This week, fighting continued to rage all along the front lines. Russian forces have penetrated into the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region in small groups. DeepState, a Ukrainian OSINT project, said on Monday that an operation was underway to take out Russia’s sabotage groups there.
Russia carried out a mass missile and drone attack on Ukraine overnight into Monday, killing two people and injuring 15 others across the country. Ukraine’s air defenses shot down or otherwise neutralized 224 of 426 drones and all 24 missiles. Another 203 decoy drones disappeared off radar after likely being jammed.
On Thursday, Russia dropped glide bombs on Kharkiv and Kherson, and launched drone attacks on Odesa and Cherkasy. In Kharkiv, the glide bombs struck a residential neighborhood, injuring 42 people, including two newborns. A drone attack on Odesa killed one person and damaged the city’s historic center, a UNESCO world heritage site.
Ukraine is already using the domestically-made Sapsan ballistic missile, analysts say. Ukrainian drones attacked one of Russia’s largest gas processing and petrochemical facilities that manufactures materials for explosives.
Russian and Ukrainian officials convened in Istanbul on Wednesday for a third round of talks. The two sides have reportedly agreed to swap more prisoners of war and exchange the bodies of killed soldiers.
A new law that removes the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies: the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) triggered mass protests across the country. The bill was hastily passed by the parliament and signed into law by the president on Tuesday. Hundreds of Ukrainians took to the streets of Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro, Sumy and elsewhere to demand that the president veto the law.
The bill was also met with harsh criticism from European allies. On Thursday, a group of opposition lawmakers submitted a bill to repeal the law and uphold the agencies’ independence. Later on Thursday, President Zelenskyi submitted his draft law to reinstate the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies.
Zelenskyi submits new bill to restore independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi on Thursday submitted a new bill that would restore the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).
NABU said the agencies had been involved in drafting the bill that goes by the no.13533, saying it restores all their procedural powers and guarantees their independence.
“The bill no.13533, submitted by the president of Ukraine as urgent, restores all procedural powers and guarantees of independence to NABU and SAPO,” it said in a statement. The agencies urged the parliament to hold a vote as soon as possible to prevent threats to ongoing criminal cases that they investigate.