Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 788

Here is the situation on Monday, April 23, 2024.

Fighting

One person was killed and four others were injured in Russian shelling in the town of Ukrainsk, according to the prosecutor’s office in the partially-occupied Donetsk region. In the Odesa region, four people were injured in a Russian missile attack, Governor Oleh Kiper said. Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces had taken control of the settlement of Bohdanivka in the Donetsk region. Bohdanivka is located just to the west of the Russian-occupied city of Bakhmut. The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, in its evening report, mentioned Bohdanivka as one of a series of villages where it said Ukrainian forces repelled 13 enemy attacks. It gave no specific details. Ukraine’s Navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk said the navy had struck and damaged the Kommuna, a Russian rescue vessel, in Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea. The Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol said Russian forces had repelled an antiship missile attack on one of its vessels in the port, and that there was a small fire.

Weapons

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the US House of Representatives’ passage of a long-delayed bill to provide $61bn in foreign aid for Ukraine and urged the United States to quickly turn the bill into law and start the transfer of weapons. European Union foreign ministers will meet in Luxembourg on Monday to discuss bolstering Ukraine’s air defences. Global military spending rose by 6.8 percent to an all-time high of $2.4 trillion, driven by conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Russia boosted spending by 24 percent, reaching $109bn in 2023, according to SIPRI’s estimates. Ukraine’s military spending rose by 51 percent, reaching $64.8bn, while it also received $35bn in military aid from its allies, mostly the US.