Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Ukraine’s ongoing offensive inside Russia, leadership shake-ups in Japan and Thailand, and peace talks to end Sudan’s civil war.
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On the Offensive
Ukrainian troops advanced up to 2 kilometers (or 1.2 miles) into Russia’s Kursk region on Wednesday, adding to around 1,000 square kilometers (or 386 miles) secured since Kyiv’s major cross-border operation began on Aug. 6. This would amount to Ukraine capturing almost as much land as Russian forces took in Ukraine between January and July of this year, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Kyiv has no intention of holding this territory but aims to stop Moscow from using Kursk to fire missiles into Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast. The operation is the largest foreign incursion into Russian soil since World War II. Ukraine’s military claimed on Wednesday that it now controls 74 settlements in the region.
Kyiv also conducted its biggest attack on Russian military airfields thus far, Ukraine’s General Staff said on Wednesday. Drones targeted four Russian airfields overnight to try to sap Moscow’s airpower advantage, a Ukrainian security official told The Associated Press. Kyiv also said it destroyed a Russian Su-34 jet bomber used to attack Ukrainian front-line positions.
Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said Kyiv has captured hundreds of Russian soldiers in the past week, including more than 100 on Wednesday alone, whom President Volodymyr Zelensky said he intends to swap for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Ukraine also announced that it is creating a buffer zone in Kursk near the Ukrainian border to help defend Kyiv’s territory and that Ukraine would protect Russian civilians in the zone, as required under international humanitarian law, including by organizing humanitarian aid and providing evacuation routes.
Russia’s Belgorod region declared a state of emergency on Wednesday after facing heavy Ukrainian shelling. This is an “extremely difficult and tense” situation, Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said. More than 100,000 people have evacuated, according to Russian officials, including around 11,000 Russians from Belgorod.
Moscow is pulling reserve forces from Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia, Crimea, and Kharkiv to help fend off Ukrainian advances in the Kursk region, Ukrainian military commander Dymtro Kholod said on Wednesday. Ukrainian Army spokesperson Dmytro Lykhovii said on Tuesday that Russian troop movements were also documented in the occupied Dnipro region, and Lithuanian Defense Minister Laurynas Kasciunas claimed that the Kremlin had moved some troops from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, where Moscow holds strategic territory on the Baltic coast.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of using the incursion to try to boost its leverage for possible future peace talks. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Rodion Miroshnik said Moscow will place such negotiations “on a long pause” due to the Kursk offensive.
Fighting on Russian soil has created “a real dilemma” for Putin, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday. Ukraine did not notify the White House of its plans prior to the operation, leaving the Biden administration in an awkward position where it must “publicly stand by the Ukrainians’ actions despite internal reservations about the endgame,” FP’s Amy Mackinnon and Jack Detsch reported.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Leadership changes. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Wednesday that he will not run in next month’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership contest. His decision follows low approval ratings linked to the LDP’s ties to the controversial Unification Church and a major fundraising scandal. “The most obvious first step to show that the Liberal Democratic Party is changing is for me to step down,” Kishida said.
The Liberal Democrats have ruled for all but four years since 1955 but have suffered rapid leadership turnovers as the country faces high costs of living and low birthrates. Although Kishida ruled for less than three years, he is Japan’s eighth-longest-serving prime minister. It is unclear who will likely replace him.
In another leadership shake-up, Thailand’s Constitutional Court dismissed Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin from office on Wednesday after ruling in a 5-4 vote that he is guilty of an ethics violation. Srettha was accused of breaking constitutional law when he appointed a cabinet minister with a previous attempted bribery conviction.
The ruling Pheu Thai Party picked former Justice Minister Chaikasem Nitisiri to be its candidate ahead of Friday’s special parliamentary session to choose a new leader. Srettha was in power for less than a year and is the fourth Thai prime minister in 16 years to be removed by the court.
Murder investigation. A Bangladeshi court on Tuesday ordered police to open a murder investigation into ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and six of her top officials for the death of a grocery store owner during government crackdowns against student protesters last month. Experts anticipate this to be the first of several legal cases against Hasina.
Just hours after the court order, Hasina, who has been in self-exile in India since fleeing Bangladesh on Aug. 5 amid the student-led uprising, issued a statement in which she denied responsibility for the deaths of more than 300 demonstrators. She instead blamed the “movements” for instigating “vandalism, arson, and violence” and called for an investigation into the deaths of the “many innocent citizens” killed by the “terrorist aggression.” It was her first public statement since she resigned and fled.
Hasina’s son has said she will return to Bangladesh when new elections are held.
Slim hopes for peace. The United States kicked off peace talks in Geneva on Wednesday to address Sudan’s devastating civil war. But with the Sudanese military not sending a delegation to meet the opposing paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), hope for a quick cease-fire deal remains slim.
“Military operations will not stop without the withdrawal of every last militiaman from the cities and villages they have plundered and colonized,” Sudanese army leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said on Tuesday. The Sudanese military has repeatedly accused the RSF of failing to protect civilians during the 16-month conflict, and it accused the RSF of attempting to assassinate Burhan last month while he was attending an army graduation ceremony. “Both the SAF and RSF have been accused of widespread atrocities, including mass rape, torture, and civilian massacres. The United States has also concluded that the RSF is responsible for ethnic cleansing,” FP’s Robbie Gramer reported in July.
“Sudan right now is probably the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the Aspen Security Forum in July. Two hunger monitoring groups have officially declared a famine in Sudan’s Darfur region, as many as 11 million Sudanese have been displaced, and tens of thousands have been killed.
Violence against medical professionals in India. Tens of thousands of women gathered across India on Wednesday to participate in “Reclaim the Night” marches following the rape and death of an Indian medical professional. Last Friday, a woman who was a doctor-in-training was found dead at a teaching hospital in Kolkata. Her parents were originally told it was a suicide, but an autopsy later revealed that the woman was raped and murdered.
Thousands of doctors have held protests and gone on strike since the incident, calling for better security and justice for the victim. Indian Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda accepted the demonstrators’ demands on Tuesday, which include strengthening the Central Protection Act, a law that protects medical professionals from violence. In response, the Federation of Resident Doctors Association called an end to the strike, but other doctors’ groups and hospitals are continuing to strike and protest, demanding that additional steps be taken.
A 2015 survey by the Indian Medical Association found that more than 75 percent of doctors in the country had faced some form of violence at work. And the BBC reports that women, who account for almost 30 percent of the country’s doctors and 80 percent of the nursing staff, are more vulnerable than their male colleagues.
Odds and Ends
Thank goodness it’s not Halloween in New Zealand. Local police in the country raced on Wednesday to recover small blocks of methamphetamine that an Auckland charity had accidentally distributed to the public, thinking they were candy. The drug was packaged to look like individually wrapped, pineapple-flavored candy from the Malaysian confectionary brand Rinda but in fact contained a potentially lethal amount of the illegal stimulant, according to the New Zealand Drug Foundation. Thus far, at least three people have sought medical attention for tasting the fake treats, which were gifted to the charity by a member of the public. Note: Not all donations are welcome.
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