These are the most important developments on the 903rd day of the war.

Here is the situation on Friday, August 16, 2024.

Battle

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had taken complete control of the town of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region after sending thousands of troops across the border in a surprise attack on August 6.
• Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskii said Ukrainian troops had advanced 1.5 km in the past 24 hours and penetrated about 35 km into Russia’s Kursk region since the incursion began. Ukrainian troops now control 1,150 square kilometers of Russian territory and 82 settlements, he added.
• The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to the Ukrainian claims about Sudzha. The ministry had previously said that Russian forces had blocked Ukrainian attempts to capture several settlements in the area and recaptured the village of Krupets.
• Acting Kursk Governor Alexei Smirnov ordered the evacuation of the Glushkovo district, located about 45 km northwest of Sudzha. According to authorities, more than 120,000 residents of the Kursk region have already been evacuated due to the fighting.
• Vasyl Malyuk, head of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), said Ukrainian special forces detained a group of 102 Russian soldiers in the Kursk region on Wednesday.
• Russia announced that in response to the Kursk invasion it would strengthen its border defenses, improve the command and control system and send additional troops.
• At least two people were killed and 12 injured in a Russian-led bombing raid on the north-eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram.
• Serhiy Tsehotskiy, an officer in Ukraine’s 59th Motorized Brigade, told national television that Russian military pressure in the partially occupied eastern Donetsk region had not let up. “The enemy, despite what is happening on Russian territory, still … keeps the bulk of its forces in this direction and is trying to succeed,” Tsehotskiy said.
• The Russian Defense Ministry said it had captured the Donetsk village of Ivanivka, a front-line village about 15 kilometers from the strategically important city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.
• The Ukrainian Air Force said it shot down all 29 Russian drones targeting eight Ukrainian regions; the attack caused only minor damage.

Politics and Diplomacy

• A court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg sentenced 32-year-old Ksenia Karelina, a US and Russian citizen, to 12 years in prison after she was found guilty of treason for donating $51.80 to a New York-based charity that helps children and the elderly in Ukraine. Karelina, who lives in Los Angeles where she made the donation, was arrested earlier this year when she flew to Russia to visit her family.
• Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, rejected suggestions that Kyiv was involved in the 2022 sabotage plot against the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that Ukraine’s then-top military commander, Valerii Zaluzhny, oversaw the plan to blow up the pipelines in September 2022. The report came after Germany issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian over the attacks.
• Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a key Russian ally, said on Russian state television that Moscow and Kyiv should negotiate an end to the war. Lukashenko claimed that only “high-ranking people of American origin” wanted the war to continue.

Weapons

• The British Ministry of Defence said that Ukraine was permitted to use British weapons in operations on Russian territory, but restrictions remained on the use of long-range Storm Shadow missiles.
• Sky News and other British media reported that Challenger 2 tanks donated to Ukraine by Britain were used in the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk.