Here is the situation on Saturday 4 May 2024.
Battler
- France estimates that 150,000 Russian soldiers were killed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said in an interview.
- Russia says it shot down four US-made Army Long-Range Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), recently supplied by the US to Ukraine, over the occupied Crimean peninsula.
- Two people have been killed in a Russian attack on the city of Kurakhove, located in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine. Two other people were also injured.
-
Russia launched a nighttime drone strike on Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Dnipro regions, wounding at least six people, including three women and a child, and hitting critical infrastructure, commercial and residential buildings.
- The Ukrainian Air Force says Russian forces launched 13 Iranian-made Shahed drones targeting regions in the country’s northeast and center, but its air defense units shot them all down.
-
At least one person was seriously injured and private homes and infrastructure were damaged in Ukraine’s central Kirovohrad region following a Russian missile attack, according to a local official.
- Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) says it has killed a man allegedly recruited by Ukraine to blow up military buildings and energy sites in the country, state media reported. The alleged plans included attacking “Ministry of Defense facilities in the Moscow region and members of a volunteer battalion and a volunteer center in St. Petersburg.”
Politics
-
The Kremlin described British Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s statement that Ukraine could use British weapons against targets inside Russia if it wanted to as a direct and dangerous escalation of tensions around the conflict.
-
Cameron promised £3 billion ($3.7 billion) of annual military aid to Ukraine “for as long as it takes”.
- Russia criticized new comments by French President Emmanuel Macron in which he reiterated that the possibility of sending ground troops to Ukraine should not be ruled out. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the statement “is very important and very dangerous.”
- Russia has accused the United States of using the threat of secondary sanctions against Chinese companies as a “pretext” to try to contain China. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says China’s economy “extremely irritates the United States,” so it uses sanctions “to hold on [its] economic leadership”.
- A Russian military court has extended the detention of a theater director and a playwright by six months in a case that has shaken the already depleted theater community. Director Yevgeniya Berkovich and writer Svetlana Petriychuk were arrested a year ago, accused of “justifying terrorism” in an award-winning play performed several years ago.
Economy
-
Ukraine’s central bank introduced its biggest wartime currency liberalization measures aimed at easing restrictions on businesses, more than two years after Russia’s invasion prompted the imposition of tough restrictions.
-
Most of the new provisions, which will come into force on May 14, include the lifting of currency restrictions on imports of goods and services, as well as the easing of restrictions on the transfer of foreign currency from representative offices to parent companies.
- Central bank governor Andriy Pyshnyi, writing on Facebook, described the moves as a “very tangible step” that would provide businesses “opportunities to enter new markets or bring in investments.”
- Ukraine’s economy, supported by financial aid from its Western partners, posted 5.3% growth last year and is expected to expand 3% this year, a reversal from 2022, when the economy it contracted by about a third in the first year of the war.
