Ukraine war briefing: Kursk offensive diverted 40,000 Russian troops, says Zelensky | Ukraine

Ukraine's offensive in the Russian border region of Kursk has withdrawn about 40,000 Russian soldiers from the front line, Selensky said on Thursday.Kiev launched its Kursk Offensive on August 6 to withdraw Moscow's forces from eastern Ukraine, where the Russian army had captured a number of villages in recent months.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had captured the village of Heorhiivka, east of the town of Kurakhove in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk region.. The Ukrainian military's General Staff described the village as one of several hit by fighting in an afternoon report. The popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said the village was in Russian hands. In his evening video address, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had “succeeded in reducing the attack potential of the occupiers in the Donetsk region,” although the situation remained difficult in the most attacked areas near Kurakhove and another key Russian target, the town of Pokrovsk.

Russian forces hit a nursing home in the Ukrainian city of Sumy and targeted the town's energy sector in a new wave of airstrikes on Thursday, killing at least one civilian, Ukrainian officials said.. A Russian guided bomb hit a five-story building in a daytime attack on the northern city, regional and military officials said. One person was killed and 12 injured, the Interior Ministry said. President Volodymyr Zelensky said rescue teams were checking whether people were trapped under rubble. Images from the scene shared along with the ministry's post show elderly patients evacuated from the damaged building lying on the floor on carpets and blankets.

The UN Human Rights Observation Mission in Ukraine said the attacks on the power grid were likely to have violated international humanitarian law. The International Energy Agency said in a report that Ukraine's electricity shortage could reach about a third of expected peak demand during the critical winter months.Moscow has repeatedly attacked the Sumy region, which borders Russia's Kursk region, where a major Ukrainian campaign took place, during which Kiev claims to have captured over 100 settlements.

Zelensky will meet Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at the White House next week. It will likely be his last such visit before the US elections, which could upend Washington's policy toward Kyiv.During his visit on September 26, Zelensky is expected to present to US leaders a “victory plan” to end the war with Russia – Kyiv fears that a second Donald Trump presidency could loosen US engagement with Ukraine. In a separate announcement, Zelensky said he would also meet with Trump.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the powerful leader of Russia's Chechen republic, accused Elon Musk on Thursday of disabling a Tesla Cybertruck he reportedly received from the billionaire last month.. Kadyrov, who has ruled Chechnya with an iron fist for over 17 years, shared a video in August of himself driving around in the electric vehicle, which appears to have a machine gun mounted on its roof. Kadyrov said he received the vehicle from Musk, a claim the Tesla owner dismissed as a lie on his social media platform X. “Recently, Musk remotely disabled the Cybertruck,” Kadyrov said in a post on his Telegram account. It was not possible to independently verify Kadyrov's claims.

The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday against a network of five groups and one individual for facilitating payments between Russia and North Korea to support Moscow's war in Ukraine and Pyongyang's weapons programs, the U.S. Treasury Department said.The United States and Ukraine, as well as independent analysts, say Pyongyang supports Russia by supplying missiles and rockets and, in return, receives economic and other military assistance from Moscow.

Artillery shells sold by Indian arms makers have been diverted to Ukraine by European customers, and New Delhi has not intervened to stop the trade despite protests from Moscow, according to 11 Indian and European government and defense industry officials and a Reuters analysis of commercially available customs data.According to sources and customs data, the supply of ammunition to support Ukraine's defense against Russia has been going on for over a year.

Germany is expected to approve nearly 400 million euros ($450 million) in additional military aid to Ukraine, according to a letter from the German Finance Ministry seen by Reuters on Thursday. The funds come in addition to the approximately 8 billion euros budgeted for Ukraine in 2024.

In Russia, the trial began on Thursday against an 18-year-old girl who glued a 19th-century Ukrainian poem to a statue in protest against Moscow's offensive in Ukraine.Daria Kozyreva faces up to five years in prison. She was arrested in February for pasting a verse from a poem by Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko on a statue of him in St. Petersburg. Elsewhere, a court on Thursday sentenced a student in the country's far east to nearly two months in prison for making positive comments about a Ukrainian paramilitary unit that Moscow classifies as a “terrorist” group.

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia would increase drone production tenfold to nearly 1.4 million this year to secure victory in Ukraine“In total, about 140,000 unmanned aerial vehicles of various types were delivered to the armed forces in 2023,” Putin said. “This year, the production of drones is expected to increase significantly. To be more precise, almost tenfold.”