Ukraine Conflict Update: 31 August – 6 September 2024

Key trends

• Fighting mostly occurred in the Donetsk region, where Russian troops occupied three additional settlements southeast of Pokrovsk and two others west and northeast of Vuhledar. Russian forces also seized Synkivka northeast of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, after battling for the settlement since the end of 2022.
• Across the border in the Kursk region, armed clashes between Ukrainian and Russian forces continued throughout the week in the Korenevskiy, Sudzhanskiy, Bolshesoldatskiy, and Glushkovskiy districts. Ukrainian forces also conducted strikes on the city of Lgov and reportedly made small incursions on the Lgov-Kurchatov road.
• ACLED records 19 Russian long-range missile and drone strikes, mostly targeting Kyiv city and the surrounding region, but also affecting the westernmost Lviv and Volyn regions.
• Russian shelling, missiles, and drones killed at least 39 civilians across Ukraine. In addition, Ukrainian drone strikes and shelling killed five civilians in the Russia-occupied cities of Donetsk and Horlivka.

Spotlight

On 3 September, Russian ballistic missiles hit the Military Communications Institute building and a nearby medical facility in Poltava,¹ killing 58 people and wounding at least 328 people. The strike marked the deadliest event in the city and the eponymous region since the beginning of the war, despite regular Russian strikes possibly targeting industrial sites in the city and especially the Myrhorod airbase. Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed that the strike targeted soldiers and foreign instructors.² Ukrainian officials pointed to the short time for evacuation as the main factor behind the high number of casualties and confirmed the death of military personnel at the institute, though no disaggregation of civilian and military victims of the attack has been provided.³ The sides routinely make largely unverifiable claims of striking concentrations of enemy personnel. Previous confirmed mass Ukrainian military casualties due to Russian strikes occurred on 13 March 2022 in the Lviv region and on 3 November 2023 and the Zaporizhia region.