Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,240
Fighting
The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed that its forces have captured three Ukrainian settlements: Kamianske in the southeastern Zaporizhia region, Dehtiarne in the northeastern Kharkiv region, and Popiv Yar in the Donetsk region.
Russian air defences destroyed a Ukrainian drone headed for Moscow, the city's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said.
Russia's Defence Ministry said 46 Ukrainian drones were destroyed over a period of four hours on Thursday evening, including a single drone over the Moscow region. Most were downed in areas near the Ukraine border, including 31 over Russia's Bryansk region and 10 over the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged more bodies of their war dead, a Kremlin aide said, part of an agreement struck at the second round of peace talks in Istanbul in June. A total of 1,000 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers were turned over in exchange for 19 bodies of Russian soldiers.
Military aid
Preparations are under way to quickly transfer additional Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine, NATO's top military commander, Alexus Grynkewich, said.
Czech-coordinated shipments of artillery ammunition for Ukraine are rising this year, according to Ales Vytecka, director of the Czech Defence Ministry's AMOS international cooperation agency. So far this year, shipments have totalled 850,000 shells, including 320,000 NATO 155mm calibre projectiles.
Ukraine will let foreign arms companies test out their latest weapons on the front line of its war against Russia, Kyiv's state-backed arms investment and procurement group Brave1 said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the US publication The New York Post that he and United States President Donald Trump are considering a deal that involves Washington buying battlefield-tested Ukrainian drones in exchange for Kyiv purchasing weapons from the US.
Zelenskyy told the country's parliament that he expects his new government to increase the amount of domestically-produced weapons on Ukraine's battlefield from 40 percent to 50 percent within the next six months.
The US has informed Switzerland of delays to the delivery of Patriot air defence systems, the Swiss Defence Ministry said, adding that Washington wants to prioritise delivery of the systems to Ukraine.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said clarity is needed on how the US could replace any weapons that Europe plans to send to Ukraine. He issued the statement during a visit to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Politics and diplomacy
President Trump's decision to ramp up arms shipments to Ukraine is a signal to Kyiv to abandon peace efforts, Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia had no plans to attack NATO or Europe but floated the idea of preemptive strikes if it believed the West was escalating what he cast as its full-scale war against Russia.
Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico said his country will stop blocking the approval of the 18th package of European Union sanctions against Russia, which could be approved on Friday.
Ukraine's parliament appointed Yulia Svyrydenko, 39, as the country's first new prime minister in five years, part of a major cabinet overhaul aimed at revitalising wartime management of the country as prospects for peace with Russia grow dim. Ukraine's former Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has been named defence minister.
Ukraine's parliament also voted to keep Andrii Sybiha as foreign minister, while appointing Olha Stefanishyna, a deputy prime minister responsible for Euro-Atlantic integration, as the country's new ambassador to the US.
Russian lawmakers have advanced a bill that would outlaw opening or searching for content online judged to be 'extremist' in nature, such as songs glorifying Ukraine and material by the feminist rock band, Pussy Riot.
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Al Jazeera
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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,250
Here is how things stand on Monday, July 28: Fighting Russian forces attacked Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, early on Monday, wounding five people and damaging a residential building, according to the head of the city's military administration, Tymur Tkachenko. A Russian drone hit a Ukrainian bus carrying 39 evacuees in the eastern Sumy region, near Ukraine's border with Russia, on Sunday, killing three people and wounding 19 others, according to the regional governor. Two others were killed in a landmine explosion in Sumy's Esman community on Saturday, while two more were killed in Russian attacks on the front-line Donetsk region, according to officials, taking the death toll from attacks across Ukraine on that day to at least six. Ukraine's forces also launched drone attacks at Russia on Sunday, with the governor of the Leningrad region reporting that at least 10 Ukrainian unmanned aircraft were downed over the areas surrounding the city of St Petersburg. Falling debris injured a woman, Governor Alexander Drozdenko said. St Petersburg's Pulkovo airport was closed during the attack, with 57 flights delayed and 22 diverted to other airports, according to a statement. The Kremlin, meanwhile, confirmed that the large-scale televised Navy Day parade in St Petersburg had been cancelled for security reasons. Russian President Vladimir Putin still watched naval drills featuring 150 vessels and 15,000 military personnel in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, and the Baltic and Caspian Seas, from St Petersburg's naval headquarters. The Russian Ministry of Defence said that air defence units downed a total of 291 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones on Sunday, below the record 524 drones downed in attacks on May 7, ahead of Russia's Victory Day parade on May 9. Politics and diplomacy European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to uphold independent anticorruption bodies, amid a firestorm of criticism after the country's parliament voted to revoke the autonomy of two anticorruption agencies. 'Ukraine has already achieved a lot on its European path,' von der Leyen said in a post on X after a call with Zelenskyy. 'It must build on these solid foundations and preserve independent anti-corruption bodies, which are cornerstones of Ukraine's rule of law.' Zelenskyy, who has submitted draft legislation to restore the independence of the two agencies, thanked the EU and said it was important that the bill be 'adopted without delay'. Russia opened a regular air link between Moscow and the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, with the first flight between the cities in decades taking off at 16:25 GMT on Sunday, according to the Sheremetyevo airport's website. The route will be serviced once a month, Russia's Ministry of Transport said. Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Beate Meinl-Reisinger told the German media outlet Welt that the country was willing to engage in a 'national debate' about joining NATO, after decades remaining neutral.
Al Jazeera
21 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,249
Here is how things stand on Sunday, July 27: Fighting Falling debris from destroyed Ukrainian drones disrupted railway power supply and train operations in part of the Volgograd region, the administration of the region in Russia's south said on Sunday. There were no injuries as a result of the attacks, the administration said on Telegram, quoting Governor Andrei Bocharov. Russia downed 99 drones overnight over 12 Russian regions, the Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea, the Russian Ministry of Defence said. Meanwhile, Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles in an overnight attack that killed three people in Ukraine's Dnipro and the nearby region on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said. Ukraine's air force said it intercepted 183 drones and 17 missiles, but hits from 10 missiles and 25 drones were recorded in nine locations. Drones once again targeted Moscow, said the city's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, and an industrial facility in the Penza oblast southeast of the capital, according to the region's governor, Oleg Melnichenko. In the Rostov region, officials said, Ukrainian drones killed two people, and another in Russia's Kursk region on the country's border, regional Governor Alexander Khinshtein said. Russia's Defence Ministry said on Saturday its forces captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine, Zelenyi Hai in the Donetsk region and Maliivka just inside the Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukrainian drones hit a radio and electronic warfare equipment plant in Russia's Stavropol region in an overnight attack on Saturday, an official from the SBU security service told the Reuters news agency. 'Each such attack stops production processes and reduces the enemy's military potential. This work will continue,' the official told the agency. Attacks targeting the plant continued on Sunday. Weapons and military aid Indian firm Ideal Detonators Private Limited, which shipped $1.4m worth of the explosive compound octogen with military uses to Russia in December, said on Saturday it complies with Indian rules and the substance it had shipped was for civilian industrial purposes. The US government has identified the compound as 'critical for Russia's war effort' and has warned financial institutions against facilitating any sales of the substance to Moscow. Diplomacy Russia will launch direct passenger flights from Moscow to North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, on Sunday, Russian authorities said, as the two former communist bloc allies move to improve ties following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The start of regular flights between the capitals for the first time since the mid-1990s, according to Russian aviation blogs, follows the resumption of Moscow-Pyongyang passenger rail service, a 10-day journey, in June. Pope Leo discussed the war in Ukraine on Saturday with Metropolitan Anthony, a senior cleric in the Russian Orthodox Church, in a possible effort to ease ties between the churches strained by Russia's invasion. Ceasefire Peace talks and a settlement in Ukraine have never been on the real agenda of the West, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday, in her first comments on negotiations since Russian and Ukrainian officials held talks on Wednesday. If the West wanted 'real peace' in Ukraine, it would stop supplying Kyiv with weapons, Zakharova said in comments reported by the TASS news agency.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,248
Here is how things stand on Saturday, July 26: Fighting Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces were facing fierce fighting around the city of Pokrovsk in the country's east, a logistics hub near where Russia's military has been announcing the near-daily capture of Ukrainian villages. Ukraine's top commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, described Pokrovsk and five other sectors as among the most difficult theatres of war along the 1,000km (620-mile) front with Russia. Earlier on Friday, Russia's Ministry of Defence announced the capture of two villages on either side of Pokrovsk – Zvirove to the west and Novoekonomichne to the east. A third village – Novotoretske – near Pokrovsk was declared 'liberated' by Moscow earlier this week. President Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces were also 'continuing to act' in border areas in the northern Sumy region, where Russian troops have gained a foothold in recent weeks. According to the popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState, Kyiv's forces have retaken the previously lost village of Kindrativka in Sumy. Moscow is trying to establish in Sumy what Russia's President Vladimir Putin calls a 'buffer zone' between Russia and Ukraine. Weapons and military aid Zelenskyy has toured a local factory producing interceptor drones, increasingly seen as a solution to protecting Ukrainian cities from Russian air attacks, and said a goal had been set to make up to 1,000 of the weapons each day. He said interceptor drones had proved efficient at downing waves of Russian attack drones. Zelenskyy also said his country was working to secure international funding for 10 Patriot air defence systems, following a deal that allows European states to buy weaponry from the United States and donate it to Kyiv. The US announced that it is providing a $4bn loan guarantee for the purchase of American military equipment by Poland, which borders both Russia and war-torn Ukraine. Russia's only aircraft carrier, the 40-year-old Admiral Kuznetsov, is likely to be sold or scrapped, the chairman of Russia's state shipbuilding corporation Andrei Kostin told the Kommersant newspaper. Sanctions US President Donald Trump said he is looking at secondary sanctions on Russia amid the war in Ukraine. Acting US ambassador to the UN, Dorothy Shea, urged all countries, specifically naming China, to stop exports to Russia of dual-use goods that Washington says contribute to Russia's industrial base and enable its drone and missile attacks on Ukraine. In response, China's deputy UN ambassador, Geng Shuang, said China did not start the war in Ukraine, is not a party to the conflict, has never provided lethal weapons, and has always 'strictly controlled dual-use materials, including the export of drones'. Geng also urged the US to 'stop shifting blame' in the conflict. The European Parliament is considering proposals to speed up the European Union's phasing out of Russian gas by one year, to January 2027, the Reuters news agency reported, as officials in Brussels prepare to negotiate a legally-binding ban. Russia-backed Indian oil refiner Nayara Energy has named Sergey Denisov as its new chief executive, after the firm's previous CEO, Alessandro des Dorides, resigned following European Union sanctions that targeted the company, Reuters reports. Ceasefire Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he may speak to Trump and President Putin this week to see if a leaders' meeting in Istanbul is possible to discuss a ceasefire in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a summit between Putin and Zelenskyy could only happen as a final step to seal a peace deal, adding that it was unlikely that such a meeting could occur by the end of August, as Ukraine had proposed. Politics and diplomacy Ukraine's top anticorruption investigator Semen Kryvonos said he did not expect attempts to derail his agency's work to end, despite an abrupt U-turn by Zelenskyy on curbing the independence of two anticorruption agencies that fuelled rare wartime protests. Kryvonos said he was taken aback by those attempts. Trump said he would like to maintain the limits on US and Russian strategic nuclear weapons deployments set in the 2010 New START agreement, which expires in February. Trump made the comments as he exited the White House on a trip to Scotland. Regional developments Georgia hosted major multinational military exercises with NATO troops, despite its government facing growing accusations of drifting away from a pro-Western path and edging closer to Russia's orbit amid the war in Ukraine.
