Report: Russia Took 196 Square Km of Ukraine Last Week

 Rescuers work at a site of a private house which was hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine October 29, 2024. (Reuters)
Rescuers work at a site of a private house which was hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine October 29, 2024. (Reuters)
TT

Report: Russia Took 196 Square Km of Ukraine Last Week

 Rescuers work at a site of a private house which was hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine October 29, 2024. (Reuters)
Rescuers work at a site of a private house which was hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine October 29, 2024. (Reuters)

Russia took 196.1 square km of Ukrainian territory over the week of Oct. 20-27, making it the swiftest weekly advance for Russian forces this year, according to the Russian media group Agentstvo which analyzed Ukrainian open source maps.

The 2-1/2-year-old war in Ukraine is entering what Russian officials say is its most dangerous phase as Russian forces advance and the West ponders how the war will end.

Russian forces, which President Vladimir Putin ordered into Ukraine in February 2022, advanced in September at their fastest rate since March 2022, according to open source data, despite Ukraine taking a part of Russia's Kursk region.

"The Russian army has not had such a rapid weekly advance since at least the beginning of this year," Agentstvo, which is considered by Russia to be a "foreign agent", said on its Telegram channel.

It said it had used raw data from Ukraine's Deep State open-source intelligence analysts to make the conclusion.

Agentstvo said that last week, the Russian army took 95 square kilometers near the town of Vuhledar and 63 square kilometers near the town of Pokrovsk. Both are in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine.

Agentstvo said that Ukrainian defenses in the Donbas were weakened by Kyiv's decision to send troops into Russia's Kursk region as Russia did not transfer troops from Donbas to Kursk.

The advance of Moscow's forces, which control just under a fifth of Ukraine, has underlined Russia's vast numerical superiority in men and materiel as Ukraine pleads for more weapons from the Western allies that have been supporting it.

Russia controls Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas - a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions - and over 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.



Congress is Notified by the Biden Administration of Planned $8 Billion Weapons Sale to Israel

The State Department has informed Congress of a planned $8 billion weapons sale to Israel - File Photo/AFP
The State Department has informed Congress of a planned $8 billion weapons sale to Israel - File Photo/AFP
TT

Congress is Notified by the Biden Administration of Planned $8 Billion Weapons Sale to Israel

The State Department has informed Congress of a planned $8 billion weapons sale to Israel - File Photo/AFP
The State Department has informed Congress of a planned $8 billion weapons sale to Israel - File Photo/AFP

The State Department has informed Congress of a planned $8 billion weapons sale to Israel, US officials say, as the American ally presses forward with its war against Hamas in Gaza.

Some of the arms in the package could be sent through current US stocks but the majority would take a year or several years to deliver, according to two US officials Saturday who spoke on condition of anonymity because the notification to Congress hasn't been formally sent.

The sale includes medium-range air-to-air missiles to help Israel defend against airborne threats, 155 mm projectile artillery shells for long-range targeting, Hellfire AGM-114 missiles, 500-pound bombs and more.

The weapons package would add to a record of at least $17.9 billion in military aid that the US has provided Israel since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, launched the war, The AP reported.

The Biden administration has faced criticism over mounting deaths of Palestinian civilians. There have been demonstrations on college campuses and unsuccessful efforts in Congress by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and some Democrats to block sales of offensive weapons to Israel.

The United States paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in May over concerns about civilian casualties if the bombs were to be used during an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The Biden administration has demanded that Israel increase humanitarian aid into the enclave. But in November, citing some limited progress, it declined to limit arms transfers as it threatened to do if the situation did not improve.

In recent days, Israel has been conducting airstrikes in Gaza that have killed dozens of people, adding to the tens of thousands of deaths since the war began more than a year ago.

The Israeli army said Friday that it had struck dozens of Hamas gathering points and command centers throughout Gaza. Israel’s military says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in dense residential areas.

The war has caused widespread destruction and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, many of them multiple times. Winter has now arrived, and hundreds of thousands are sheltering in tents near the sea.

The informal notice to Congress isn’t the final notification before a sale. Now the leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee or the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can review the package.

News of the weapons sale was first reported by Axios.