Here is the situation on Monday, August 5, 2024.
Fighting
- Ukraine announced the mandatory evacuation of children and their guardians from areas in the eastern region of Donetsk, where Russia has been claiming advances. Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin said 744 children and their families would leave Novohrodivka, about 20km (12 miles) from the village of Novoselivka Persha, which Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it had captured just hours before the announcement.
- Ukrainian pilots have started flying F-16s on operations within the country, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said as he visited an airbase under tight security at an undisclosed location. Two of the jets were behind him on the ground as he spoke and two more flew overhead.
- Ukraine’s military said it sunk a Russian Kilo-class submarine and struck an anti-missile system established to protect the strategic Kerch bridge in the Moscow-occupied Crimean Peninsula over the weekend.
Politics and diplomacy
- Mali said it was immediately cutting diplomatic ties with Ukraine after Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (GUR), said that Mali’s northern separatist Tuareg rebels had received the “necessary” information to conduct an attack last month on Malian soldiers and mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group, which killed 131 fighters.
- Ukrainian Minister for Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba is on his fourth diplomatic tour of Africa in two years, trying to rally support for Kyiv’s efforts to push Russian forces out of its territory. Kuleba will be in Africa until August 8 and will visit Malawi, Zambia and Mauritius.
- Ukraine’s Yaroslava Mahuchikh won the country’s first individual gold medal at the Paris Olympics when she won the high jump, clearing 2 metres in front of an adoring crowd at the Stade de France. Ukraine also took bronze in the event with Iryna Gerashchenko sharing the medal with Australia’s Eleanor Patterson.