These are the most important developments on the 904th day of the war.

Here is the situation on Saturday, August 17, 2024.

Battle

• At least two people were killed and others injured when Ukrainian artillery shelling hit a shopping mall in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, Russian state news agencies said, citing local authorities. Earlier, Russian-appointed governor Denis Pushilin said at least seven people had been injured in a series of Ukrainian attacks.
• Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine will evacuate residents from five villages and block access to them, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said, as the area comes under heavy attack from Ukrainian invading forces.

• The heaviest fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops was reported in the strategically important Ukrainian center of Pokrovsk. According to official data, Russian troops were located 10 km from the outskirts of Pokrovsk and about 6 km from nearby Myrnohrad. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

• Ukrainian Army Chief Oleksandr Syrskii said that Kyiv’s troops advanced 1-3 km in some areas of Russia’s Kursk region. Kyiv claims to have taken control of 82 settlements covering 1,150 km² in the region since August 6.

• Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram that the Air Force was actively involved in the Kursk operation and attacked Russian supply routes and logistics centers. He posted a video of an attack on a bridge.
• Kursk Region Governor Alexei Smirnov later said Ukraine had destroyed a road bridge over the Seym River in the region’s Glushkovsky district. The attack is hampering the evacuation of civilians by land, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing local security services. An estimated 20,000 people are being evacuated from the area.
• The Russian Defense Ministry said its troops had repelled Ukrainian attacks in several areas, including near the villages of Gordeyevka and Russkoye Porechnoye.
• Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage unit equipped with weapons from NATO countries in the Kursk region, the Russian state media agency RIA reported on Friday, citing unnamed security sources.

Politics and Diplomacy

• Ukraine has set up storage facilities in its northern Sumy region to store and ship humanitarian aid to Russian civilians in the Kyiv-controlled part of Russia’s Kursk region, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

• Nikolai Patrushev, an influential adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the Izvestia newspaper in an interview that the West and the US-led NATO helped plan Ukraine’s surprise attack on Russia’s Kursk region. Without “direct support” from the West, Kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory, he said.

• The Russian Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the Italian ambassador in Moscow to express a “strong protest” against the alleged “illegal border crossing” of a team of correspondents from the Italian state broadcaster RAI, which reported this week from Ukrainian-occupied parts of Russia’s Kursk region.
• Baza, a Telegram channel close to Russian law enforcement agencies, reported that the country’s Interior Ministry plans to initiate criminal proceedings against two RAI journalists for crossing the Russian border.
• The Italian Foreign Ministry told Reuters that Italy’s ambassador to Russia, Cecilia Piccioni, had told Russian authorities that RAI and its news teams plan their activities “completely independently and autonomously” from the government.
• The US will announce further security assistance for Ukraine in the coming days, White House National Security Spokesman John Kirby told US television news on Friday. He did not provide any details.