Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,144
The acting mayor of the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy said at least 31 people were killed in a Russian missile attack. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for a global response to the attack. 'Talks have never stopped ballistic missiles and aerial bombs. What's needed is an attitude toward Russia that a terrorist deserves,' he said.
Ukraine's air defence units have intercepted and destroyed 43 drones out of 55 launched by Russia overnight targeting northern, southern and central areas of Ukraine, the air force said. But it did not say what happened to the drones that escaped destruction.
A Ukrainian F-16 pilot was killed in combat, according to the military, in the second such incident since the delivery of the precious United States-made fighters to Ukraine to help fight Russia's invasion.
A Russian-guided bomb struck a house in the northeastern Ukrainian town of Kupiansk, injuring four people and possibly trapping three more under rubble, Kharkiv regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
Russia's Defence Ministry accused Ukraine of carrying out five attacks on its energy infrastructure over the past day, a violation of a US-brokered moratorium on such strikes.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Trump seems to understand much more about what is going on in Ukraine than any European leader, adding that the US leader understood the need to address the root causes of the conflict to resolve it.
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Al Jazeera
3 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Russia pounds Ukraine, boosts army as world braces for Putin-Trump talks
Russian President Vladimir Putin's announcement that he would meet with his United States counterpart in Alaska to discuss a settlement in Ukraine triggered a diplomatic flurry between Ukraine and its European allies – all of whom have been left out of the discussion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Putin is not earnest about peace as the Russian army continues to pound away at Ukraine. 'There is no indication whatsoever that the Russians have received signals to prepare for a post-war situation,' Zelenskyy said, citing recent intelligence, in his Monday evening address to the Ukrainian people. 'On the contrary, they are redeploying their troops and forces in ways that suggest preparations for new offensive operations.' European leaders have also warned US President Donald Trump against trading away Ukrainian land. 'Until Russia agrees to a full and unconditional ceasefire, we should not even discuss any concessions,' said Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign policy chief. On Wednesday, EU states forming the Coalition of the Willing, a military grouping including some of Europe's largest militaries, warned that 'international borders must not be changed by force' and that if Russia did not agree to an immediate ceasefire, more economic sanctions should be imposed on Moscow. Putin and Trump will talk one-on-one first, with only translators present, before participating in meetings with delegates, a Russian official said on Thursday, adding that there will be a joint news conference later on in the day. As Russia confirmed the Alaska meeting, its army pounded away at Ukraine, seizing the village of Yablunivka in the eastern Donetsk region on Saturday. Some 535 Russian drones and missiles rained on Ukraine during the week of August 7-13. Ukraine intercepted just under two-thirds of them; and Moscow's forces launched eight missiles against Ukraine, five of which got through its defences. The Alaska summit Putin aide Yuri Ushakov announced the Alaska summit on August 7, a day after Putin met with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and suggested it. The statement led to immediate confusion within the Trump White House. An unnamed administration official denied it, saying a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting would have to happen first. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to agree, telling the Fox entertainment network, 'Obviously, the Ukrainians have a right to be part of this process. We have to find a compromise between both sides so that the chief mediator, President Trump, can step in and make it happen.' But on Monday, Trump said that Zelenskyy was not invited to Alaska. Nor were Ukraine's European allies. Trump has stoked fears before among Ukrainian and European officials that he would elbow them aside to partition Ukraine in a great power deal with Russia. During Monday's news conference, Trump offered conflicting information about whether that was still his intention, on the one hand saying, 'I am going to call up President Zelenskyy and the European leaders, right after the meeting, and tell them what kind of a deal…,' then interrupting himself and saying, 'I'm not going to make a deal. It's not up to me to make a deal'. Both Trump and Rubio intimated that Putin had shared with them his red lines. 'I think for maybe the first time since this administration began, we have concrete examples of what Russia might require to end the war,' Rubio said, without giving details of the Kremlin's demands. 'There will be some land swapping going on,' Trump said. 'I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody.' Zelenskyy publicly pitted himself against the Alaska summit. In July alone, he said, Russia dropped more than 5,100 guided aerial bombs, more than 3,800 drones and nearly 260 missiles on Ukraine. Ukrainian Commander in Chief Oleksandr Syrskii said that during July, Russian forces 'tried to advance along almost the entire line of contact'. He also revealed that the Russian armed forces were managing to out-recruit their losses. Despite sustaining heavy losses of 33,000 troops last month, Syrskii said, 'The enemy is increasing its grouping by 9,000 people every month.' Russia plans to form 10 new divisions by the end of the year, two of which have already been created, said Syrskii. 'Therefore,' he concluded, 'we have no choice but to continue mobilisation measures, improve combat training, and strengthen the drone component of our troops'. What's Putin's game? Zelenskyy on Saturday said that Putin wanted the part of the Donetsk region that Russia does not occupy, in addition to keeping the Luhansk region. Bloomberg on Friday cited unnamed sources as confirming that Russia had made this demand for Ukraine's east. 'He was allowed to take Crimea, and this led to the occupation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,' Zelenskyy said on Saturday, referring to Russia's annexation of Crimea in January 2014, and his open support for pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine's east. 'We will not allow this second attempt to partition Ukraine.' Russia claims all of Luhansk and Donetsk, as well as the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, but only controls Luhansk. Roughly a quarter of the other three regions remain in Kyiv's hands. The free portion of Donetsk is particularly important, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, because it contains a 50km (30-miles) long 'fortress belt' of heavily fortified cities: Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhivka and Konstyantynivka. Seizing them would be a 'multi-year effort', the ISW said, because Ukraine had been investing in their defence since recapturing them from Russian control in 2014. Similarly, the city of Zaporizhzhia, which lies in the unoccupied portion of the region, has been heavily fortified, and the unoccupied part of Kherson is separated from the Russian front line by the wide Dnipro river, the ISW said. Ceding all these territories to Russia would weaken Ukraine's ability to defend its remaining areas, the ISW said. 'Potential Ukrainian defensive lines in this area would run through open fields, and natural obstacles such as the Oskil and Siverskyi Donets rivers are too far east to serve as defensive positions,' it said. On Saturday, Ukraine and the EU presented a plan to US officials outlining mutual territorial concessions and NATO membership for what remained of Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported. Ukraine's deep strikes Putin has in the past suggested a partial ceasefire on deep strikes, while preserving front-line hostilities. Some observers have suggested that this would suit Russia because Ukraine has been successful at interdicting its supply lines and wearing down its defence industrial base and energy infrastructure. On Saturday, Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) said a long-range strike set fire to a Russian drone warehouse in the Republic of Tatarstan, where Russia has built a large factory producing Iranian-designed Shahed drones. Ukraine's military intelligence agency also said that sabotage operations had caused explosions at a Russian anti-aircraft missile base in Afipsky, in the Krasnodar Krai border region. Ukraine also claimed to have struck oil refineries in Saratov and the Komi Republic on Sunday.
Al Jazeera
4 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Trump-Putin meeting: How much territory does Russia control in Ukraine?
Russian President Vladimir Putin and United States President Donald Trump will meet on Friday in Alaska to discuss ending Moscow's three-year-long war in Ukraine. The leaders are expected to discuss 'land swapping', suggesting that Trump may support an agreement where Russia will maintain control of some of the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies, but not all. In a news conference at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said, 'Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They occupied prime territory. We're going to try to get some of that territory back for Ukraine.' But the idea of a swap also suggests that Ukraine might need to give up some land that it currently controls. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said that any deal involving the ceding of Ukrainian land to Russia would be unsuccessful. What does Putin want? Last month, Trump warned that tougher sanctions would be put in place unless Russia halted fighting with Ukraine within 50 days. That deadline has now passed, and no new measures have hit Moscow, but the US has imposed 50 percent tariffs on India to punish it for its continued purchase of Russian oil. Trump has demanded that Putin agree to a ceasefire on Friday to avoid the US imposing further tariffs on other countries buying Russian energy assets. Putin has stated that he wants full control of Ukraine's eastern regions, including Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, parts of which Russia annexed in 2022, along with Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. If Kyiv were to agree, it would mean withdrawing troops from parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, where much of the recent fighting has been concentrated. Bloomberg reported on August 8 that US and Russian officials were working towards an agreement that would 'freeze the war', and allow Moscow to keep the territory it has taken. In addition, Putin has consistently demanded that Ukraine remain a neutral state, abandoning its ambitions to join NATO. Can Ukraine even cede territory? Ukraine giving up land it has lost during this war and previously, in 2014, is not a welcome option. On Saturday, Zelenskyy said that he would not 'gift' land to Russia, and that Ukrainians would not give up their land to Russian occupiers. More than this, ceding any territory would be illegal under the Ukrainian constitution. How much of Ukraine does Russia control? Russia occupies about one-fifth – 114,500 square km (44,600 square miles) – of Ukraine's land. The active front line stretches some 1,000km (620 miles) through the regions of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson. Russia controls about three-quarters of the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. Additionally, small parts of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine are under Russian occupation. Across the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, Russia controls about 400 sq km (154 sq miles) of territory. In Dnipropetrovsk, Russia has taken a tiny area near the border. Russia controls about 46,570 sq km (17,981 sq miles), or 88 percent, of the territory known as Donbas, made up of the Luhansk and Donbas regions. Russia occupies almost all of Luhansk and three-quarters of Donetsk. Ukraine still holds about 6,600 sq km (2,550 sq miles) of Donbas, although Russia has been focusing most of its energy along the front in Donetsk, pushing towards the last remaining major cities not in its control. This has been part of its efforts to secure what is known as the 'fortress belt'. What is the fortress belt? The 'fortress belt' stretches some 50km (31 miles) along a strategic highway between the towns of Kostiantynivka and Sloviansk. The fortress belt includes key towns — Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Oleksiyevo-Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka – which have remained under the control of Ukrainian troops since 2014 and are of significant strategic importance as logistical and administrative centre. Attempts by Russian troops to capture Sloviansk and the cities of the fortress belt in 2022-2023 were unsuccessful, and Ukrainian counteroffensives drove the Russian forces far from key positions. 'Ukraine's fortress belt has served as a major obstacle to the Kremlin's territorial ambitions in Ukraine over the last 11 years,' the Washington, DC-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported on August 8. Russian advances: What's the situation on the ground now? In August, Russian forces made significant gains, advancing about 10km (6 miles) beyond the front lines as they intensified efforts to seize the fortress belt from the southwest, concentrating forces in the Toretsk and eastern Pokrovsk directions. Al Jazeera military expert Alex Gatapoulous said, 'I'm not sure what Ukraine has to offer in terms of territory. Russia has it all and is slowly winning this conflict, albeit at a great cost. 'There is already movement around Pokrovsk in the east, and Konstantinivka is also in danger of encirclement. If Ukraine hasn't built defensive positions in-depth, Russian forces will have the ability to break out into open country. This is a really dangerous time for Ukraine. They've lost all the Russian territory they had taken in Kursk and have little to trade with.' How has the war progressed over the past three years? In the war's early weeks, Russia advanced from the north, east and south, rapidly seizing vast areas of Ukrainian territory, with fierce battles in Irpin, Bucha and Mariupol – the latter of which fell to Russian forces in May 2022. The siege of Mariupol was one of the deadliest and most destructive battles of the war. Ukrainian officials estimated tens of thousands of civilian deaths. By March 2022, Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe, and by April of that year, Russia controlled 27 percent of Ukraine. By late 2022, Ukraine had turned the tide with major counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, with Kyiv reclaiming 54 percent of the land Russia had captured since the beginning of the war, according to ISW data, reducing Russian-occupied land to just 18 percent of the country. In August 2024, Ukraine launched a significant incursion into Russia's Kursk region, marking a notable escalation in the conflict. This offensive saw Ukrainian forces advancing approximately 10km (6 miles) into Russian territory, seizing control over an estimated 250 sq km (96.5 sq miles), all of which has since been retaken by Russia. By late 2024 and into 2025, the war had settled into a grinding impasse, with both sides suffering heavy losses. However, Russia's recent incursions, pushing towards Sloviansk, allude to the potential for another offensive to take land it has historically struggled to capture. What was the pre-war situation? Prior to Russia's full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia had held Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Moscow also supported separatists in the Donbas region, leading to the creation of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. Russia officially recognised these entities on February 21, 2022, and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine three days later. The war in Ukraine has resulted in one of the largest and fastest-growing displacement crises in Europe since World War II. According to the UN, approximately 10 million Ukrainians have been displaced, which is about 21 percent of the country's pre-war population. Of these, 3.7 million remain internally displaced within Ukraine, while 6.9 million have fled abroad as refugees.
Al Jazeera
5 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Starmer hosts Ukraine's Zelenskyy ahead of high-stakes Trump-Putin meeting
United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer will welcome Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Downing Street as Europe braces for the outcome of a summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin later this week. The talks in London on Thursday come after Starmer said Britain was ready to 'increase pressure' on Moscow if necessary, signalling new sanctions should the Kremlin reject a ceasefire in its war on Ukraine. Trump, meanwhile, warned Russia of 'severe consequences' if it refuses to halt its military campaign. Speaking after a call with Trump and European allies on Wednesday, Starmer praised the United States leader for helping to create what he described as a 'viable' opening to end the war. 'This meeting on Friday that President Trump is attending is hugely important,' Starmer told reporters. 'As I've said personally to President Trump for the three and a bit years this conflict has been going on, we haven't got anywhere near a prospect of actually a viable solution, a viable way of bringing it to a ceasefire. And now we do have that chance, because of the work that the president has put in,' added Starmer. Zelenskyy is due to meet Starmer at 9:30am local time (08:30 GMT) at the British prime minister's official residence, 10 Downing Street. The Trump-Putin meeting, due to take place in Alaska on Friday, has stirred unease in Kyiv over Zelenskyy's exclusion. Starmer and other European leaders have repeatedly insisted that Ukraine must be part of any talks on its future. Asked if he had deliberately left Zelenskyy out of the Alaska meeting, Trump replied: 'No, just the opposite,' adding that a second meeting with the Ukrainian leader could follow. 'We had a very good call, he was on the call, President Zelenskyy was on the call. I would rate it a 10, you know, very, very friendly,' Trump said. 'There's a very good chance that we're going to have a second meeting, which will be more productive than the first.' The US president has previously floated the idea of a territorial 'swap' as part of a truce. It is believed Putin is demanding Ukraine hand over the remaining parts of the Donbas region it still holds, a proposal Zelenskyy has already rejected, stressing that Ukraine's constitution forbids surrendering territory. In a joint statement, the so-called Coalition of the Willing, co-chaired by Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, warned that 'international borders must not be changed by force'. The group also said sanctions on Russia's war economy should be strengthened if Moscow refuses a ceasefire in Alaska.
