the situation was “extremely challenging in the Donetsk directions, and it is in the Pokrovsk direction that there have been the biggest number of Russian assaults these weeks – the most intense enemy attacks are precisely there”. Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces were behind an attack on a fuel depot in Russia’s Kursk region which it said was supplying the Russian military. Alexei Smirnov, the governor for Kursk, said Kyiv launched more than two dozen drones on the region in several waves of attacks that started on Saturday night. Smirnov said at least 13 drones were destroyed by Russia’s air defence systems late on Sunday, with 19 drones destroyed over the region during the day. The drone attacks started a fire at the fuel depot.

Politics and diplomacy

Ukrainians held a protest in Kyiv demanding the government do more to secure the release of prisoners of war held by Russia. The rally, involving several thousand soldiers and civilians, took place on the second anniversary of an explosion that killed more than 50 POWs Russia was holding in barracks in occupied Olenivka.