‘No miracles': Russia downplays Ukraine talks as deadly attacks continue
'We don't have any reason to hope for some miraculous breakthroughs,' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday, saying this was 'hardly possible in the current situation'.
'We intend to pursue our interests, we intend to ensure our interests and fulfil the tasks that we set for ourselves from the very beginning.'
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's announcement late on Monday that talks would take place generated some hope that negotiators would deliver progress on ending the war that began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. United States President Donald Trump has been putting more pressure on Russia to hold talks, which have stalled as Russian President Vladimir Putin stood his ground on his demands.
The third round of talks in recent months is expected to be held in Istanbul on Wednesday. Previous negotiations led to a series of exchanges of prisoners of war and the bodies of fallen soldiers, but produced no breakthrough on a ceasefire.
On Tuesday, Zelenskyy announced on social media that Rustem Umerov, the former defence minister and current secretary of the security council, will head Ukraine's delegation.
He also said Ukraine was ready to 'secure the release of our people from captivity and return of abducted children, to stop the killings, and to prepare a leaders' meeting', outlining potential topics for discussion.
Russia has not yet announced the composition of its team for the talks. Its delegation at the previous round was led by a hawkish historian and the current head of the Russian Union of Writers, Vladimir Medinsky, whom Ukraine described as not a real decision-maker.
Asked on Tuesday if he could give a sense of how the Kremlin saw the potential timeframe of a possible peace agreement, Peskov said he could give no guidance on timing.
'There is a lot of work to be done before we can talk about the possibility of some top-level meetings,' Peskov added, a day after Zelenskyy renewed a call for a meeting with Putin.
Despite the upcoming talks, Russia's offensive continues, with its forces driving hard to break through at eastern and northeastern points on the 1,000km (620-mile) front line.
Ukraine's air force said Russia had launched 426 drones and 24 missiles overnight, making it one of Russia's largest aerial assaults in months. It said it had downed or jammed at least 224 Russian drones and missiles, while 203 drones disappeared from radars.
In one of the attacks, a 10-year-old boy was killed and five people were wounded when guided glide bombs hit a residential building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, according to Mayor Alexander Goncharenko.
Kramatorsk is part of a metropolitan area in Donetsk that remains under Ukrainian control three years after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A barrage of Russian strikes was also reported in the capital, Kyiv, sparking several fires and damaging an underground air raid shelter where civilians had taken refuge. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region came under multiple waves of attacks, according to regional authorities. A drone hit a petrol station in the town of Putyvl, wounding four people, including a five-year-old boy, the regional military administration reported. A second drone hit the same location less than two hours later, wounding seven people.
Separately, two powerful Russian glide bombs were dropped on Sumy city, wounding at least 13 people, including a six-year-old boy, and damaging five apartment buildings, two private homes and a shopping centre in the attack. The blasts shattered windows and destroyed balconies in residential buildings, acting Mayor Artem Kobzar said.
A few weeks ago, Putin announced his intention to create a 'buffer zone' in the Sumy region, effectively by occupying the Ukrainian border areas.
In the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, there were initial reports of drone attacks in which at least one person was wounded. Fires broke out in several places in the city, according to regional media.
Ukraine also launched attacks, with Russia's Ministry of Defence saying its air power had downed 35 Ukrainian long-range drones over several regions overnight, including three over the Moscow area.
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Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Folk music and raids: How ultranationalists target migrants in Russia
A group of uniformed men, at least one of them masked, walk up to a pair of watermelon sellers in a street on the outskirts of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. The men are dressed in black, wearing tactical vests with patches bearing the emblem of a bogatyr – a mythic warrior of Slavic folklore – riding on horseback. They inform the traders, who they believe to be foreigners, that they are trading without a permit, and the black-clad men help load their goods into a van to be confiscated by the authorities. But these men-in-black have no official position in law enforcement. A video of this operation was uploaded online on Monday morning by the Russian Community, or Russkaya Obshchina (RO), who boasted of shutting down an 'oriental bazaar'. Since the invasion of Ukraine, the RO has become the largest and most influential ultranationalist organisation in Russia, with 1.2 million subscribers to its official YouTube page and more than 660,000 readers on its main Telegram channel, as well as its own app, and enjoys support from powerful allies within the clergy and security services. 'This is a classic movement of Russian ethnic nationalists,' says Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA Centre, which monitors hate movements in Russia. 'There used to be [the slogan] 'Russia for Russians', but now that is considered too radical. But in essence, this is what it is about,' he says. RO also claims to stand for conservative moral and religious values, and steadfastly supports the Kremlin, including in its invasion of Ukraine. 'These points define their entire ideology… There have always been nationalists, but the fact that the largest and most prominent Russian nationalist organisation is fully loyal to the government – this is an unusual situation.' Folk singing and a stream of anti-immigrant messages RO was founded five years ago by Omsk politician Andrey Tkachuk, anti-abortion rights activist Yevgeny Chesnokov and Andrey Afanasyev, a host on the TV channel Spas, which is owned by the Russian Orthodox Church. One member told the BBC last year that the idea was to create solidarity among Russians themselves, as other, tightly-knit ethnic communities in Russia already look out for each other, for example, Chechens or Armenians. As such, many of the Community's activities are benign: Helping each other out with flat tyres, or organising festivities on Orthodox holidays such as Maslenitsa (Butter Week), with folk singing and dance performances in the run-up to Easter. But an examination of RO's various Telegram groups reveals a narrow focus on ethnic Russian interests, to the exclusion of Russia's other non-Slavic groups – although there are a handful of minority members – and a stream of anti-immigrant content. 'The blacks will devour everything in their path if the Slavs do not unite to somehow defend their borders and values,' a young female follower of the Community's Saratov branch, who can't be named for fear of repercussions, told Al Jazeera, using a derogatory slur. The group's other activities include vigilantism, often with the open or tacit support of the authorities, observers say. According to Verkhovsky, there are a number of tactics to target immigrants and non-Russian minorities. One is filing official complaints and making denunciations to authorities against what it deems immoral, such as homosexuality or abortion or 'Russophobic behaviour'. Neither of the former are technically illegal in Russia, but there are laws against 'propaganda' related to LGBTQ and 'childfree' themes. Another tactic is raids, such as the one on watermelon sellers in Novosibirsk. 'In the case of migrants, these are places where migrants live or work,' Verkhovsky explains. Members of the Russian Community or similar vigilante groups, for example, the smaller group Northern Man, typically appear where immigrants are working and find some sort of 'violation' – in the case of the Novosibirsk watermelon stall, unlicensed trading. They then detain the alleged violators and hand them over to the police. 'In principle, more or less any citizen can complain to the Russian Community and say he's been offended by some 'bad' people,' says Verkhovsky. 'Ideally, these 'bad' people are not Russian, and the person complaining is Russian. And then the Russian Community will go to protect him.' Sometimes, the group accompanies police on joint operations as 'volunteers', though this is rarer. Verkhovsky noted that attitudes towards RO by different police departments vary, and, while some seem to welcome the group, in other cases, officers have brought charges against Community members – only for prosecutors to drop them. Standing up to a 'crime wave'? The vigilantes claim they are standing up to an 'immigrant crime wave'. There is crime among foreigners in Russia: For instance, Georgians make up more than half of the 'thieves-in-law', an elite fraternity in the criminal underworld. Brawls and beatings involving gangs of young immigrant men often make headlines. However, these well-publicised incidents and individuals contribute only a small part of the overall crime statistics in Russia. According to Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia's Security Council, foreigners committed just 2 percent of all reported crime nationwide last year, while comprising roughly 4 percent of the population. Furthermore, Valentina Chupik, a lawyer who offers free legal help to migrants, told Al Jazeera that a substantial portion of these offences are related to improper paperwork, rather than victimising Russians. 'These crimes [missing paperwork] are the inevitable consequence of the organisation of illegal migration, which are committed by homeowners who rent apartments to migrants, but do not fulfil the obligation established by law to register them there,' she says. As well as immigrants, RO campaigns against alleged immorality and 'fifth-columnists' in Russian society. As a human rights advocate, Chupik is considered to be one of these fifth-columnists and has become used to receiving threats and obscenities, including from RO supporters. 'They threaten me regularly,' she says. 'My employees are also threatened, as well as volunteers. They sometimes have posts in their Telegram groups mentioning me. After that, they write to me and call me.' Messages seen by Al Jazeera tell Chupik, 'there's a special spot for you in hell' and to 'wait for the bottle', alluding to sexual assault. Al Jazeera contacted multiple representatives of RO for comment, but did not receive any response. Since a deadly attack on a Moscow music venue last year by ISIS-affiliated gunmen, there has been an upswing in xenophobia. The police have ramped up arrests and other restrictions on immigrants, especially those from Central Asia. Verkhovsky says it is hard to tell to what extent the public is actively hostile towards immigrants, but polling indicates concerns about immigration have sharply escalated. Support the war; gain acceptance In the 2000s, Russia suffered a scourge of far-right-wing violence, peaking in 2008 when skinhead gangs carried out 110 racist murders nationwide. In one particularly grisly episode, a Tajik and a Dagestani were shot dead and beheaded on camera in a woodland near Moscow. In 2022, two men were finally convicted of the double homicide after a third suspect, already imprisoned, incriminated them in his suicide note. For a time, available outlets for xenophobic sentiment dried up somewhat. 'In the 2010s, the authorities greatly suppressed this movement and almost all these organisations either stopped their activities or were simply eradicated,' Verkhovsky explained. 'And people who wanted to share these ideas and wanted to take part were either afraid or just did not know where to go at all.' Some far-right activists moved to Ukraine, where they found common cause with like-minded locals. But RO is a new phenomenon. It prefers to work alongside the authorities, largely forsaking the thuggery of old. And its brand of nationalism aligns with the Kremlin, supporting the invasion of Ukraine and actively fundraising for soldiers and their families. In interviews, founder Andrey Tkachuk has even denied the existence of Ukraine's national identity. 'The state's tolerance towards any groups that support the [war] has grown very much,' says Verkhovsky. 'In general, the authorities don't like any grassroots initiatives, but here they've quite notably tolerated it. This is possible only during a wartime situation.' While the Russian Community stays relatively within the confines of the law – acting as more of an unofficial auxiliary to law enforcement than the skinheads of the past, who eagerly filmed their brazen assaults – Verkhovsky points out 'many of the activists are, shall we say, inclined towards violence, and the leadership can't always hold them back.' In May, for instance, activists armed with pepper spray and a Taser allegedly burst into an apartment near St Petersburg where two men and a woman were drinking and taking illicit drugs. A fire broke out in the scuffle, and one of the men, of Armenian origin, died in the blaze, while the woman suffered serious injuries after jumping from a seventh-storey window. 'Let him burn,' the activists reportedly told witnesses, accusing the man of being a 'pusher'. And last week, a mass brawl erupted between dozens of RO members and Chechen and Ingush workers on a building site northeast of Moscow, after an Ingush security guard reportedly evicted a drunk man from the premises. On Sunday, the group revealed it had been branded an 'undesirable organisation' by local authorities in the Chelyabinsk region of west-central Russia on the grounds of 'extremism'. But RO has friends in high places: according to reports in Russian media, Alexander Bastrykin, the chief of Russia's Investigative Committee, has intervened on members' behalf several times, including filing charges against police officers who arrested them on various charges. And, in June, sources within the security services told reporters from the independent Russian news site, Meduza, that they use RO as a tool for managing 'interethnic conflicts'. Blessed by a vicar Another difference from the old, racist gangs is the influence of the Orthodox Church. The group has campaigned against mosques, requires its members to profess Orthodoxy, and has been blessed by a vicar on behalf of Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, himself. 'Primarily the Russian Community, but also other organisations of the same type, have a very good relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church,' says Verkhovsky. 'And I mean not just individual priests who sympathise with them, but at the level of high-ranking officials. This is quite unusual. How far it will go, it's hard to say, but it's very noticeable.'
Al Jazeera
8 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Dahiyeh families displaced by war now trapped by identity
Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon – Fatima Kandeel, 43, and her two sons moved into a new rented apartment in the southern suburbs of Beirut in March. They had been staying with her sister Aida nearby for four months after a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon had stopped the worst, but not all, of Israel's attacks on Lebanon, and it felt good to have their own place. In their barely furnished living room in Laylake, Dahiyeh, with only two armchairs and a shisha pipe between them, the walls make clear where the family stands. A framed photo of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hangs beside a martyr's portrait of Fatima's 21-year-old nephew, a Hezbollah fighter killed in an Israeli air strike in Jnoub in October. In the rubble, scraps of home When the war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah declared its support for Palestine and escalated tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border for about a year until Israel invaded and launched full-scale war. The suburbs of Dahiyeh have been repeatedly targeted in Israeli strikes as it is widely recognised as a Hezbollah stronghold. The family's previous home in Dahiyeh's Hay el-Selom, a 10-minute walk from Laylake, was destroyed by an Israeli air strike in October. Yet Fatima was warm and hopeful in early June, her hazel eyes still smiling from below her hijab while recounting the pain of loss, displacement and hardship. Energetic and confident, she spoke expressively, using her hands as if she were on stage. Like many Lebanese hosts, she offered drinks and an invitation for lunch while chatting about what it was like to feel under attack in Dahiyeh and whether that changed her relationship with her neighbourhood. After her family's home was destroyed and they fled to Aida's, Fatima said, her sons, 24-year-old Hassan and 20-year-old Hussein, managed to salvage two wardrobes and a bed from the rubble along with other scraps from their lives there. Proud of that small victory, Fatima flung open the bedroom doors to show off the two wardrobes restored to the point where it would be hard to guess they had been in a bombing. The rescued bed is used by one of her sons after getting new slats and a new lease on life. 'These are the most important pieces of furniture in the house,' she said, gently running her hand over one of the damaged surfaces. 'They're historical [because they survived]. I was so happy we got them back.' Hassan and Hussein found more in the rubble of their home: a stuffed toy that Hassan used to play with and a few of the books from their mother's library. As she spoke, Fatima held the stuffed toy in her hands, smiling and looking at it. Hussein was quietly observing his mother as she shared her thoughts. 'He used to sleep with it beside him every night,' Fatima recalled. 'I couldn't save much from their childhood after my divorce, but I kept this, and now it survived the war too.' In her bedroom, a small table holds a stack of books about history, religion and culture – a fragment of what she once owned. Scars, visible and invisible From the living room balcony, the scars of war are visible. The top floors of a neighbouring building have been destroyed, the lower floors still standing – a daily reminder of what was lost. Yet Fatima holds Dahiyeh dear and is determined to stay. 'I love the people here,' she said. 'Everyone is kind. … Dahiyeh is home.' Hussein agreed that he feels most at home in Dahiyeh with its strong sense of community and friends and neighbours all around. During the war, he struggled emotionally, constantly stressed and getting into fights. He has seen two therapists but hasn't felt much improvement. Unlike his mother, Hussein is open to the idea of leaving Dahiyeh, but he pointed out practicalities – rents and the overall cost of living outside Dahiyeh are much higher if they could find a place to rent. And, he said, they could face sectarian discrimination if they relocate. The family had to leave Dahiyeh briefly during Israel's war on Lebanon and sought shelter in the nearby coastal Beirut suburb of Jnah. Fatima still carries a painful memory from that time. A Jnah grocery store owner snidely remarked: 'Look at those trashy Shia people,' as he looked at newly arrived families dressed in the slippers and pyjamas they fled in. The comment left a scar, and she refuses to leave Dahiyeh again. 'If war comes again, what do you teach the next generation?' she asked. 'That it's OK to give up your home? Or that you stand your ground?' 'If it were just me, I'd stay' While Fatima has chosen to stay in Dahiyeh, her 55-year-old sister, Iman, wants to leave. Iman lives with her husband, Ali, a plastering foreman, and their four children: Hassan, 25, a programmer; Fatima, 19, a university student; and 16-year-old twins Mariam and Marwa, both in school. All the children still share a single bedroom in their modest but light and joyful home. The living room was full of laughter as Iman sat with Mariam and Hassan, passing around chocolate and juice while cousins chatted in the background. There was teasing as they shared memories of fear, displacement and resilience. Dahiyeh has never been entirely safe. Its history has been shaped by the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War and Israeli assaults, including the devastating 2006 war. It's a cycle, Iman said – another war, another wave of fear and displacement. During Israel's most recent war on Lebanon, the family fled multiple times. They first went to Kayfoun village in the Mount Lebanon governorate in late September, but tensions there were high, and a local man spread rumours of imminent Israeli strikes, trying to scare displaced families away. They left Kayfoun after a week and fled to Tripoli in the north, where life was quieter and the presence of nearby relatives offered some comfort, but mistrust lingered. Iman was often judged by her hijab, which marked her as 'resistance-aligned' to people who blamed Hezbollah for Israel's attacks on Lebanon. 'We all became introverts,' Hassan recalled. 'We stayed home most of the time, but we had relatives nearby and met some good friends. We'd sit together, play cards. It helped.' In early October, they followed friends to Iraq's capital, Baghdad, where they were welcomed warmly – more warmly, they said, than in parts of Lebanon. After the ceasefire, they returned. 'There's no place better than our country,' Iman insisted, but Dahiyeh does not feel safe to her any more despite her deep ties to the neighbourhood, so she is searching for a new home – anywhere that's safer. 'If it were just me, I'd stay,' she said. 'But I have kids. I have to protect them.' 'They don't rent to Shia families' Iman's son Hassan recalls the first time Israel bombed near their apartment – on April 1 in breach of the November ceasefire. 'I just wanted out,' he said. 'I don't care where we go. Just somewhere that isn't a target.' But finding a new place to rent is far from simple. They considered moving to Hazmieh. It is close to Dahiyeh but not part of it, making it relatively safer. And it would be closer to Iman's sister Mariam, who lives there. But Iman said: 'In Hazmieh, most of them don't rent to Shia families, or they would double the price.' Despite the mounting fear, the family does not want to leave Lebanon, and Hassan has turned down a job offer abroad. They're exhausted, they said, but not ready to abandon their country. Even in the midst of war, Hassan said, his parents did not want to leave Dahiyeh. He had to work on convincing them to go first to Kayfoun, then eventually Iraq. It was the same after the ceasefire with long discussions about whether to leave, and it was his mother's fear for her children that made her eventually agree. But more than a month after they spoke to Al Jazeera in early June, they're still searching for a place that will take them and that they can afford.
Al Jazeera
12 hours 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.
