This week, heavy fighting raged all along the front lines. Russia continued to strike cities and towns across Ukraine with missiles and drones.
Ukraine bolsters domestic defense production. Its homemade Peklo cruise missile has entered series production with around 100 pieces of weapon manufactured in the past three months. Despite the pledges made at the NATO Washington summit to send more air defense systems, Ukraine still doesn’t have them, Zelenskyi said. Ukraine is winning the economic war against Russia, according to The Economist. Earlier in the week, the head of Russia’s chemical forces was killed in a blast in Moscow claimed by Ukraine’s Security Service. Ukraine struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region that services the military.
Four and a half months into the Kursk incursion, Ukraine has lost “about half” of the territories it once controlled in Russia’s region. Every Ukrainian unit in Kursk is now on the defensive, The Economist said. More than 200 North Korean troops were wounded in a few days in Kursk region, an intercepted audio reveals.
The EU adopted a 15th package of sanctions against Russia that also hit China and North Korea. No world leader can negotiate with Putin on Ukraine without Ukraine, Zelenskyi said.
When asked during a call-in show Thursday how Russia manages “not only to stay afloat but also to continue growing,” Putin said Russians grew “bored” when life was stable but expressed horror when bullets were flying, alluding to Russia’s war against Ukraine. “You know, when everything is calm, measured, stable, we get bored. Stagnation. We want some action. As soon as the action starts, everything whistles by our temples. Unfortunately, bullets are whistling now. We are so scared. What a horror. Well, it’s not that horror. Not horror-horror,” he said.
Russia launches five ballistic missiles at Kyiv. A Russian ballistic missile attack on Ukraine’s capital early Friday killed one person and injured at least nine others, officials said. The air defenses intercepted all five Iskander-M/KN-23 missiles that Russia fired at Kyiv, the Ukrainian Air Force said. Falling missile debris caused damage and sparked fires in at least three districts, according to the city administration. The attack knocked out heating to 630 residential buildings, 16 medical facilities, 17 schools and 13 kindergartens, it said.