As the war enters its 953rd day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Saturday, October 5, 2024.

Fighting

• Romania has recovered fragments of a Russian drone from a canal in the Danube Delta near the Ukrainian border, the defence ministry said. Romania shares a 650km (400-mile) border with Ukraine and has had Russian drone fragments stray into its territory repeatedly over the past year.

• Russia has knocked out about 80 percent of critical infrastructure in the town of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in Ukraine’s east, as Russian soldiers slowly advance. Serhiy Dobriak, Pokrovsk’s military administration head, said Russian forces were about 7km (4 miles) from the town.

• An employee at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine was killed in a car bomb attack near the city of Enerhodar. Ukrainian military intelligence published a video of his car exploding and in a statement called Andrei Korotkiy a “war criminal” and collaborator. Plant director Yuri Chernichuk described the attack as “horrific” and an “inhumane act”.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that he has visited the northern Sumy region, from where Ukraine launched a major incursion into the neighbouring Russian Kursk region. He said the incursion “has greatly helped” Kyiv to secure the latest military support packages from Western countries.
• Poland will start building the first elements of enhanced defence lines on its borders with Russia and Belarus by the end of 2024, Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk said. Spurred by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Warsaw laid out plans to beef up its northern and eastern borders with fortifications, surveillance, reconnaissance and anti-drone systems by the end of 2028.

• The Kremlin on Friday accused Ukrainian authorities of playing with fire, a day after Russian forces said they had intercepted a Ukrainian drone near the Kursk nuclear plant and some news outlets reported a fire had broken out several miles away. Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Heorhiy Tykhyi denied that his country had fired weapons at or near the plant.

• A Russian court has placed a Dutch national in detention for “violence towards a police employee”, a charge that carries up to 10 years in prison. Harry Johannes Van Wurden will be detained for an initial period of two months, according to a statement by Moscow’s city courts.
• Russia has sentenced a man from Crimea to 14 years in a penal colony on treason charges after it accused him of aiding the Ukrainian military. Russian media said the FSB security service had accused the suspect, a resident of Sevastopol, of assisting Kyiv’s armed forces and preparing a “terrorist” attack. Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.