Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,232
Ukrainian air defence units were defending Kyiv against Russian drones early on Thursday for the second night running, with officials reporting a fire in a city-centre apartment building and drone fragments landing in different districts. At least two people were injured in the latest attacks, according to the AFP news agency.
A Russian air strike killed three people and injured one in the front-line town of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine's east, national emergency service officials said. A post on Telegram said the strike also destroyed a one-storey administrative building. Firefighters also extinguished blazes in four buildings, according to officials.
Vadym Filashkin, the governor of Ukraine's Donetsk region, which encompasses Kostiantynivka, said on Telegram that it was time to 'take a responsible decision. Evacuate to less dangerous regions of Ukraine!', amid Russia's latest offensive westward.
A five-year-old boy died of burns sustained in a Ukrainian drone strike on a beach in the Russian city of Kursk, regional Governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Telegram, raising the death toll in the attack to four, including a member of Russia's National Guard.
Russian forces advanced at key points along the front in eastern Ukraine, defeating Ukrainian units in at least six regions, including Donetsk and Kharkiv, and using missiles and drones to strike ammunition depots and airfields, the Ministry of Defence in Moscow said. It also claimed Russia captured a village in Donetsk.
The United States is delivering artillery shells and mobile rocket artillery missiles to Ukraine, two US officials told the Reuters news agency, days after President Donald Trump's administration halted shipments of some critical weapons to Kyiv.
Trump also said that he would consider sending Patriot missiles to Ukraine, which he has previously said Kyiv would need for its defence.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he held a 'substantive' conversation with Trump's Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, in Rome shortly after Trump pledged to send more defensive weapons to Kyiv.
Zelenskyy met Pope Leo at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, where the pontiff told him that the Vatican was willing to host Russia-Ukraine peace talks. It was the Ukrainian leader's second meeting with the pope in his two-month-old papacy.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will open the Rome conference on Ukraine on Thursday, with Zelenskyy and European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen in attendance. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Dutch leader Dick Schoof and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis are also expected to attend.
Merz has announced that he will make an offer of air defence systems to Ukraine during the Rome conference.
Ukraine said it detained a Chinese father and son, both suspected of spying on its prized Neptune antiship missile programme, a key part of Kyiv's growing domestic arms industry critical to its defence against Russian invaders. Kyiv has accused Beijing of helping the Kremlin's war effort.
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the Kremlin had evidence that Ukraine has repeatedly used antipersonnel mines that have injured civilians. Ukraine in June announced its withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention banning the production and use of antipersonnel mines.
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov will visit North Korea this weekend, the latest in a series of high-profile visits by top Moscow officials as the two countries deepen military ties, according to Zakharova.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet Lavrov on Thursday on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a senior US State Department official said.
Russian authorities have confiscated company assets worth some $50bn over the past three years, citing justifications ranging from illegal actions by Western countries to the need for strategic resources, underscoring the shift toward to a 'fortress Russia' economic model amid the war in Ukraine, the Reuters news agency reported, citing research from the Russian law firm Nektorov, Saveliev & Partners.
Italy is set to unveil a support scheme worth 300 million euros ($351m) for small and medium enterprises involved in the reconstruction of Ukraine, Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani said.
An Italian government source told the Reuters news agency that about 500bn euros ($585bn) would be needed for the reconstruction, recovery and modernisation of Ukraine, citing World Bank estimates.
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Al Jazeera
13 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Eastern Europe must earn its security in a post-American NATO
From the Baltic states to the Black Sea, Central and Eastern European (CEE) governments remain anxious about their security in the face of Russian aggression. Despite NATO's enduring pledge to Article 5, many officials in countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Romania continue to express concern over a potential US shift in focus towards Asia‑Pacific and the Middle East, creating fears of weakening American vigilance in Europe. This anxiety has heightened in light of Russia's steady military rebuilding and escalating hybrid threats targeting critical infrastructure across the region. To be clear, President Trump has long criticised NATO members for failing to hit defence spending targets and has even suggested the US might withhold protection from countries that do not meet the 2 percent of GDP target. In response, the June 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague marked a turning point: all member states agreed to raise combined defence and related spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035, including 3.5 percent for core military capabilities and 1.5 percent for broader security measures such as logistics, cyber resilience and support for Ukraine, which was viewed as an 'ironclad' commitment to NATO Article 5 and a pledge of continued backing for Ukraine. For all the robust signalling, however, the agreement's gradual timeline – 2035, with a review in 2029 – and its flexible accounting, where spending on Ukraine aid, infrastructure upgrades and cyber projects all count, leave the Eastern flank states uneasy because timely implementation will be essential for credibly deterring Russia. Moreover, tensions over US-EU burden sharing remain, as shown recently when, during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Trump announced that the US would send Patriot air defence systems to Europe 'for Ukraine' but insisted that European allies foot the bill by donating the interceptor missiles themselves. The breakdown in diplomatic decorum with European partners has been on display for a while, notably during the March Signalgate incident in which Trump's Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth called Europe 'pathetic' and suggested European NATO states were 'freeloading', and during the infamous February diplomatic debacle when Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was publicly humiliated during a joint White House news conference with Trump. Yet despite the turbulence, CEE capitals cannot afford the luxury of disengagement from the second Trump administration. Indeed, the volatility reinforces the need for these states to remain actively engaged and push for better outcomes. This is for several reasons. First, the US military presence has long served as the cornerstone of regional deterrence against Russian expansionism. Even as Washington's commitment to European security appears uncertain, CEE's security architecture has been fundamentally anchored in US guarantees since the end of the Cold War. The traumatic historical experience of Western abandonment during critical 20th-century junctures, such as the 1938 Munich Agreement, when Czechoslovakia was handed over to Nazi Germany by Western powers, has left a deep-seated awareness that diplomatic decoupling from Washington often correlates with heightened vulnerability along NATO's eastern flank. This is why Poland and the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) have for years hosted US troops and air defence systems, alongside NATO battlegroups. NATO's eastern flank countries have routinely cautioned that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, 'they are next.' This concern is particularly acute in light of the Trump administration's active push to broker a flash ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine, reportedly involving territorial concessions to Moscow. President Trump has made clear he wants to be remembered as 'a peacemaker and unifier', a theme he emphasised again in his second inaugural address. His advisers have floated frameworks that would freeze the conflict along current front lines, potentially recognise Russian control over Crimea and parts of Donbas, and block Ukraine's NATO aspirations. But Ukrainians are not seeking peace at any price, nor should the Europeans. Any deal that cedes Ukrainian territory or is seen as legitimising Russian aggression risks emboldening the Kremlin, weakening NATO's credibility and undermining Europe's long-term security architecture. Since Russia's 2022 full-scale incursion, the Kremlin has repeatedly tested NATO's Article 5 resolve through various provocations along the eastern flank, including airspace violations and missile incidents. For example, in February 2024, Estonia was subjected to electronic warfare from Russian territory that disrupted GPS signals across its eastern border regions, affecting both civilian infrastructure and military communications systems. One month later, a Russian cruise missile entered Polish airspace for 39 seconds before returning to Ukrainian territory. Moreover, in August 2023, Russian fighter jets conducted aggressive intercepts of NATO surveillance aircraft over the Baltic Sea, coming within dangerous proximity and executing unpredictable manoeuvres that risked mid-air collisions. Such a status quo can deteriorate quickly should Putin's aggression, under a Trump-brokered deal, enable Russia to carve out a piece of Ukraine or achieve troop disengagement from Eastern Europe. Russia may also continue its military buildup after the war stops, buying time for later aggressions and compounding the challenge for CEE and Europe. Against this backdrop, CEE leaders would do well to pursue a dual-track strategy, despite the volatility of current US foreign policy. First, the region's engineering workforce and industrial might have an outsized role to play in rearming Europe in the face of US disengagement and Europe's stepped-up defence pledges, particularly in partnership with Germany. In Germany, this shift of actively repurposing idle civilian manufacturing facilities into military production hubs is already firmly under way. Its defence firms have been actively converting shuttered or underperforming automotive facilities, such as those in Berlin and Neuss, and rail plants in Gorlitz, to produce Leopard tanks, Puma IFVs and artillery systems, into hybrid military production hubs. This industrial push is enabled by Germany's domestic reforms, notably Berlin approving a sweeping defence procurement law that simplifies contracting, raises tender thresholds and fast-tracks construction for military infrastructure. Such deliberate reallocating of resources from beleaguered civilian industries toward military industrial output holds clear implications for allied production networks in CEE. In addition, CEE countries have been ramping up their own heavy manufacturing capacity, with Poland and Slovakia stepping up joint production of artillery and armoured vehicles, and Czechia's Czechoslovak Group surging to the forefront of Europe's munitions supply chain, with a 4-billion-euro ($4.6bn) revenue spike and an 11-billion-euro ($12.7bn) order book anchored in Ukraine bound exports. The CEE region, with its faltering car manufacturing competitiveness now worsened by Trump car tariffs, needs to latch onto this opportunity to tackle both its security and economic imperatives. In doing so, it can benefit from the 800-billion-euro ($921.8bn) defence mobilisation plan, coupled with its proposal for 150 billion euros ($172.8bn) in EU-backed loans, approved in Brussels on March 6. Second, hedging against US security disengagement through the combination of strategic industrial repositioning and European solidarity must be complemented by persistent efforts to secure better outcomes through diplomatic channels with Washington. This remains necessary even as ideological alignment frays, because transactional partnerships can still deliver meaningful security benefits. To that end, the region can leverage some of its unique strategic assets, including Poland's substantial arms purchases from US manufacturers, Romania's critical Black Sea security infrastructure and the Baltic states' sophisticated cybersecurity capabilities, with an administration that prizes transactional diplomacy. The path forward requires setting aside both illusions and grievances at a time when security guarantees must be earned rather than assumed. In this emerging reality, Eastern European nations can meaningfully partake in rearming Europe while demonstrating their value as partners, as they navigate the shifting fault lines of post-American Europe. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Inmates, pregnant woman among 22 killed in Russia's attacks on Ukraine
At least 22 people, including 16 inmates and a pregnant woman, have been killed in Russian air attacks on mostly southeastern Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and regional officials. The attacks came overnight on Tuesday, a day after United States President Donald Trump set Russia a new deadline of '10 or 12 days' to reach a peace deal in its war on Ukraine or face tough new sanctions, shortening a 50-day deadline he had set earlier this month. Ivan Fedorov, head of the military administration in Zaporizhia, on Tuesday said Russia carried out eight overnight air attacks on his region alone, hitting a prison near the city of Zaporizhzhia. 'Russia bombed a penal colony near Zaporizhzhia overnight – 16 killed, 35 injured. Civilians continue to suffer. Another blatant war crime,' Fedorov said in English on X. Putting Tuesday's death toll at 22, Zelenskyy said a pregnant woman was among three people killed in a Russian missile attack on the city of Kamianske in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, targeting a hospital. Yesterday, very important words were spoken by President Trump about how the Russian leadership is wasting the world's time by talking about peace while simultaneously killing people. We all want genuine peace – dignified and lasting: Ukraine, all of Europe, the United States,… — Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 29, 2025 Also in Dnipropetrovsk, a person was killed and several wounded in the Synelnykove district, according to Serhiy Lysak, head of the Dnipropetrovsk military administration. In a separate attack on the village of Velyka Mykhailivka in the Odesa region on Monday night, a '75-year-old woman was killed. A 68-year-old man was wounded. A private house was damaged,' Lysak said on Telegram. Reacting to the developments, Andriy Yermak, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on social media: 'Russian President [Vladimir] Putin's regime, which also issues threats against the United States through some of its mouthpieces, must face economic and military blows that strip it of the capacity to wage war.' Ukraine's Air Force said Russia had launched 37 drones and two missiles overnight, adding that its air defence systems had downed 32 of the drones. In Russia's southern Rostov region, multiple Ukrainian drone attacks killed one person, according to Russian authorities. Russia's Ministry of Defence, which reports only how many drones were destroyed, not how many Ukraine launched, said its defence units downed a total of 74 drones overnight, including 22 over the Rostov region. 'A car was damaged on Ostrovsky Street. Unfortunately, the driver who was in it died,' Yury Slyusar, acting governor of the Rostov region, said in a post on Telegram. He said the attack had targeted several places, including Salsk, Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, Volgodonsk, Bokovsky, Tarasovsky and Slyusar. Drone debris also fell on Salsk train station, damaging a freight train and passenger train, with passengers being evacuated, Slyusar added. Power was disrupted at the station, forcing the suspension of train traffic, Russia's Railways said on Telegram. No casualties were reported. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which has often said its attacks inside Russia are in response to Moscow's relentless strikes on Ukraine. Both sides deny targeting civilians in their attacks, but thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict, the majority of them Ukrainian. Kyiv has been trying to repel Russia's summer offensive, which has made new advances into areas on the eastern front line largely spared since the start of the 2022 offensive. Over the weekend, the Russian army said its forces had captured the settlement of Maliyevka in Dnipropetrovsk, weeks after it seized the first village in the region – claims Kyiv has contested.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Why Zelenskyy tried to curb autonomy of Ukraine's anti-graft bodies?
Kyiv, Ukraine – Last week, hundreds of Ukrainians rallied in several cities to protest the government's attempt to curb the independence of anticorruption watchdogs. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on July 22 signed a bill into law, which would revoke the autonomy of key agencies – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). The rare protest in the war-torn country forced the Ukrainian president to introduce a new draft bill to restore the independence of NABU and SAPO, which have been established to investigate high-level corruption and are widely seen as a symbol of democratic reforms. So, why did Zelenskyy try to curb powers of the anticorruption agencies, and will his action dent public trust in the government crucial at a time of war against Russia? Why are Ukrainians protesting? The nationwide protests erupted in the wake of the July 22 vote in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's lower house of parliament, to approve the bill that allows the prosecutor general to oversee the two anticorruption agencies. The prosecutor general is appointed by the president and approved by the Verkhovna Rada, where Zelenskyy's Public Servant party holds a majority. It was seen as an attempt by the government to control the two agencies, which were created in the wake of the 2013-14 pro-democracy Euromaidan protests. Many believe it's a setback from the years of reforms following the removal of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. The protesters held banners with slogans reading 'Sham!' 'Don't make a step back, there's an abyss there,' and 'Corruption applauds' the new bill. The rallies took place in Kyiv as well as in large cities such as the Black Sea port of Odesa and Lviv, known as Ukraine's cultural capital. NABU has been probing a string of senior officials and lawmakers, including those within Zelenskyy's Public Servant party. Oleksiy, who enlisted to join the army in 2022, wonders why he should keep fighting on the front lines of eastern Ukraine while officials engage in corruption. 'What's the point if I go back home and my family is surrounded by corruption everywhere,' the 42-year-old construction manager told Al Jazeera. 'Judges, officials, even school teachers all say, 'Give, give, give,'' he said, asking to withhold his last name and details of his military service, in accordance with the wartime protocol. Oleksiy, who is on a break from his service to visit his two children and ailing mother, took part in the largest antigovernment rallies in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. Why Zelenskyy backed the bill? The new law envisaged executive control over NABU and SAPO as the prosecutor general's office could access their information, give them binding directives, transfer cases and close down investigations. The bill 'could finally destroy the independence of the anticorruption system in Ukraine', NABU said. Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the new law 'risks weakening Ukraine's democratic foundations and its future integration with Europe'. She called for the repeal of the law. Zelenskyy, a former comedian and political rookie who came to power in 2019 on an anticorruption ticket, defended the law, claiming that the NABU and SAPO have to 'get rid of Russian influence'. His allegation followed the arrest of two NABU staffers suspected of working for Russian intelligence, and charges against outspoken anticorruption campaigner Vitaly Shabunin. Shabunin was accused of 'evading military service', but his supporters called the charges trumped-up, and almost 60 anticorruption and nongovernmental groups signed a joint appeal in his defence. A Kyiv-based political analyst says there are two popular theories about why Zelenskyy initiated the bill. 'One is that NABU allegedly closed in on Zelenskyy's inner circle,' Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta think tank, told Al Jazeera. NABU accused Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, Zelenskyy's closest ally and lifelong friend, of taking kickbacks worth $346,000 from a real estate developer in a deal that cost the government $24m. Zelenskyy's press office didn't reply to Al Jazeera's phone calls and text messages. 'Or this is an attempt to control NABU's actions in order not to overtly politicise them, not to provoke domestic political wars during the war with Russia,' Fesenko said. 'But I think it has to do with the activisation of the NABU on political issues that may have caused suspicion in Zelenskyy's inner circle. That it wasn't a fight against corruption but more of a political attack on Zelenskyy,' he said. The protests, an anticorruption expert told Al Jazeera, have weakened Zelenskyy's support within domestic political circles. 'There was a belief in his high and stable rating,' Tetiana Shevchuk from the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Kyiv-based group, said. But 'he no longer can demand anything from the parliament,' she said. Zelenskyy is afraid of NABU as the only law enforcement agency that won't open or close an investigation following a phone call from his administration, she said, referring to the centralisation of power under him. 'NABU is the only body that doesn't do that,' Shevchuk said. Fesenko from the Penta think tank says the politicians 'underestimated' the bill's 'negative consequences'. They 'didn't think the public response would be that harsh'. Zelenskyy has promised to submit the new bill – a move applauded by the country's top anti-corruption investigator. Semen Kryvonos, director of NABU, however, said that corrupt actors will step up a 'dirty information campaign' against the anti-graft agencies. Meanwhile, protest leaders say they would stop rallies only after the bill has been passed – tentatively, later this week. Why has Ukraine struggled to control corruption? Has war-related corruption increased? Since the 2014 pro-democracy revolution or Revolution of Dignity, attempts have been made to root out endemic corruption. Many bureaucratic procedures have been simplified and consume less time, money and nerves. But corruption remains pervasive in the halls of justice. Ukraine ranks 105 out of 180 in Transparency International's corruption index. A criminal investigator who spent months putting together a string of lawsuits against a fraudster who duped dozens of people, including several lawmakers, told Al Jazeera that a corrupt judge could annul his work and the fraudster may walk free. 'We can't guarantee any judge's honesty,' the investigator said on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, Europe's worst armed conflict since World War II has bred new forms of corruption. Some officers extort bribes for letting a serviceman take leave or go to a hospital, pilfer foreign aid such as canned foods, clothes or shoes that end up on store shelves instead of the front line. 'If someone reports such an officer, they may end up in a suicide squad on zero position,' serviceman Oleksiy who took part in the protests claimed, referring to the front line positions most likely to be attacked by enemy drones. Officers tasked with the conscription campaign have been accused of receiving bribes to smuggle people out of the country. Dozens of conscription officers have been arrested – and some had cash stashes of millions of dollars or euros or even in gold bullion. Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov was fired in 2023 after scandals involving inflated prices for military procurement, including ammunition, foodstuffs, medical equipment and winter clothing. His successor Rustem Umerov was investigated for alleged abuse of power, NABU said in January. Will the curbs on anticorruption bodies affect foreign aid? The European Union said on Sunday it would freeze $1.7bn, a third of its latest aid package for Ukraine, because of the new law. But military aid from the EU and the United States is not likely to be interrupted, said Lt Gen Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of Ukraine's general staff of armed forces. However, the protests reveal a shocking contrast between hundreds of thousands of servicemen on the front lines and the corrupt officials who dodge the draft and keep thriving on corruption. 'On one side, there are people spilling blood, and corruption remains high and even gets higher in certain areas, and people find it inadmissible,' Romanenko told Al Jazeera.
