The war in Ukraine continues for the 617th day, when Kyiv troops advance on the Crimean peninsula. Russian air defenses shot down five Ukrainian drones over the Crimean Peninsula and one over the Black Sea on Thursday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry claims. Ukraine announced on Wednesday that Russia had bombed more than 100 cities in one day, the largest single attack since the start of the year, resulting in at least four deaths.

Basic information about the war in Ukraine, day 617, LIVETEXT:

01:38Kazakhstan hosts President Emmanuel Macron under the disapproving gaze of Moscow

French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Kazakhstan on Wednesday as part of the first leg of a tour of Central Asia, a region long considered Russia’s backyard but which has regained Western attention since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.

01:05Mykola Patrushev stated that the USA was preparing Ukraine for military action against Russia

The United States of America turned Ukraine into a training ground for military biological experiments and prepared it for military action against Russia, the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, Mykola Patrushev, said during a meeting in Tomsk.

He said that it was not by chance that US President Joe Biden called military aid to Ukraine and Israel “a wise investment that will benefit American security for generations,” TASS reports.

Ukraine suffered the biggest Russian attack since the beginning of the year

00:31 How dangerous are long fights, exhaustion

The war between Ukraine and Russia is heading for a new phase of static fighting and attrition, a phase that could allow Moscow to restore its military power, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.

In an article for The Economist published on Wednesday, General Valery Zaluzhny said his army needs key new military capabilities and technological innovations to emerge from a new phase of the war, now in its 21st month.

He described the risks of a prolonged war of attrition: “It will benefit Russia by allowing it to rebuild its military power, which will ultimately threaten the armed forces of Ukraine and the state itself.”

Synthesis of the last 24 hours of the war:

• Ukraine announced on Wednesday that Russia had bombed more than a hundred cities in the past 24 hours, the largest single attack since the start of the year, resulting in at least four deaths. Details HERE.
• The Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, sharply reacted to Time magazine’s report about the pessimistic atmosphere among Ukraine’s leadership, and the Kyiv official also launched a veiled attack on the president’s office. Volodymyr Zelenskyi.
• The war between Ukraine and Russia is heading for a new phase of static fighting and attrition, a phase that could allow Moscow to restore its military power, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said. In an article for The Economist published on Wednesday, General Valery Zaluzhny said his army needs key new military capabilities and technological innovations to emerge from a new phase of the war, now in its 21st month.
  
• Russian Defense Minister Serhiy Shoigu said that Ukraine will lose the war despite the delivery of new weapons from NATO, reports BBC News. According to him, Ukraine suffered heavy losses during the battles in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson Oblast and Donetsk. His statements could not be verified.
• Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, 264 civilians have died from mines and other explosive devices in Ukraine, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported.
• Russian oligarch Oleksiy Kuzmichev, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, was charged in Paris on Wednesday with aggravated tax fraud and alleged money laundering and was placed under judicial control, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) announced, AFP reports.
• According to the Kyiv Independent, a survey published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that corruption, along with low wages and pensions, is the main concern of Ukrainians, along with the ongoing war with Russia.
• At the International Gas Forum in St. Petersburg, the Chairman of the Gazprom Board of Directors Oleksiy Miller warned that the natural gas market will be limited for European countries in the context of separation from Russia.
• The scenes at Makhachikala airport in the Dagestan region on Sunday, where a mob rampaged through the terminal and onto the runway in search of Jews disembarking from a plane from Israel, may be a sign that President Vladimir Putin is beginning to lose his iron grip on Russians. Federation.
• Former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday mocked Danish beer maker Carlsberg after the company complained that its Russian business had been seized by Russian authorities.
• When will the war in Ukraine end? More and more Ukrainians are turning to psychics for answers

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Wednesday’s events related to Russian aggression were broadcast LIVE on HotNews.ro