Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Red Cross should have access to a prisoner of war camp, where at least 50 Ukrainians were killed in a July blast.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Thursday with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Kazakhstan, where the pair discussed a potential Turkish gas hub. Before the meeting Erdogan said Ankara’s goal is to help stop the “bloodshed” in Ukraine, and that “a fair peace can be achieved through diplomacy.” More grain vessels sailed Thursday under the safe-transit deal that Turkey helped to broker.
The Kyiv region — although not Ukraine’s capital itself — was struck by Iranian-made drones on Thursday morning as air raid sirens rang out across much of the country for a fourth morning. Air strikes continued in the south, including Mykolaiv, where a multi-story apartment building was destroyed.
Ukraine’s allies gathered for a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels that’s expected to result in the offer of more air defense capabilities. The UK got things started by pledging Amraam rockets capable of shooting down cruise missiles.
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On the Ground
Russia launched missile and drone strikes on more than 40 settlements overnight, notably around Makariv in the Bucha district to the northwest of the capital. Other cities, including Mykolaiv, Vinnytsya and Cherkasy also sustained damage, Ukraine’s military said. On Thursday, Russia carried out one missile attack, 15 airstrikes and 22 shellings from multiple launch rocket systems, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook. Five Russian Kalibr missiles were shot down by Ukraine’s air defenses, according to Facebook postings from Ukraine’s West and South commands.
Zelenskiy Calls for Red Cross Mission to POW Camp (12:50 a.m.)
Zelenskiy said a Red Cross mission should have have access to Ukrainian prisoners of war held in Olenivka, in the occupied part of the Donetsk region. An explosion there killed at least 50 prisoners and wounded more in July, and Ukrainian intelligence described the episode as a provocation by Russian forces.
Olenivka is “de facto a concentration camp, where Ukrainians are kept,” Zelenskiy said in his evening address. “There must be an access to them, as discussed. The Red Cross is able to provide it. But there must be attempts to provide it.”
Tech Giant Microsoft Channels Its Resources to Aid Ukraine (8:19 p.m.)
As US and NATO defense contractors work to speed up production lines to send weapons to Ukraine, Microsoft Corp. has provided more than $250 million in tech support to the country since Russia’s invasion, according to a senior company official.
That has included secure communications lines set up with Ukraine’s cyber officials “to rapidly respond to and defend against Russian malware attacks,” Wes Anderson, the vice president for Microsoft’s defense unit, said in an interview.
He said the software giant has completed more than 173 “emergency support missions that provided 23,000 person-hours of technical support” to other companies and nonprofits aiding Ukraine. He said Microsoft also has made as much as 43 million free hours of Skype time available to Ukraine residents and their families outside the country to get in touch.
Boxing Champ Klitschko Calls Putin’s Nuclear Threat a Bluff (7:29 p.m.)
Vitali Klitschko, the former world heavyweight boxing champion who’s now mayor of Kyiv, said Russian Putin’s threats to use nuclear arms in Ukraine were only a “big bluff.
“If Putin talks about nuclear weapon, it shows a weakness” because his “army isn’t successful in the east or south” of Ukraine, Klitschko told Bloomberg Television.