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Al Jazeera
4 days ago
- Business
- 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.
Al Jazeera
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,241
How things stand on Saturday, July 19: Fighting Russian drones and glide bombs killed several people in Ukraine on Friday, officials said, including a 52-year-old train driver in the Dnipropetrovsk region, a 66-year-old woman killed in her home in Kostiantynivka, and a 64-year-old man killed in a glide bomb attack on a building site in the Zaporizhia region. Russian forces have staged a mass drone attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa, setting fire to at least one multistorey apartment building, the city's mayor, Gennadiy Trukhanov, said early on Saturday. At least 20 drones converged on the city in the early hours of this morning. Russian air defences intercepted or destroyed 10 Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow overnight on Friday, the city's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said. Ukraine's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, said his forces are standing firm in defending the city of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub in the eastern Donetsk region that has weathered months of Russian attacks, and the Novopavlivka settlement in the Zaporizhia region. Praising the troops defending Pokrovsk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces 'trying to advance and enter Ukrainian cities and villages' will not have 'a chance of survival'. Authorities in Russian-controlled Crimea have introduced an information blackout designed to counter Ukrainian drone, missile and sabotage attacks. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea, said he signed a decree banning media outlets and social media users from publishing photos, video or other content that revealed the location of Russian forces or details of Ukrainian attacks on the Black Sea peninsula. Military aid Australia's government said it delivered M1A1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine as part of a 245 million Australian dollar ($160m) package to help the country defend itself against Russia in their ongoing war. The United States has moved Germany ahead of Switzerland to receive the next Patriot air defence systems to come off production lines in the US. The expedited delivery to Germany will allow Berlin to send two Patriot batteries it already has to Ukraine, according to a US media report. Leaders in Ukraine and Washington are in detailed talks on a deal involving US investment in Kyiv's domestic drone production, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said. She added the deal would also lead to the US purchasing 'a large batch of Ukrainian drones'. President Zelenskyy said he discussed missile supplies and funding for interceptor drones to counteract Russian attacks in a call with French President Emmanuel Macron. 'I would especially like to highlight our agreement on pilot training for Mirage jets – France is ready to train additional pilots using additional aircraft,' Zelenskyy said on X. Sanctions The European Union approved its 18th package of sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine, aimed at dealing further blows to Russia's oil and energy industry. Eighteen officers working for Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU, along with three units, have been hit with sanctions by the United Kingdom over their role in a 2022 bomb attack on a theatre in southern Ukraine that killed hundreds of civilians. The officers were also accused of targeting the family of a former Russian spy who was later poisoned in the UK with a nerve agent. President Zelenskyy thanked the European Union for the latest sanctions targeting Russia and called for further punitive measures against Moscow. 'This decision is essential and timely, especially now, as a response to the fact that Russia has intensified the brutality of the strikes on our cities and villages,' he said. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the Russian economy would withstand the EU sanctions package and said Moscow would intensify its strikes against Ukraine. India has said it does not support 'unilateral sanctions' by the EU, after Brussels imposed penalties on Russia that included a Rosneft oil refinery in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Greek tanker operators involved in shipping approved Russian oil exports are expected to continue doing so despite the new wave of tougher sanctions by the EU that will further tighten restrictions, shipping sources told the Reuters news agency. WhatsApp should prepare to leave the Russian market, a lawmaker in Moscow who regulates the IT sector said on Friday, warning that the messaging app owned by Meta Platforms is very likely to be put on a list of restricted software in Russia. Politics and diplomacy The Kremlin said that it did not believe the tougher stance that Donald Trump has adopted towards Russia over its war in Ukraine means the end of US-Russia talks aimed at reviving their battered ties. The Kremlin also said that it agreed with a statement by Zelenskyy that there needed to be more momentum around peace talks between the warring sides. Zelenskyy appointed former Defence Minister Rustem Umerov as the secretary of the country's National Security and Defence Council, according to a decree published on Friday on the president's website. Umerov's appointment follows a reshuffle of the Ukrainian government and the appointment of a new prime minister. Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Ukraine during a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday, the Kremlin press service said. Putin said Russia was 'committed to a political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict in Ukraine' and thanked Erdogan for facilitating Russia-Ukraine bilateral talks. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has cast doubt on the possibility of Ukraine joining the EU by 2034, saying accession was unlikely to come at a point affecting the bloc's medium-term finance plans, which run to 2034. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had said Kyiv could join the EU before 2030 if the country continues its reforms. Russian courts sentenced 135 people to lengthy prison sentences in connection with a mass anti-Israel protest in October 2023 at an airport in the predominantly Muslim Dagestan region, the country's Investigative Committee said on Friday. Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters stormed an airport in the city of Makhachkala, where a plane from Tel Aviv had just arrived, over Israel's war on Gaza. Regional security Russia views recent comments by a top US general about NATO's ability to swiftly capture the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad as hostile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. General Christopher Donahue, the US Army Europe and Africa commander, said NATO could seize Kaliningrad 'from the ground in a timeframe that is unheard of and faster than we've ever been able to do', according to a report. Almost a third of Italians believe the country will be directly involved in a war within five years, but only 16 percent of those of fighting age would be willing to take up arms, a new survey shows. The survey by the Centre for Social Investment Studies showed 39 percent of Italians aged between 18 and 45 would declare themselves as pacifist conscientious objectors, 19 percent would try to evade conscription another way, and 26 percent would prefer Italy to hire foreign mercenaries.
Al Jazeera
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,228
Here is how things stand on Sunday, July 6 : Fighting Ukraine's military claimed an attack on the Borisoglebsk airbase in Russia's Voronezh region, hitting a depot containing glide bombs and training aircraft. Russian officials did not immediately comment on the attack. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russian air defences shot down four Ukrainian drones headed for the Russian capital, forcing one of Moscow's main airports to temporarily halt outgoing flights. This came as Russia's Ministry of Defence said its air defences had intercepted 48 Ukrainian drones in a period of just over five hours into Saturday evening, and 45 more during the day. Earlier, the ministry said that 94 drones had been destroyed over Russia overnight. In Ukraine, the Air Force said Russia fired 322 drones and decoys into the country overnight into Saturday. Of these, 157 were shot down and 135 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed. Ukraine's western Khmelnytskyi region was the main target of the attack, according to Ukraine's Air Force. Regional Governor Serhii Tyurin said no damage, injuries or deaths had been reported. Russian forces occupied the Ukrainian settlements of Zelenyi Kut and Novoukrainka near the administrative border between the Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions, Ukrainian military blog DeepState reported on Telegram. Ukraine's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, warned on Saturday of a possible new Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region, in northeastern Ukraine. The Kyiv Independent reported that explosions damaged a gas pipeline and destroyed a water pipeline that supplied military facilities in Russia's Vladivostok, citing an unnamed intelligence source. Politics and diplomacy After speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, United States President Donald Trump said Ukraine would need Patriot missiles for its defence. Trump also voiced frustration over Russian President Vladimir Putin's failure to end the fighting. Trump told reporters he was 'very unhappy' about his earlier call with Putin. 'It just seems like he wants to go all the way and just keep killing people… It's not good. I wasn't happy with it,' he said. In a post on X, Zelenskyy described his call with Trump as 'extremely fruitful', confirming that the pair 'discussed air defence'. 'I'm grateful for the readiness to assist,' Zelenskyy said. 'Patriot systems are the key to defending against ballistic threats.' United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned Russia's 'large-scale drone and missile attacks' on Ukraine on Friday, describing the attacks as 'reportedly the largest in over three years of war'. Guterres also expressed alarm at the 'dangerous escalation and the growing number of civilian casualties' as well as concern about disruption to power at the 'Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, once again underlining the ongoing risks to nuclear safety'. Economy Bloomberg reported that US investment firm BlackRock paused efforts to raise funds for a multibillion-dollar Ukraine recovery fund after Trump was elected, leading France to step in to work on an alternative fund.
Al Jazeera
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
UN chief ‘strongly condemns' Russian drone assault on Ukraine
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned a Russian drone and missile attack against Ukraine this week that has been described as the largest such assault in the three-year war. In a statement on Saturday, Guterres's spokesperson said the Russian strikes 'disrupted the power supply to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, once again underlining the ongoing risks to nuclear safety'. 'The secretary-general is alarmed by this dangerous escalation and the growing number of civilian casualties,' the statement read. Ukrainian officials said Moscow fired more than 500 drones and 11 missiles at the capital Kyiv overnight into Friday in an attack that killed one person, injured at least 23 others and damaged buildings across the city. The sounds of air raid sirens, kamikaze drones and booming detonations reverberated until dawn. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack 'deliberately massive and cynical'. Russia has been stepping up its long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities as United States-led efforts to reach a ceasefire to end the war have stalled. On Saturday, Ukraine's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, warned of a possible new Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region, a part of northeastern Ukraine that has seen heavy fighting since Russia invaded in 2022. Moscow has been slowly grinding its way along several parts of the Ukrainian front line in recent months, throwing forth continuous waves of infantry as it seeks to press home its advantage in troops and munitions. Russian forces have already pushed into northern Ukraine's Sumy region over the past months, carving out a small foothold there. Russia fired 322 drones and decoys into Ukraine overnight into Saturday, Ukraine's air force said. Of these, 157 were shot down and 135 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed. Ukraine has also ramped up its retaliatory strikes in Russia, with the Ministry of Defence saying it shot down 94 Ukrainian drones overnight into Saturday, along with 45 further drones in the morning and early afternoon. Four Ukrainian drones also were shot down while approaching Moscow on Saturday, according to Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Meanwhile, a woman was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in the Rostov region, the acting governor said. Separately, the Ukrainian military said in a statement on social media on Saturday that its special forces struck Russia's Borisoglebsk military airfield in the Voronezh region, hitting a glide bomb store and a trainer aircraft. The military said that other aircraft were also likely hit, without giving details. The governor of Voronezh, Alexander Gusev, wrote on Telegram that more than 25 drones were destroyed over the region overnight. He said a power line was temporarily damaged, but made no mention of a military airfield. The attacks come as Ukraine's Zelenskyy said on Friday that he had a 'very important and fruitful' phone conversation with US President Donald Trump in his efforts to strengthen Ukraine's air defences. The US president also spoke to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a day earlier in a conversation that he said was disappointing. 'I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he's there, and I'm very disappointed,' Trump said after the call on Thursday. 'I'm just saying I don't think he's looking to stop, and that's too bad.' Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that it was 'preferable' to achieve the goals of Russia's invasion through political and diplomatic means. 'But as long as that is not possible, we are continuing the special operation,' he said.
Al Jazeera
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,221
Here is how things stand on Sunday, June 29: A Russian drone attack killed a teacher and her husband in Ukraine's Odesa, and wounded 14 others, according to Ukrainian officials. Three of the victims, including a child, were in critical condition. At least two others were killed in another Russian attack on the villages of Kostiantynivka and Ivanopillia in the eastern region of Donetsk on Friday, according to Governor Vadym Filashkin. Explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Saturday night, with Mayor Vitali Klitschko warning residents to take shelter from Russian drones 'heading for the city', according to the official Ukrinform news agency. Russia's Ministry of Defence said Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Chervona Zirka in Donetsk. The ministry later said it had also seized the area between the Vovcha and Mokri Yaly rivers. Top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskii also said on Telegram that Russia's military was 'surging towards' the key city of Kostiantynivka in Donetsk, but that 'apart from sustaining numerous losses, [it] has achieved nothing'. In Russia, a Ukrainian drone attack caused several injuries to a 43-year-old man, including a traumatic brain injury, in the village of Glushkovo in the Kursk region, the TASS news agency reported, citing a local official. Ukraine's SBU security service said Ukrainian forces using special drones attacked the Kirovske military airfield in Russian-occupied Crimea, destroying three attack helicopters and an anti-aircraft missile system. Russia's military said it destroyed 64 Ukrainian drones over western Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea overnight and into Saturday. Politics and diplomacy Poland's outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, during a visit to Kyiv, asked Ukraine to 'please be patient' during the handover to his nationalist successor, Karol Nawrocki. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters he would 'of course' invite Nawrocki to Ukraine after he assumed office. Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker and chairperson of the Ukrainian Parliament, told Ukraine's ongoing marathon television broadcast that a bill is being drafted to hold elections after the war, Ukrinform reported.
