Russia-Ukraine War: List of Major Events, Day 800

As we enter the 800th day of the war, these are the most important developments.

Here is the situation on Saturday, May 4, 2024.

Battle

France estimates that 150,000 Russian soldiers were killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Foreign Minister Stéphane Sejourne said in an interview.
Russia says it has shot down four US-made long-range tactical missile systems (ATACMS), which the US recently delivered to Ukraine, over the occupied Crimean peninsula.
Two people were killed in a Russian attack on the town of Kurakhove in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk. Two other people were also reported injured.
Russia launched a drone strike on Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Dnipro regions overnight, injuring at least six people, including three women and a child, and hitting key infrastructure, commercial and residential buildings.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russian forces fired 13 Iranian-made Shahed drones at the northeast and central regions of the country, but their air defense units shot them all down.
A Russian missile attack seriously injured at least one person and damaged private homes and infrastructure in the central Ukrainian region of Kirovohrad, a local official said.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) says it has killed a man it said was recruited by Ukraine to blow up military buildings and energy sites in the country, state media reported. The alleged plans included attacks on “Defense Ministry facilities in the Moscow region and against members of a volunteer battalion and a volunteer center in Saint Petersburg.”

The Kremlin described British Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s statement that Ukraine could use British weapons against targets inside Russia if it wanted to as a direct and dangerous escalation of tensions surrounding the conflict.
Cameron has promised Ukraine 3 billion pounds ($3.7 billion) in annual military aid “for as long as it takes.”
Russia has criticized new statements by French President Emmanuel Macron in which he reiterated that the possibility of sending ground troops to Ukraine should not be ruled out. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the statement was “very important and very dangerous.”
Russia has accused the US of using the threat of secondary sanctions against Chinese companies that work with Russia as a “pretext” to contain China. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says China’s economy “extremely irritates the US” and the country is therefore using the sanctions “to hold on to them.” [its] economic leadership”.
A Russian military court has extended the prison sentences of a theater director and a playwright by six months, a case that has rocked the already weakened theater scene. Director Yevgenia Berkovich and writer Svetlana Petrichuk were arrested a year ago and accused of “justifying terrorism” in an award-winning play staged several years ago.

Ukraine’s central bank has introduced its biggest currency liberalization measures of the war to ease restrictions on businesses, more than two years after the Russian invasion prompted the imposition of tough restrictions.
Most of the new provisions, which will come into force on May 14, include the lifting of currency restrictions on the import of goods and services, as well as the easing of restrictions on the transfer of foreign currency from representative offices to parent companies.
Central Bank Governor Andriy Pyshnyi described the moves in a letter on Facebook as a “very tangible step” that would provide companies “with opportunities to enter new markets or make investments.”
Ukraine’s economy, bolstered by financial aid from its Western partners, grew 5.3 percent last year and is expected to grow 3 percent this year, a reversal from 2022, when the economy shrank by about a third in the first year of the war .