Here are the key developments on the 1,096th day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Here is the situation on Monday, February 24, the third anniversary of the start of the war:
Fighting
The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces seized eastern Ukraine’s Ulakly and Novoandriivka in the Donetsk region.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine is working on a domestic alternative to the US Patriot air defence system.
Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said social media footage showed a Russian servicemember executing a Ukrainian prisoner in an unspecified area of Kursk Oblast, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
Protesters in many countries, including the United States, France, Turkiye and Greece, as well as the island of Taiwan, took to the streets to mark the third anniversary of the war.
Politics and diplomacy
On the eve of the anniversary, President Vladimir Putin said Russian soldiers were defending “national interests” at the risk of their lives in Ukraine and pledged to continue with an “unchanged” strategy for strengthening the armed forces.
Putin also said in a military decorations award ceremony that God and fate entrusted him and the Russian army with “the mission” to defend the country.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would never sell captured Ukrainian territories, claiming that “the people decided to join Russia a long time ago”.
Advertisement
Peskov also said US President Donald Trump’s hostility towards Zelenskyy was “understandable”, and accused Zelenskyy of repeatedly making “inappropriate r …