Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 612

Here is the situation on Sunday, October 29, 2023.

Fighting

• Russia said Ukrainian drones damaged a nuclear waste storage facility at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant on Thursday evening. This comes after the press service for the plant told journalists on Friday that there had been no significant damage from the attacks and that operations were continuing as normal.
• Intense fighting continued close to the city of Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defence systems destroyed 36 Ukraine-launched drones over the Black Sea off the Crimean Peninsula overnight. A statement from the ministry on Telegram did not provide much additional detail.

Diplomacy and Politics

• Sixty-six countries are attending Ukraine’s two-day peace summit which started on Saturday in Malta, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram. He described the number of countries attending as a “good result”, adding that the meeting showed that Ukraine’s peace formula “step by step, is becoming global”. Russia was not in attendance.
• Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said on Saturday Russia and Ukraine are locked in a “stalemate”. “No one can do anything and substantively strengthen or advance their position,” he said.
• Ukraine’s deputy police chief Dmytro Tyshlek was suspended after an investigative journalist alleged his wife had a Russian passport, Ukraine’s Kyiv Independent reported.

Weapons

• Ukraine and Israel will be excepted from a 90-day halt to United States export licences for most civilian firearms and ammunition, the US Commerce Department said on Friday. It said the pause in exports was due to national security and foreign policy interests.