Russian forces rapidly pierce Ukraine's lines
The Ukrainian DeepState blog, which retains close connections with the military, showed Russian advances around 10 kilometres over around two days, punching deep into a narrow sliver of Ukraine on the front. The corridor, now apparently under Russian control, threatens the town of Dobropillia, a mining hub that civilians are fleeing and that has been coming under Russian drone attacks. It also further isolates the embattled and destroyed town of Kostiantynivka, which is one of the last large urban areas in the Donetsk region still held by Ukraine.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based observatory, said Russia was dispatching small sabotage groups forwards. It said it was "premature" to call the Russian advances in the Dobropillia area "an operational-level breakthrough". The Operational-Tactical Group Donetsk, which oversees parts of the front in the industrial region, also said Russia was probing Ukrainian lines with small sabotage groups, describing battles as "complex, unpleasant and dynamic".
Trump, who is scheduled to meet Putin on Friday, has described the summit as a "feel-out meeting" to gauge the Russian leader's ideas for ending the war in Ukraine. European leaders, meanwhile, are rushing to ensure respect for Kyiv's interests. "We see that the Russian army is not preparing to end the war. On the contrary, they are making movements that indicate preparations for new offensive operations," Zelensky said in a statement on social media.
Moscow's army, which attacked Ukraine in 2022, has made costly but incremental gains across the sprawling front in recent months and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions while still fighting to control them. Ukrainian police, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that Russian attacks in the past hours had killed three people and wounded 12 others, including a child.
Meanwhile, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Tuesday that he did not support an EU leaders' statement on Ukraine's right to "choose its own destiny" released ahead of a US-Russia summit this week. Orban said the "only sensible action" for EU leaders was "to initiate an EU-Russia summit, based on the example of the US-Russia meeting". "Let's give peace a chance!," he said on X, describing the Trump-Putin summit as "historic".
The EU leaders' "statement attempts to set conditions for a meeting to which leaders of the EU were not invited," Orban said.
"The fact that the EU was left on the sidelines is sad enough as it is. The only thing that could make things worse is if we started providing instructions from the bench," he added. Orban regularly breaks EU unity on Ukraine, to which he has refused to send arms. Orban is also a Trump ally, describing the Republican president as a "dear friend".
Trump, in a press conference on Monday, in turn, described Orban as "a very, very smart man", saying he asked him whether he thinks Ukraine can defeat Russia. "He looked at me like what a stupid question. He said Russia is a massive country and they win their country, they win their lives through wars," Trump added.
Europe again increased its military aid to Ukraine in May and June, unlike the United States, and is depending increasingly on its defence industry rather than existing weapons stockpiles, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy said on Tuesday. Europe, the United Kingdom included, sent or earmarked a total of 80.5 billion euros ($93.7 billion) in military aid between the start of the war and the end of June 2025, against 64.6 billion euros allocated by the United States. — AFP
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