Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,247

Here is how things stand on Friday, July 25 :

Fighting

• Ukraine and Russia have attacked targets on each other’s territory after brief direct talks between the two sides in Istanbul failed to make any progress on steps to end nearly three-and-a-half years of war.
• Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said Russia launched 103 drones and four missiles during its overnight attack, hitting civilian infrastructure, including seaports, transport hubs, and residential areas.
• One person was killed and four others injured after Russian forces staged the latest in a series of mass drone attacks on Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa. The attack also caused several fires as well as damage to the historic centre, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
• At least two people were killed and at least 33 others wounded after Russian glide bombs struck a residential neighbourhood in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city in the northeast of the country, officials said.
• One person was killed in a drone attack in Ukraine’s Sumy region on the northern border with Russia, where Moscow’s forces have established a foothold in recent months.
• Russia also attacked the central Ukrainian region of Cherkasy overnight, injuring seven people, including a nine-year-old child, and damaging more than a dozen residential apartment buildings.
• Emergency officials in Russia’s Krasnodar region on the Black Sea said debris from a falling drone struck and killed a woman in the Adler district near the resort city of Sochi. A second woman was being treated in hospital for serious injuries.
• The administrative head of the Sirius federal district, south of Sochi, said a drone hit an oil terminal, giving no further details. Russia’s aviation authority also said operations were suspended at Sochi airport for about four hours.

• Russian forces have taken control of the villages of Zvirove and Novoekonomichne in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the Russian Ministry of Defence said. The claim could not be independently verified.

• Russian forces are making every effort to establish buffer zones along the border with Ukraine, state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

Protesters in Kyiv hold placards during a demonstration against a law that removes the independence of the NABU and SAPO anticorruption agencies. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has backtracked on the proposed legislation after pressure from nationwide protests and the European Union [Tetiana Dzhafarova/AFP]

Military aid

• The United States Department of State has approved potential military sales, including air defence, to Ukraine worth $330m, the Pentagon said.
• An Indian company – Ideal Detonators Private Limited – shipped $1.4m worth of an explosive compound with military uses to Russia in December, according to Indian customs data seen by the Reuters news agency, despite US threats to impose sanctions on any entity supporting Russia’s Ukraine war effort.

Politics and diplomacy

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has blamed Russia for rejecting a proposal presented during the Istanbul talks for an immediate and complete ceasefire. He said that instead of accepting a truce deal, Russian drones struck residential buildings in Ukraine.

• Zelenskyy has submitted draft legislation to restore the independence of Ukraine’s anticorruption agency NABU and anticorruption prosecution unit SAPO, reversing course after an outburst of public criticism over his attempt to remove their status as independent organisations.

• The Kremlin said it was hard to see how Russian President Vladimir Putin could meet Zelenskyy before the end of August, RIA reported. Earlier, a Ukrainian official suggested that Kyiv had proposed a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting in August, within the 50-day deadline set by the US for both sides to reach a ceasefire deal.

• The European Union has expressed its expectations that China will respond to the EU’s concerns and use its influence to urge Russia towards accepting a ceasefire in Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said following her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

• Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has accused German Chancellor Friedrich Merz of pursuing a path of “militarisation” and said this was a cause for concern. She said Berlin is pursuing an openly hostile policy, and that Merz was stepping up anti-Russian rhetoric “literally every day”.

Economy

• Ukraine’s Central Bank Governor Andriy Pyshnyy said his government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – Kyiv’s key international lender – were working on a new lending programme. Ukraine currently has a $15.5bn four-year lending programme with the IMF that is set to expire in 2027. Kyiv has received about $10.6bn under the programme so far.

Source:

Al Jazeera and news agencies