Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 236 | Russia-Ukraine war News

Here is the situation as it stands on Monday, October 17.

Fighting

• Russian forces launched air attacks on Ukraine’s capital for the second time in a week while Russian and Ukrainian forces battled it out in heavy fighting around two towns in the Donbas region in the east, officials said.
• The central Shevchenkivskyi district of Ukraine’s capital was rocked by blasts early on Monday, with Mayor Vitalii Klitschko saying several residential buildings had been damaged.
• Russia has opened a criminal investigation after gunmen shot dead 11 people and injured 15 at a military training ground near the Ukrainian border, authorities said.
• Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the gunmen were from Tajikistan and had opened fire after an argument over religion.
• No civilians died, but many soldiers were killed or wounded in the attack, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said.
• Ukrainian troops are holding the strategic eastern town of Bakhmut despite repeated Russian attacks while the situation in the Donbas region remains very difficult, Zelenskyy said.
• Shelling by Ukrainian forces damaged the administration building in Donetsk, the capital of the Donetsk region, according to the Russian-backed administration of the city.
• Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had repelled efforts by Ukrainian troops to advance in the Donetsk, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.
• The Belarusian defence ministry said just under 9,000 Russian troops would be stationed in Belarus as part of a “regional grouping” of forces to protect its borders.
• Zelenskyy said nearly 65,000 Russians had been killed since the February 24 invasion, a figure far higher than Moscow’s official September 21 estimate of 5,937 dead.

Economy, diplomacy

• White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said it was incumbent upon NATO allies and other responsible countries, including China and India, to “send a very clear and decisive message to Russia that they should not contemplate the use of nuclear weapons in this conflict”.
• After previously stating he could no longer afford to do so, Elon Musk has said his rocket company SpaceX would keep funding its Starlink internet service in Ukraine, citing the need for “good deeds”.