RussiaUkraine

Here are the key events on day 1,300 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, September 16 :

Fighting

• A Ukrainian drone attack killed two women in the village of Golovchino in Russia’s Belgorod region, Russia’s state TASS news agency reports.
• A man who was seriously injured in a Ukrainian drone attack in Russia’s Belgorod region in April has died in hospital, TASS reports.
• TASS also reported that Russian forces shot down 82 Ukrainian drones in a 24-hour period.
• Russian forces have captured the village of Olhivske in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Monday.
• Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down 59 of 84 Russian drones fired overnight, while Russia also fired three guided missiles.
• The commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, Robert Brovdi, reported that a Starlink outage affected the entire front line for about 30 minutes, starting at 7:28am local time (04:28 GMT). Ukraine’s forces are heavily reliant on SpaceX’s Starlink terminals for battlefield communications and some drone operations.

Regional security

• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Poland’s State Protection Service “neutralised a drone operating over government buildings” and the Presidential Palace. Police are investigating the drone incident, and two citizens of Belarus have been detained, Tusk added in a post on X.
• Announcing that the United Kingdom will deploy fighter jets to Poland, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, “Russia’s reckless behaviour is a direct threat to European security and a violation of international law, which is why the UK will support NATO’s efforts to bolster its eastern flank.”
• The UK Foreign Office on Monday called the recent Russian drone incursions into Polish and Romanian airspace “utterly unacceptable”, and summoned Russian Ambassador Andrei Kelin.
• “Russia should understand that its continued aggression only strengthens the unity between NATO allies,” the Foreign Office said in a statement.

• Russia and Belarus continued their Zapad 2025 joint military drills on Monday, with Russia launching a Kalibr missile from a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
• United States military officers observed the joint war games in Belarus, where they were told by Belarusian Minister of Defence Viktor Khrenin that they could look at “whatever is of interest for you”.
• Denmark’s defence minister attended a military exercise in Greenland on Monday with his Icelandic and Norwegian counterparts, the Danish Ministry of Defence said. The US did not send observers.
• Danish Minister of Defence Troels Lund Poulsen said in a statement: “The current security situation requires us to significantly strengthen the armed forces’ presence in the Arctic and North Atlantic.”

Tariffs and sanctions

• US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday that the administration of President Donald Trump would not impose additional tariffs on Chinese goods to halt China’s purchases of Russian oil unless European countries hit China and India with steep duties of their own.
• “We expect the Europeans to do their share now, and we are not moving forward without the Europeans,” Bessent said.
• Russia warned on Monday that it would go after any European state that sought to take its assets after reports that the European Union was looking for new ways to leverage hundreds of billions of dollars of frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine.

Moscow and Minsk insist, however, that the drills are defensive, adding that Western security concerns are ‘nonsense’.

Russia has showcased some of its advanced weapons while conducting a joint military drill with Belarusian troops amid heightened tensions with NATO countries following alleged violations of the airspaces of Poland and Romania by Moscow.

Approximately 7,000 troops, including 6,000 Belarusian soldiers, participated in exercises held at locations in Belarus and Russia.

Russia conducted a test strike with a Kalibr missile from the nuclear submarine named Arkhangelsk in the Barents Sea during the joint Russia-Belarus “Zapad” military drills, Russian news agency Interfax reported on Monday. The strike on the designated target was carried out by the submarine from an underwater position, Interfax reported.

Moscow and Minsk insisted on Tuesday that the drills are defensive, meant to simulate a response to an invasion.

But NATO states along the alliance’s eastern flank see them as a threat, particularly after alleged Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace last week. Warsaw has since warned that “open conflict” is closer now than at any point since World War II. Romania on Sunday accused Russia of drone incursion during its attacks on Ukraine.

Britain’s Labour Party-led government on Monday announced its fighter jets will fly air defence missions over Poland to counter aerial threats.

Russia has been at war with Ukraine since it launched a ground invasion in 2022.

Belarus’s Defence Minister Viktor Khrenin dismissed the NATO concerns.

“We have heard a lot of things … that we are threatening NATO, that we are going to invade the Baltic states,” he told reporters at the Barysaw base, east of Minsk. “Simply put, all kinds of nonsense.”

Still, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania have stepped up security, closing borders and carrying out counter-drills.

Belarus invites international observers

Belarus allowed rare media access, inviting foreign journalists, TV crews and even US army officers.

“Thank you for the invitation,” Bryan Shoupe, the US military attache, said as he shook hands with the Belarusian defence minister.

“Give the American guests the best places and show them everything that interests them,” the defence minister said. Cameras captured Khrenin shaking hands with two US Army officers, thanking them for attending.

The drills were a tightly choreographed show of force. Camouflaged armoured vehicles splashed across a river, helicopters swooped low over treetops, and young conscripts loaded shells into artillery systems. Others prepared drones for mock strikes.

Reporters were excluded from the naval manoeuvres in the Barents and Baltic seas, as well as the exercises near Grodna, close to the Polish and Lithuanian borders.

Minsk highlighted the limited scale of the drills, stressing that only 7,000 troops were involved. By comparison, the 2021 Zapad exercises included about 200,000 personnel, just months before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Khrenin said the reduced numbers reflected Minsk’s efforts to ease tensions. “We have nothing to hide,” he insisted. “We are only preparing to defend our country.”

Belarus also pointed to the international presence, saying observers from 23 countries attended, many of them long-standing allies of Minsk and Moscow.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Evhen Ihnatov was a young teenager when Russian forces occupied his hometown.

In the eight months of 2022 when the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was overtaken, his mother was killed and his brother was forcibly held in Russia.

“We buried her in the countryside. Grandma was beside herself,” Ihnatov told Al Jazeera of the tragedy that befell the family when his mother, Tamara, died. He was aged just 13.

On October 6, 2022, Tamara, 54, had boarded a minibus that was ultimately blown to pieces on a bridge by a misdirected Ukrainian missile.

His brother left for a Russian camp on the day she died.

Now 16 and living in Mykolaiv, studying in a college to become a car mechanic and working part time in a pizzeria, Ihnatov has spoken to Al Jazeera about life in occupied Ukraine.

After graduation, he said he might sign a contract with the army.

But that ambition felt impossible when he was living under Russian control, a period he survived with angst, the denial of all things Russian and a sense of dark humour.

Kherson is the administrative capital of the eponymous southern region the size of Belgium, which mostly lies on the left bank of the Dnipro River, which bisects Ukraine.

Russians occupied the region and Kherson city, which sits on the Dnipro’s right bank, in early March 2022 and rolled out in November that year.

According to Ihnatov, other witnesses and rights groups, Ukrainians were mistreated, assaulted, abducted and tortured from day one. Russia regularly denies intentionally harming civilians.

“They beat people, a real lot,” Ihnatov said. “Those who really stood up are no more.”

A former Ukrainian serviceman he knew was assaulted so violently that he spent a week in an intensive care unit, Ihnatov said.

In the first weeks of occupation, Kherson city was rocked by protest rallies as Ukrainians tried to resist the new rulers. Moscow-appointed authorities soon packed hundreds of people into prisons or basements in large buildings.

“Detained for minor or imaginary transgressions, they were kept for months and used for forced labour or sexual violence,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a historian with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.

Survivors have said they were forced to dig trenches, clean streets, trim trees and bushes, and haul garbage.

At least 17 women and men were raped by Russian soldiers, Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general at the time, said in May 2023.

Rallies stopped because of the crackdown, but most of the locals remained pro-Ukrainian, Ihnatov believes. He said the fewer pro-Russian locals were mostly elderly and nostalgic about their Soviet-era youth, attracted to the idea of Russia because of Moscow’s promises of higher pensions.

But to him, the Russian soldiers did not look like “liberators”.

He said many drank heavily and sported prison tattoos. In July 2022, the Wagner mercenary group began recruiting tens of thousands of inmates from Russian prisons with promises of presidential pardons and high pay.

“They look at you like you’re meat, like you’re chicken,” Ihnatov said.

He said ethnic Russian soldiers or ethnic Ukrainians from the separatist region of Donbas in the east whom he saw several times a day on patrols or just moving around were often hostile towards Ukrainian teenagers. Ethnic Chechens were more relaxed and gave them sweets or food, he said.

Fearful of Russian forces, the Ihnatovs – Evhen’s seven siblings and their single, disabled mother who occasionally worked as a seamstress – moved to their grandmother’s house outside Kherson. While still occupied, the village was not as heavily patrolled as the city.

There was a cow, some ducks and a kitchen garden, but they were cash-strapped and moved back to the city right in time for the new school year that began on September 1, 2022.

But Russian-appointed authorities were facing an education disaster.

Many teachers had quit to protest against the Moscow-imposed curriculum, and enrolment fell as some parents preferred to take a risk and keep their children in Ukrainian schools online.

A Russian curriculum was introduced in all of Kherson’s 174 public schools, and by August, Russia-appointed officials and masked soldiers began knocking on doors, threatening parents and offering them monthly subsidies of $35 per child who would go to a Russia-run school.

Ihnatov’s eldest sister, Tetiana, enrolled her school-aged siblings.

Students at Ihnatov’s school were herded into the schoolyard to listen to the Russian anthem. But he and his friends “just turned around and went to have a smoke”, he said.

The school was not far from his apartment. He remembered seeing about 50 children staring at Russian flags and coats of arms on the school building.

His class had 22 students. They were surprised by an oversimplified approach of new teachers who treated the students like they knew nothing.

“They explained everything, every little thing,” he said.

Communication between students changed. Their conversations became cautious, and they did not discuss sensitive issues, worried others would overhear them.

“Everything was happening outside the school,” he said.

The new curriculum was taught in Russian and emphasised Russia’s “greatness” while Ukrainian was reduced to two “foreign language” lessons a week.

“Everything was about references to Russia,” Ihnatov said.

However, to his clique, Russia’s efforts appeared half-hearted.

Teachers were more interested in fake reporting and just gave away A’s, he said.

“They didn’t force us to study, couldn’t make us,” he said.

“I’d crank up the music in my earphones, didn’t care about what they were saying, because anyway I’d get an A. We got good grades for nothing. They wanted to show that everyone studies well,” he said.

Only his history teacher would confront his group of friends while “the rest were scared,” he said.

Their rebelliousness could have cost them more than reprimands had Russians stayed in Kherson longer, according to observers.

“What they did only worked because the occupation was short term. Had the occupation gone on, the screws would have gotten tighter,” Victoria Novikova, a senior researcher with The Reckoning Project, a global team of journalists and lawyers documenting, publicising and building cases of Russia’s alleged war crimes in Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.

After school, Ihnatov took odd jobs in grocery shops or the city market and hung out with his friends.

Ukraine ‘never existed’

The new teachers paid special attention to history classes. Instructors from Russia or annexed Crimea were promised as much as $130 a day for teaching in Kherson, the RBK-Ukraine news website reported.

New textbooks “proved” that Ukraine was an “artificial state” whose statehood “never existed” before the 1991 Soviet collapse.

The erasure of Ukrainian identity went hand in hand with the alleged plunder of cultural riches.

Russians robbed the giant Kherson regional library of first editions of Ukrainian classics and other valuable folios and works of art after the building was repeatedly shelled and staffers were denied entry, its director said.

“My eyes don’t want to see it. My heart doesn’t want to accept it,” Nadiya Korotun told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, thousands of children in occupied areas were reportedly taken to summer camps in Crimea or Russia – and never came back as part of what Kyiv calls a campaign of abduction and brainwashing.

Kyiv has accused Moscow of forcibly taking 20,000 Ukrainian children away and placing them in foster families or orphanages.

In 2023, The Hague-based International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the “unlawful deportation and transfer of children”.

Some of the abducted kids “broke”, a presidential adviser on children’s rights said.

“They are really maximally broken. Russians do absolutely everything to achieve that,” Daria Herasymchuk told Al Jazeera. “There were cases of Stockholm syndrome when [the abducted children] became Russian patriots.”

Ihnatov’s elder brother Vlad, 16 at the time, was among those who went to a camp – and was forcibly kept in Russia for a year until his sister travelled there to get him back.

In an unfortunate twist of fate, he had left for the camp hours before his mother was killed.

He was transported to a summer camp on Russia’s Black Sea coast and then transferred to the city of Yevpatoria in annexed Crimea, where he continued school – and was not allowed to return home.

His sister Tetiana travelled there to spend a week in a “basement” while Russian security officers “checked her”, Ihnatov said.

They returned to Ukraine via Belarus and Poland and “don’t talk much” about the experience, he said.

A month after his mother’s death, Moscow decided to withdraw its forces from Kherson city and the region’s right-bank area.

Ukrainian forces were greeted like long-lost family.

“The liberation was about nothing but joy, freedom and joy,” Ihnatov said.

But Russians holed up on the left bank and began shelling the city and flying drones to hunt down civilians.

“In a week or two, the cruellest shelling began. And then – fear,” Ihnatov said.

His sister decided to relocate the family to the Kyiv-controlled city of Mykolaiv, where they live in a rented three-bedroom apartment.

Romania has scrambled fighter jets after a drone breached the country’s airspace during a Russian attack on neighbouring Ukraine, its Ministry of National Defence said, as Kyiv accused Moscow of expanding its war.

The Romanian move on Saturday came as Poland also deployed aircraft and closed an airport in the eastern city of Lublin over the threat of a drone attack.

Ukraine’s European Union neighbours have been on guard since Poland shot down Russian drones in its airspace earlier this week, with the backing of aircraft from its NATO allies.

Romania’s Defence Ministry said it detected the drone incursion late on Saturday, and scrambled two F-16 fighter jets as well as two Eurofighters – part of German air policing missions in Romania – while also warning citizens to take cover.

It said the jets followed the drone until “it disappeared from the radar” near the Romanian village of Chilia Veche.

Minister of National Defence Ionut Mosteanu said the F-16 pilots came close to taking down the drone before it left the country’s airspace, adding that helicopters would survey the area near the border to look for potential drone parts.

“But all information at this moment indicates the drone exited airspace to Ukraine,” he told the private television station Antena 3.

Romania, an EU and NATO state which shares a 650km (400-mile) border with Ukraine, has had Russian drone fragments fall onto its territory repeatedly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on the social media platform X that data showed the drone breached about 10km (6 miles) into Romanian territory and operated in NATO airspace for about 50 minutes.

He alleged that the Russian military knows exactly where its drones are headed and how long they can operate in the air.

“It is an obvious expansion of the war by Russia – and this is exactly how they act,” Zelenskyy said.

“Sanctions against Russia are needed. Tariffs against Russian trade are needed. Collective defence is needed.”

Sweden also condemned the drone incursion in Romania.

Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Maria Malmer Stenergard wrote on X that the breach was “another unacceptable violation of NATO airspace”.

“Sweden stands in full solidarity with Romania as a NATO Ally and EU Member State. We are always ready to contribute further to the deterrence and defence of the Alliance.”

NATO had announced plans to beef up the defence of Europe’s eastern flank on Friday, after Poland shot down drones that had violated its airspace, the first known shots fired by a member of the Western alliance during Russia’s war in Ukraine.

While Russia denies targeting Poland, several European countries, including France, Germany and Sweden, have stepped up their support for defending Polish airspace in response.

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, expressed concern at the Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace, but said that it remained unclear if it was a deliberate act by Russia.

“We think it’s an unacceptable and unfortunate and dangerous development,” Rubio told reporters before departing on a trip to Israel and the United Kingdom.

“No doubt about it: the drones were intentionally launched. The question is whether the drones were targeted to go into Poland specifically.”

Rubio said that if the drones were targeted at Poland, “if the evidence leads us there, then obviously that’ll be a highly escalatory move”.

“There are a number of other possibilities as well, but I think we’d like to have all the facts and consult with our allies before we make specific determinations,” he added.

The comments echo suggestions by US President Donald Trump that the Russian incursions into Polish airspace were a mistake.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, however, has dismissed that.

“We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake. But it wasn’t. And we know it,” Tusk said on X on Friday.

Trump, meanwhile, said on Saturday that he was ready to impose major sanctions on Russia – just as soon as all NATO nations did the same thing and stopped buying Russian oil.

“I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA,” he said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump has repeatedly threatened sanctions against Russia without following through.

Here are the key events on day 1,298 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Sunday, September 14:

Fighting

• Russian attacks on Ukraine killed at least three people in the Donetsk region and another in Kharkiv, the Kyiv Independent reported on Saturday, citing local officials.
• A drone breached Romanian airspace during a Russian attack on Ukrainian infrastructure, prompting Romania to scramble fighter jets, the country’s defence minister, Ionut Mosteanu, said. He added that the F-16 pilots came close to taking down the drone as it was flying very low before it left national airspace towards Ukraine.
• Poland also deployed aircraft and closed an airport in the eastern city of Lublin because of the threat of Russian drone strikes. The moves came three days after Poland shot down Russian drones in its airspace with the backing of aircraft from its NATO allies.
• On the front line, the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed its troops had taken control of the village of Novomykolaivka in Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
• In Russia, a local official said two Ukrainian drones hit one of the country’s largest oil refining complexes in the Bashkortostan region, sparking a fire and causing minor damage. Regional Governor Radiy Khabirov said that despite the attack, operations would continue at the facility operated by Bashneft, a subsidiary of Russia’s largest oil producer, Rosneft.
• An explosive device detonated on a section of railway in Russia’s western Oryol region, killing two people and wounding another, Governor Andrei Klychkov wrote on Telegram. Russia’s railway network has been repeatedly rocked by derailments, blasts and fires that authorities blame on Ukrainian sabotage.
• The Russian Defence Ministry said its troops shot down 340 Ukrainian drones over the past day and also struck Ukrainian long-range drone infrastructure.

Politics and diplomacy

• United States President Donald Trump said the US is prepared to impose new energy sanctions on Russia, but only if all NATO nations stop buying Russian oil and implement similar measures.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also urged allies to stop buying Russian oil and not to “look for excuses” to avoid sanctions.

• US lawmakers Lindsey Graham and Brian Fitzpatrick, both Republicans, have sponsored a bill to impose tough sanctions on Russia over its war on Ukraine, and said they would urge fellow legislators this week to tie their bill to must-pass legislation on keeping the federal government operating. The measures include secondary sanctions on India and China for buying Russian oil.
• Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi criticised the US’s calls for action against buyers of Russian oil, saying that Beijing did not participate in wars or plot them. He said that war cannot solve problems and that sanctions only complicate them.
• Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, accused Hungary of blackmailing the European Union by obstructing Ukraine’s bid to join the 27-member bloc. Ukraine had applied to join the EU days after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, but has been unable to advance accession talks due to vetoes imposed by Hungary’s Kremlin-friendly leader, Viktor Orban.

• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace this week was unacceptable but that it remained unclear if Russia had deliberately sent the drones into Polish territory. Poland had shot down the drones, the first known shots fired by a member of the Western alliance since the war began.

Military

• Ukraine will need at least $120bn for its defence in 2026 as the war with Russia drags on into its fourth year, Minister of Defence Denys Shmyhal said. Ukraine now spends more than 31 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on its military. This year’s state budget plans at least $63bn in defence spending, plus in-kind weapons from Kyiv’s Western allies.
• Russia’s MiG-31 fighter jets, equipped with hypersonic ballistic missiles, completed a four-hour flight over the neutral waters of the Barents Sea as part of ongoing “Zapad 2025” (West 2025) military exercises, the Interfax news agency reported. Russia and Belarus are holding joint drills days after Poland shot down suspected Russian drones over its airspace.

Economy

• Ukrainian officials and a team from the US International Development Finance Corporation will carry out site visits to identify investment projects as part of Kyiv’s minerals deal with Washington, Ukraine’s Minister of Economy Oleksii Sobolev said. The two countries had signed a deal giving the US preferential access to new Ukrainian minerals projects in exchange for investment.

United States President Donald Trump has said he is ready to sanction Russia, but only if all NATO allies agree to completely halt buying oil from Moscow and impose their own sanctions on Russia to pressure it to end its more than three-year war in Ukraine.

“I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday, which he described as a letter to all NATO nations and the world.

Trump proposed that NATO, as a group, place 50-100 percent tariffs on China to weaken its economic grip over Russia.

Trump also wrote that NATO’s commitment “to WIN” the war “has been far less than 100%” and that it was “shocking” that some members of the alliance continued to buy Russian oil. As if speaking to them, he said, “It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia.”

NATO member Turkiye has been the third-largest buyer of Russian oil, after China and India. Other members of the 32-state alliance involved in buying Russian oil include Hungary and Slovakia, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

If NATO “does as I say, the WAR will end quickly”, Trump wrote. “If not, you are just wasting my time.”

As he struggles to deliver on promises to end the war quickly, Trump has repeatedly threatened to increase pressure on Russia. Last month, he slapped a 50 percent tariff on India over its continued buying of Russian oil, though he has not yet taken similar actions against China.

Trump’s social media post comes days after Polish and NATO forces shot down drones violating Polish airspace during Russia’s biggest-ever aerial barrage against Ukraine.

Poland and Romania scramble aircraft

Polish airspace has been violated many times since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but never on this scale anywhere in NATO territory.

Wednesday’s incident was the first time a NATO member is known to have fired shots during Russia’s war in Ukraine.

On Saturday, Poland said it and its NATO allies had deployed helicopters and aircraft as Russian drones struck Ukraine, not far from its border.

Poland’s military command said on X that “ground-based air defence and radar reconnaissance systems have reached their highest level of alert”, adding that the actions were “preventative”.

Also on Saturday, Romania’s Ministry of National Defence said that the country’s airspace had been breached by a drone during a Russian attack on infrastructure in neighbouring Ukraine.

The country scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to monitor the situation, tracking the drone until it disappeared from the radar” near the Romanian village of Chilia Veche, said the ministry in a statement.

Little sign of peace

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed the prospect of penalties on states still doing business with Moscow.

In an interview with the US media outlet ABC News last week, Zelenskyy said, “I’m very thankful to all the partners, but some of them, I mean, they continue [to] buy oil and Russian gas, and this is not fair… I think the idea to put tariffs on the countries that continue to make deals with Russia, I think this is the right idea.”

Last month, the US president hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, to discuss an end to the war, in their first face-to-face meeting since Trump’s return to the White House.

Shortly afterwards, he hosted Zelenskyy and European leaders in Washington, DC, for discussions on a settlement.

Despite the diplomatic blitz, there has been little progress towards a peace deal, with Moscow and Kyiv remaining far apart on key issues and Russia persisting in its bombardment of Ukrainian cities.

Russia claims advances

Russia on Saturday said it had captured a new village in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, which Moscow’s forces say they reached at the beginning of July.

The Russian Ministry of Defence said its troops had seized the village of Novomykolaivka near the border with the Donetsk region – the epicentre of fighting on the front. The AFP news agency was unable to confirm this claim.

DeepState, an online battlefield map run by Ukrainian military analysts, said the village was still under Kyiv’s control.

At the end of August, Ukraine had for the first time acknowledged that Russian soldiers had entered the Dnipropetrovsk region, where Moscow had claimed advances at the start of the month.

The Russian army currently controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory.

The Kremlin is demanding that Ukraine withdraw from its eastern Donbas region, comprised of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as a condition for halting hostilities, something that Kyiv has rejected.

The Dnipropetrovsk region is not one of the five Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Crimea – that Moscow has publicly claimed as Russian territory.

On Friday, Zelenskyy said that Putin wanted to “occupy all of Ukraine” and would not stop until his goal was achieved, even if Kyiv agreed to cede territory.

Here is how things stand on Saturday, September 13:

Fighting

• An early morning Russian attack on Friday killed three people in northern Ukraine’s Sumy region, a regional official reported.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow’s attempts to advance in the Sumy area had failed with heavy losses, and Russian operations in the region were being “completely foiled by our forces”.
• A Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s northwestern port of Primorsk has, for the first time, forced the suspension of loading at the key western oil terminal, according to two industry sources and Ukraine’s military.
• An attempted Ukrainian attack at the Smolensk nuclear power station in western Russia was carried out overnight, but the drone was downed and no damage or casualties were reported, officials said.

Regional security

• The number of Polish airspace violations by Russian drones this week may be higher than previously reported, with further analysis revealing that there may have been 21 incursions over Poland, the country’s defence chief said.
• Polish Secretary of State Marcin Bosacki urged the United Nations Security Council to issue a strong response to Russia over drones violating Poland’s airspace.
• More than 40 nations, including the United States, participated in a joint statement at the UN for stronger international action over Russia’s drone incursion into Polish airspace.
• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk contradicted US President Donald Trump’s assessment that the incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace may have been a mistake.
• Writing on X, Tusk said: “We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake. But it wasn’t. And we know it.”
• NATO is preparing a new operation, dubbed Eastern Sentry, to add military equipment from France, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom to its existing air and ground-based defences on its eastern European flank bordering Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, NATO Supreme Commander General Alexus Grynkewich said.
• Ukrainian Defence Minister Denys Shmyhal said he met with US presidential envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv. The pair discussed “the possibility of Ukraine’s Defence Forces receiving new Patriot systems and ammunition for them”, he wrote on X.
• Russian and Belarusian armed forces kicked off their large-scale, joint military exercises known as “Zapad 2025” on Friday, as German forces in neighbouring Lithuania led their own military drills.

Military aid

• President Zelenskyy said that many details on post-war security guarantees for Ukraine were already on paper as US special envoy Kellogg and national security advisers from Britain, Germany, France and Italy are in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Sanctions

• Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers discussed the possibility of imposing sanctions and trade measures, such as tariffs, on countries they consider to be “enabling” Russia’s war on Ukraine, while exploring other mechanisms to further increase financial support to Ukraine.
• Japan, the UK and New Zealand imposed new sanctions on Russia, including lowering the price cap on Russian oil and enforcing sanctions against companies linked to Russia’s weapons industry, including a producer of the Iskander missiles, as well as shadow naval fleet operators and suppliers.
• The European Union could phase out use of Russian gas within six to 12 months by replacing it with US liquefied natural gas, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the Reuters news agency on Friday.

Politics and diplomacy

• US President Donald Trump said his patience with Putin is “running out and running out fast”, but blamed the “tremendous hatred between [Putin] and Zelenskyy” for the prolonging of the war.
• President Zelenskyy said his country’s allies should encourage China to use its leverage with Russia to halt Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan emphasised that diplomacy is the only viable path to ending the Ukraine-Russia war and that the US must change its stance from neutrality, which had left a leadership gap.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to join President Trump on a state visit to the UK, where he and British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper are due to discuss US-British cooperation on “ending the Russia-Ukraine war”, the US State Department said.
• Denmark is launching a 375-million-euro ($439m) programme to support Ukraine’s integration with the EU, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said.

Economy

• Russia’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate on Friday to 17 percent as growth has slowed and spending on the war against Ukraine increases the budget deficit.

Peace talks

• Russia said peace talks with Ukraine were on “pause” as the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

Charity

• Britain’s Prince Harry arrived in Kyiv on Friday with a team from his Invictus Games Foundation to detail his charity’s plans to help rehabilitate wounded Ukrainian soldiers, his office said in a statement.

Here are the key events on day 1,296 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Friday, September 12:

Fighting

• Anti-aircraft units downed seven Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow early on Friday, according to the Russian capital’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
• Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Sosnivka in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday.
• A “massive” Ukrainian drone attack forced authorities in Russia’s Belgorod region to order children to stay at home while closing its schools and shopping centres, the regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
• The Moscow-installed administration of the Russia-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station accused Ukraine of attacking a training centre at the plant with drones.

Regional security

• The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting to address Russia’s violation of Polish airspace earlier this week, Poland’s Foreign Ministry said.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushed for a tougher response to the suspected Russian drone incursion into Poland from Kyiv’s allies, saying the move by Moscow was likely aimed at slowing supplies of air defences to Ukraine before winter.
• Polish President Karol Nawrocki claimed the Russian drone incursion was an attempt to test Poland’s and NATO’s capability to react militarily.
• The Russian drone incursion was a “kind of a prelude” to Russia’s upcoming “Zapad” military exercises in Belarus, Poland’s National Security Bureau chief said.
• Russia will not make any further comments on the shooting down by Poland of what Warsaw said were Russian drones in its airspace, the Kremlin said.

• Polish military representatives plan to visit Ukraine for training on shooting down drones, a source familiar with the matter said.
• France will deploy three Rafale fighter jets to help Poland protect its airspace after this week’s drone incursions, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday on X.
• NATO’s allied air command will provide Lithuania with better early warnings of aerial launches against Ukraine that could cross into Lithuania, NATO’s top military commander Alexus Grynkewich said.
• Germany will strengthen its commitment to NATO’s eastern border, including expanding “air policing over Poland” in response to the incursion of Russian drones, a government spokesperson said.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz emphasised the need for Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service to heighten its operational levels in the wake of increased threats of hybrid attacks by Russia.

Military aid

• German arms giant Rheinmetall plans to manufacture artillery shells for Ukrainian forces at a future production plant in Ukraine, Kyiv’s defence minister said.
• Sweden’s Defence Ministry announced plans for 70 billion Swedish krona ($7.5bn) in military support for Ukraine over the next two years.

Politics and diplomacy

• President Zelenskyy said he had discussed joint weapons production with Washington and imposing further sanctions on Russia during talks with US envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv on Thursday.
• A representative of United States President Donald Trump told Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that the US wanted to reopen its embassy in Minsk and normalise ties between the two countries, after Washington closed the embassy in 2022, the State-run Belta news agency reported.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has still not decided on attending the APEC summit in South Korea next month, the Kremlin said.

Sanctions

• Several European Union members including the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Spain summoned their respective Russian ambassadors and charge d’affaires to express official condemnation of Russia violating Polish airspace earlier this week.
• A timeline for the imposition of the EU’s 19th package of sanctions against Russia is still undetermined, after an EU delegation returned from Washington, according to a European Commission spokesperson.
• The US will pressure G7 countries to impose higher tariffs on India and China for buying Russian oil, the Financial Times reported, as the US looks to ramp up sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine.

Here are the key events on day 1,295 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Thursday, September 11:

Fighting

• Russian forces launched a “massive” attack across Ukraine, with 415 drones and 40 cruise and ballistic missiles, Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Wednesday.
• Ukrainian forces destroyed more than 380 Russian drones, including at least 250 Shahed drones, Zelenskyy added in a later post.
• Russia’s TASS state news agency said that a man who was injured by a Ukrainian drone while driving a truck has died in hospital, according to Ruslan Khomenko, the head of the Kherson region’s Aleshkinsky district.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said that its forces shot down 225 Ukrainian drones and a guided missile in a 24-hour period, TASS reported.

Regional security

• Poland’s state news agency PAP reported that the remains of a third drone were found in the country’s Swietokrzyskie province after Polish and NATO forces shot down suspected Russian drones that entered Poland’s airspace on Wednesday.
• United States President Donald Trump offered his first reaction to Russia’s drone incursion into Poland, posing the question: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones?” and exclaiming: “Here we go!” on his Truth Social platform.
• Trump also spoke with Polish President Karol Nawrocki on Wednesday afternoon, “regarding the repeated violation of Polish airspace by Russian drones, which occurred last night”, according to a post on X by the Polish leader.
• US ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker went on X to write: “We stand by our NATO Allies in the face of these airspace violations and will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
• Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the Polish allegations as “myths” while Moscow’s Defence Ministry stressed that “there were no plans to hit any targets in Poland”, and expressed readiness to hold consultations with Polish counterparts.
• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he has received “proposals for concrete support for the air defence of our country”, after speaking with the leaders of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Ukraine and NATO.
• French President Emmanuel Macron said that the intrusion of “numerous” Russian drones into Polish airspace was “unacceptable” and showed “further evidence of Russia’s escalatory stance”.
• Macron also said he had an “excellent phone call” with President Trump, about the “troubling developments in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, particularly following Russian drone incursions into Poland”.

Military aid

• David McGuinty, Canada’s minister of national defence, said his country delivered eight Armoured Combat Support Vehicles (ACSVs) to Poland, which “are on their way to Ukraine”.
• The UK said it would mass-produce Ukrainian-designed interceptor drones to help Ukraine counter Russian missiles and one-way attack drones.

Sanctions

• President Zelenskyy said that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had informed him about work with the US on strengthening sanctions against Russia.
• US Republican Congressman Joe Wilson introduced a bill to reimpose Soviet-era trade restrictions on Russia, “after the attack on Poland”.
• The European Commission is considering listing some independent Chinese oil refineries in its 19th package of sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, with the possibility of the proposal coming as soon as Friday.

Here are the key events on day 1,293 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, September 9:

Fighting

• Russian attacks killed four people and injured 10 in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram on Monday.
• Two people were killed and one person was injured as Russian forces launched 449 strikes on 17 settlements in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
• Ukrainian forces launched a “massive” drone attack on Russian-occupied Donetsk, killing two civilians, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported, citing local officials.
• Ukrainian forces recaptured the village of Zarichne in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported in a post on Facebook.
• Russian forces attacked a thermal power generation facility in the Kyiv region overnight, causing localised blackouts and gas outages, Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said.
• Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it detained a citizen of Azerbaijan, alleging he was working with Ukraine to conduct reconnaissance missions for possible attacks on government buildings in Russia’s cities of Yessentuki and Stavropol.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said that its forces shot down 195 Ukrainian drones and two aerial bombs in a 24-hour period, TASS reported.

Sanctions

• The European Union’s plan for new sanctions against Russia is being closely coordinated with the United States, EU Council President Antonio Costa said.
• Costa’s remarks came as the EU’s top sanctions official, David O’Sullivan, visited Washington, DC, with a team of experts, to discuss possible coordinated sanctions.
• The Kremlin responded to the EU announcement, saying sanctions would not force Russia to change course in the war.
• “No sanctions will be able to force the Russian Federation to change the consistent position that our president has repeatedly spoken about,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Kremlin reporter Alexander Yunashev.

Politics and diplomacy

• The Czech Republic will expel a Belarusian diplomat it has accused of espionage, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. “We will not tolerate the abuse of diplomatic cover for secret service activities,” the ministry said in a post on X.
• The Czech counterintelligence service said that, together with Romanian and Hungarian services, it had “broken up a Belarusian intelligence network being built in Europe”.

• European countries should “adjust” their interests “without false nostalgia” and “expand and strengthen existing [partnerships] even more aggressively than we have done so far,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, regarding Europe’s changing relationship with the United States.

• A German government spokesperson said that Russia’s “ongoing escalation of the war” on Ukraine shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin “does not want to negotiate”, and the war “can only be stopped by enabling Ukraine to maintain its defence and not allowing Putin to succeed”.

Here are the key events on day 1,289 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Friday, September 5:

Fighting

• Russian drones killed three people – two men and a woman – and injured three others in the village of Khotimlia in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
• A Russian missile strike on a Danish-sponsored humanitarian demining mission near the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv has killed two people, according to Governor Viacheslav Chaus. Another three were wounded in the attack, which Chaus said had purposely targeted the team from the Danish Refugee Council. All victims were Ukrainian.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed it destroyed a launch site for long-range drones with an Iskander missile strike in the same attack in the Chernihiv region.
• Russian troops have taken control of the village of Novoselivka in Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, the Russian Defence Ministry said.
• Ukraine wants to see improved performance by interceptor drones to counter Russian aerial attacks more effectively, top Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Syrskii said.

Coalition of the Willing

• Twenty-six nations have pledged to provide post-war security guarantees to Ukraine, which will include an international force on land and sea and in the air, French President Emmanuel Macron said after the “coalition of the willing” group met for a Paris summit of Kyiv’s allies to discuss those guarantees.
• “The day the conflict stops, the security guarantees will be deployed,” Macron told a news conference at the Elysee Palace, standing alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
• Macron initially said 26 nations – which he did not name – would deploy to Ukraine. But he later said some countries would provide guarantees while remaining outside Ukraine, for example, by helping to train and equip Kyiv’s forces.
• Zelenskyy said after the meeting that “we are working out which countries will take part in which security component”. He added that “26 countries agreed to provide security guarantees. Today, for the first time in a long time, this is the first such serious, very specific substance”.
• Germany is ready to step up funding for and training of Ukrainian forces, but will decide on further military commitments, including deploying troops to Ukraine, only after broader conditions are clarified, a government spokesperson said.

• Ukraine must become a steel porcupine, indigestible for present and future aggressors, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said after the meeting.
• Macron also said he, fellow European leaders and Zelenskyy held a call with United States President Donald Trump after the summit, and US contributions to the guarantees would be finalised in the coming days.
• Macron said there is “no doubt” about Washington’s willingness to take part in the security guarantees offered to Ukraine, adding that the relevant planning work needed to be finalised with Washington.
• On that call, Trump told European leaders that Europe must stop buying Russian oil that he said is helping Moscow fund its war against Ukraine, a White House official said, striking a combative tone amid slow diplomatic progress to end the fighting.
• “The president also emphasised that European leaders must place economic pressure on China for funding Russia’s war efforts,” the official said.

Sanctions

• The United Kingdom imposed sanctions on 11 more individuals and entities affiliated with the Russian state, targeting those involved in what it said were Moscow’s attempts to forcibly deport and indoctrinate Ukraine’s children.
• Former president and current deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, said Russia would take more Ukrainian territory and go after British property after London said it had spent about $1.3bn raised from frozen Russian assets on weapons for Ukraine.
• Russia has expelled an Estonian diplomat in a reciprocal move, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. In mid-August, Estonia expelled a Russian diplomat over alleged sanctions violations and other offences against the state.
• Russia’s largest oil producer Rosneft has secured an additional deal on the supply of 2.5 million metric tonnes of oil to China via Kazakhstan, Interfax news agency quoted Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev as saying.

Regional security

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would “fully support” Russia’s army as a “fraternal duty”, and Russian President Vladimir Putin called the two countries’ ties “special”, North Korean state media KCNA reported.
• Putin also reportedly sent Kim a congratulatory message for North Korea’s foundation day.
• “Your combat force’s heroic involvement in liberating the Kursk territories from the invaders is a distinct symbol of friendship and mutual aid between Russia and North Korea”, Putin’s message read, according to KCNA. “I am confident that we will continue to work together to consolidate the comprehensive strategic partnership between our two countries,” Putin said.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said that there is “no doubt” the United States will support security efforts in Ukraine after 26 European countries pledged to send troops to the war-battered country after fighting ends.

Macron spoke after a meeting of the so-called coalition of the willing in Paris on Thursday that was followed by a video call to United States President Donald Trump aiming to get a clearer sense of Washington’s commitment to Ukrainian security, viewed as essential to any peacekeeping efforts.

The French president said that US support for the “reassurance force” would be finalised “in the coming days” and that Washington would collaborate with European countries in imposing new sanctions if Russia were to continue to refuse a deal to end the three-and-a-half-year war.

The summit in Paris included European leaders, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in attendance, and was part of a push to show Europe’s ability to act independently after mixed signals from Washington since Trump entered office in January.

Reporting from Paris, Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler said that Macron had indicated the call with Trump was “positive”, with further news to come on what the US might have to offer in terms of security guarantees.

“Until now, that has been very vague indeed,” she said, noting that Trump had previously said that US troops would not be sent to Ukraine.

Experts say that any European operation would hinge on the US providing intelligence support and airpower in countries outside Ukraine.

‘Concrete step’

The guarantees by the 26 countries in the coalition of the willing – largely European, with the inclusion of Canada, Australia and Japan – are expected to include ramped-up training for the Ukrainian army and deployment of troops by some European states.

“We have today 26 countries who have formally committed … to deploy as ‘reassurance force’ troops in Ukraine, or be present on the ground, in the sea, or in the air,” Macron said alongside Zelenskyy.

He specified that troops would not be deployed “on the front line” and would aim to “prevent any new major aggression”.

Zelensky hailed the move: “I think that today, for the first time in a long time, this is the first such serious concrete step,” he said.

During the summit, United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it was necessary “to go even further to apply pressure on Putin to secure a cessation of hostilities”, a Downing Street spokeswoman said.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also urged more pressure, but remained cautious about the scope of involvement.

“Germany will decide on military involvement at the appropriate time once the framework conditions have been clarified,” a government spokesman said after the summit.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said her country would not send troops to Ukraine, but it could help monitor any potential peace deal.

Peace talks stall

Countries met to discuss Ukraine’s security amid growing concern that Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently showing no interest in a peace accord, with alarm intensifying after his high-profile visit to Beijing this week.

Al Jazeera’s Butler said that while Zelenskyy was “very pleased that things seemed to be moving forward”, he had said Putin had “no intention of coming to the table for any form of peace talks”.

Putin had earlier said he would be willing to meet Zelenskyy in Moscow, a call that many viewed as a call for capitulation.

Trump, who has not yet managed to broker talks between Zelenskyy and Putin, warned this week that the Russian leader would “see things happen” if he was unhappy with Moscow’s next steps.

Putin has said Moscow is willing to “resolve all our tasks militarily” in the absence of a peace deal acceptable to the Kremlin. He has also indicated he does not want to see European troops in post-war Ukraine,

“It’s not for them to decide,” NATO chief Mark Rutte shot back Thursday. “I think we really have to stop making Putin too powerful.”

Trump ‘dissatisfied’

Following the video call with Trump, Zelenskyy said the US president was “very dissatisfied” that European countries were still buying Russian oil, pointing the finger specifically at “Hungary and Slovakia”.

The European Union imposed a ban on most oil imports from Russia in 2022, but it made an exception for imports to Slovakia and Hungary to give the landlocked central European countries time to find alternative oil supplies.

Ukraine has targeted Russia’s Druzhba oil pipeline, which carries Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary, throughout the conflict. Both nations have asked the European Commission to act against Ukraine’s attacks.

A White House official cited by news agency Reuters confirmed that Trump had “emphasised” that European countries must stop purchasing Russian oil, adding that Russia received 1.1 billion euros ($1.28bn) in fuel sales from the EU in one year.

“The president also emphasised that European leaders must place economic pressure on China for funding Russia’s war efforts,” the official said.

The European Commission has proposed legislation to phase out EU imports of Russian oil and gas by January 1, 2028.

The Trump administration has also imposed tariffs on India for buying Russian oil in efforts to pressure the Kremlin to end the war. But the US has been accused of double standards for sparing China – the largest buyer of Russian crude.

Baltic and Nordic leaders in Denmark’s Copenhagen are meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is on a diplomatic drive trying to cement security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a peace deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“The heads of state and government will discuss how the Nordic-Baltic countries can ensure further support for Ukraine on the frontline and in the negotiating room,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s office said in a statement on Wednesday.

The gathering brings together the leaders of the Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8) – Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden – with Zelenskyy to discuss Ukraine’s future.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on Tuesday that progress was being made on security guarantees for Ukraine, but he stressed that such measures would only be implemented after a peace agreement is reached.

“We need to coordinate the security arrangements with the United States, which essentially will provide the backstop for this … We’re focusing on these issues with our chiefs of defence, which are drawing the concrete plans of what this type of operation might look like,” Stubb told reporters.

“We’re making progress on this and hopefully we’ll get a solution soon,” he said, while cautioning that he was not optimistic about a ceasefire or peace agreement with Russia in the near term.

The ‘coalition of the willing’

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said he expected clarity at a summit of Ukraine’s allies on Thursday “or soon after” on what security guarantees Europe can offer Kyiv once the war halts.

“I expect tomorrow, or soon after tomorrow, to have clarity on what collectively we can deliver,” Rutte said at a news conference with Estonian President Alar Karis in Brussels. “That means that we can engage even more intensely, also with the American side, to see what they want to deliver in terms of their participation in security guarantees.”

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron will co-host Thursday’s mostly virtual meeting of leaders of the so-called “coalition of the willing” – a collection of Western states working on long-term guarantees for Ukraine, and NATO. Zelenskyy moves on to meet Macron tonight in Paris ahead of that summit.

Western officials have said such guarantees are aimed at deterring Russia from launching another war after hostilities end, whether through a ceasefire or a permanent peace deal.

They are expected to centre on continued military support for Kyiv, along with an international force to reassure Ukraine. However, European leaders have made clear that such a force would only be feasible with US participation.

United States President Donald Trump last month promised American involvement, but Washington has yet to spell out what it would contribute. Rutte sought to reassure eastern NATO members that resources for Ukraine’s security guarantees would not come at the expense of the alliance’s own defences.

“We have to prevent spreading our resources too thinly, and this means that we always have to look at what the impact will be on the NATO plans,” he said.

Moscow, meanwhile, rejects the idea of European peacekeeping troops on the ground in Ukraine, and insists that any future settlement must reflect what it calls “new territorial realities”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Indonesia’s Kompas newspaper that regions annexed by Russia – Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson – must be “recognized and formalized in an international legal manner” for peace to last.

Trump has suggested any eventual deal would involve Ukraine ceding some territory, but many analysts believe one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s core demands will be Ukrainian recognition of Moscow’s control over the parts of Donbas still under Kyiv’s authority.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly rejected such concessions, warning that losing any territory would embolden Russia to launch new attacks in the future. The Ukrainian constitution also forbids it.

Russia takes more territory in Kherson

As diplomacy continues behind the scenes, Russia’s assault continues to intensify across eastern Ukraine. Its forces claim to have encircled and now captured “about half” of Kupiansk, a strategic city in the northeastern Kharkiv region. Moscow’s Ministry of Defence also claimed its forces had seized the settlement of Fedorivka in Donetsk.

In the skies, Russia launched a sweeping overnight air campaign, striking targets across nine regions. Ukrainian officials said at least four railway workers were injured, while Poland scrambled defence aircraft as explosions echoed near its border.

Ukraine’s emergency services reported that five people were injured and 28 homes damaged in an attack on the Znamianka community in the Kirovohrad region. In Khmelnytskyi, transport services faced “significant schedule disruptions” after strikes damaged residential buildings and triggered fires.

Local authorities said two people were killed in Russian shelling of Polohivskyi district in Zaporizhia, while separate attacks caused deaths in Kherson, Kyiv region and Donetsk. The independent news outlet Kyiv Independent reported at least five civilians killed across the country in the latest wave of strikes.

Russia said it had shot down 158 Ukrainian drones in the past 24 hours, while claiming that Ukrainian attacks across its border killed 12 people and wounded nearly 100 in the past week. In the Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a Ukrainian drone strike injured three people in the village of Proletarsky.

The diplomatic manoeuvring comes as Putin seeks to deepen ties with North Korea and China. His meeting on Wednesday with Kim Jong Un in Beijing, alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping at a grand military parade, underscored the growing partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Trump responded by accusing the three leaders of conspiring against the United States – a claim dismissed by the Kremlin.

Since their summit with United States President Donald Trump in the White House on August 18, Kyiv’s European and regional allies have begun to nail down commitments to a peacekeeping force that would enter Ukraine after a ceasefire is reached in the war that Russia began three and a half years ago.

They aim to collect those commitments by the end of the week.

Europe is also pushing for further sanctions against Russia.

But the US is not on the same page on either issue.

Here’s what you should know:

What have countries promised?

So far, Estonia has said it was prepared to contribute at least a military unit to the peacekeeping force, and Lithuania had earlier announced it was ready to send an unspecified number of troops.

Romania said it would not send troops, but would make its airfields available as bases for F-35 air patrols enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Turkiye is considering sending troops, and would help de-mine the Black Sea, Ukraine’s ambassador to Ankara said.

Colonel Andre Wuestner, the head of the German Armed Forces Association, told the Reuters news agency that at least 10,000 troops would be needed for an extended period.

“It won’t be enough to have a handful of generals and smaller military units man a command post in Ukraine,” Wuestner said.

A top priority for the Europeans at the White House meeting was to commit Trump to being involved in such a force.

Trump had said on August 18 that the US would participate, but not with troops.

Last month, The Financial Times reported that US officials recently told their European interlocutors that the US would contribute “strategic enablers”, such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, command and control, and air defence assets.

Is a ceasefire and plan for a peacekeeping force viable?

“It’s all theatre. Every single European leader, including [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, has had to find a way of keeping Trump on side,” said Keir Giles, a Eurasia expert at Chatham House. “They’ve succeeded in doing so, but it is at the cost of suspension of reality.”

The idea of a ceasefire is not only “entirely unachievable because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is plainly not interested in ending the fighting”, Giles told Al Jazeera, but it is also undesirable.

“Everybody knows still that a ceasefire was among one of the worst-case possible outcomes for Ukraine before Trump arrived in office,” he said.

Ukraine and its European allies have repeatedly scoffed at a truce as a chance for Putin to reorganise his forces before attacking with renewed vigour. Trump, however, made a ceasefire his priority last February.

“The need to humour Trump, and to play along with the fantasy version of reality that drives the Trump world, means that they still pay lip service to these ludicrous ideas,” said Giles.

Will Trump play ball with Europe?

Since August 18, Europe and Ukraine have been working hard to pull Trump back in their direction.

After meeting NATO chief Mark Rutte in Kyiv on August 22, Zelenskyy said they had agreed on the necessity of “Article 5-like guarantees” operating under a blueprint that entails “a crystal-clear architecture of which countries assist us on the ground, which are responsible for the security of our skies, which guarantee security at sea”.

NATO’s Article 5 is the collective defence clause: the idea that an attack on one NATO member is treated as an attack on all.

Would Trump agree to ‘Article 5-like guarantees’, entailing an automatic defence mechanism that would bring NATO forces into conflict with Russia?

“Even when Trump is sounding positive about it, it’s incredibly vague, and it’s not entirely clear whether he means what he says,” said Giles.

“You can never be sure with Trump. He is changeable,” agreed political scientist Theodoros Tsikas, but he believes political reality prevents Trump from straying too far into Putin’s camp.

“First, he wants the Ukrainian war to be resolved, so he can proceed with an economic cooperation with Russia on energy and mineral wealth.”

Reuters revealed late last month that Russia and the US discussed business deals parallel to the issue of Ukraine’s disposition in a summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska on August 15.

“These deals were put forward as incentives to encourage the Kremlin to agree to peace in Ukraine and for Washington to ease sanctions on Russia,” five sources told Reuters.

They included ExxonMobil re-entering a joint investment with Russian gas giant Gazprom, Moscow buying US equipment for gas liquefaction, and the US buying Russian ice-breakers.

Secondly, said Tsikas, Trump “wants to free up US troops in Europe to recommit them to Asia”.

In performing this pirouette, “He can’t allow Ukraine to collapse in his hands, because he will have a huge political cost in the States – it will be a bit like [ex-US President Joe] Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. So even Trump has limits. The profile he sells is that of the winner. If he suffers a big defeat, that image collapses,” he told Al Jazeera.

For these reasons, Trump is willing to lend security to Europe, said Tsikas.

Is Trump offering Ukraine a deal?

This aid would not come for free, consistent with Trump’s policy towards Ukraine since assuming office.

The Financial Times reported that, in exchange for US security guarantees, Ukraine has offered to buy $100bn worth of US weapons, financed by Europe, which has already promised to buy 700 billion euros ($820bn) in US weapons for itself.

Will these extraordinary sums ever be spent? Zelenskyy says Ukraine needs US weapons worth $1bn to $1.5bn every month through the PURL (Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List), a NATO programme.

European countries have currently pledged $1.5bn in purchases of US weapons for Ukraine through PURL. All this is a far cry from the sums Trump is demanding be committed in memorandums, raising the question of whether they will ever be fulfilled.

Where does Russia stand?

A peacekeeping force would only come into play once Putin and Zelenskyy had agreed to a ceasefire.

Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov has confirmed twice in recent days that the meeting was not scheduled, despite Zelenskyy’s readiness.

He told his Indian counterpart on August 21 that such a meeting would happen when proposals were “well developed”.

Lavrov also told NBC that “no meeting is being planned”, but that “Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda is ready for a summit. This agenda is not ready at all”.

Lavrov wanted Zelenskyy to align himself with positions he claimed Putin and Trump agreed to in the meeting in Alaska.

“It was very clear to everybody [that] there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership… [and] discussion of territorial issues, and Zelenskyy said no to everything.”

Russia and Europe have fought to bring Trump closer to their positions. Putin persuaded Trump that no ceasefire was necessary for peace talks, and tried to dissuade Trump from backing sanctions, which Europe supports.

Zelenskyy told Ukrainians in an evening address on Tuesday, “The only signals Russia is sending indicate that it intends to continue evading real negotiations. This can be changed only through strong sanctions, strong tariffs – real pressure.”

On August 22, Trump reiterated a self-imposed two-week deadline before he makes a decision on sanctions against Russia. He told reporters in an Oval Office briefing, “I think in two weeks, we’ll know which way I’m going.”

Trump first mentioned that deadline to Fox’s Sean Hannity in the wake of the Alaska meeting with Putin on August 15.

But the tug-of-war means Trump is still midway between Europe and Russia, and not the staunch European ally his predecessor, Biden, was.

European leaders see the Russian aggression in Ukraine in purely political and security terms, and are more sceptical of Russia’s motives.

“I don’t see President Putin ready to get peace now,” French President Emmanuel Macron recently told NBC. “As long as President Putin and his people will consider they can win this war and get a better result by force, they will not negotiate.”

Here are the key events on day 1,286 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, September 2:

Fighting

• Russian forces shelled Bilozerka in Ukraine’s Kherson region, killing a 73-year-old man, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote in a post on Telegram on Monday.
• A Russian drone attack on the city of Horodnia injured two people, including a 14-year-old girl, the governor of the Chernihiv region, Viacheslav Chaus, said.
• Russian forces “intensively attacked” Ukraine’s Sumy region, injuring seven people and damaging dozens of homes, Sumy Governor Oleh Hryhorov said.
• The attacks on Sumy also disrupted water and energy supplies in parts of the region, the local utility agency reported, according to the online news site Ukrinform.
• The Crimean Tatar Resource Centre, a human rights organisation, reported that Russia’s occupation of Crimea has led to the deaths of 15 children who “tragically died”, while dozens more children suffered due to the murder and enforced disappearance of their parents.
• Ukrainian students have returned to school for the new academic year, with some 17,000 students attending underground schools in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, a frequent target of Russian attacks.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that its forces shot down 260 Ukrainian drones and three rockets launched in a 24-hour period, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.

Regional Security

• A plane carrying European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen was hit by GPS jamming as it prepared to land in Bulgaria, a European Union spokesperson said on Monday, adding that deliberate Russian interference was suspected.

• “We can indeed confirm that there was GPS jamming, but the plane landed safely in Bulgaria. We have received information from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia,” the EU spokesperson said.

• The EU will deploy additional satellites in low Earth orbit to help strengthen its ability to respond to future GPS interference, European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius said after the incident.
• Germany does not expect Russian attacks on NATO territory under the cover of Moscow’s Zapad military exercises, which are set to begin in two weeks, Germany’s top military commander, Carsten Breuer, said, adding that German and NATO forces will still “be on our guard”.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Western countries for causing the war in Ukraine by provoking Russia, in a speech at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, in Tianjin, China.

• Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement noting surprise that an SCO statement did not include a reference to the “largest war of aggression in Europe since World War II”, in reference to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

• German Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius criticised recent remarks by the EU’s von der Leyen on plans to send European troops to Ukraine, saying: “Those are things that you don’t discuss before you sit down at the negotiating table with many parties that have a say in the matter.”
• The EU chose “diplomacy over escalation” in relation to tariffs imposed by United States President Donald Trump in part due to security considerations, European Council President Antonio Costa said in a speech on Monday.
• “We certainly do not celebrate the return of tariffs. But escalating tensions with a key ally over tariffs, while our Eastern border is under threat, would have been an imprudent risk,” Costa said.
• France will host a meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing”, a group of countries supporting Ukraine, on Thursday, the French presidency said.

The Russian president defends the military campaign in Ukraine, blaming NATO and Western policies for the conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has blamed the West for igniting the war in Ukraine, insisting Moscow’s assault was provoked by years of Western provocations.

Speaking at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the Chinese city of Tianjin on Monday, Putin accused NATO of destabilising the region and dismissed claims that Russia triggered the war.

“This crisis was not triggered by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, but was a result of a coup in Ukraine, which was supported and provoked by the West,” Putin told the gathering of regional leaders. He was referring to the 2013-14 pro-European uprising that toppled Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovych.

Russia responded to the revolution by annexing Crimea and backing separatists in eastern Ukraine, leading to a conflict that has left tens of thousands dead and devastated large parts of the country.

Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 escalated the fighting, prompting sweeping sanctions from the United States and the European Union and deepening Russia’s isolation from the West, though not from the rest of the international community.

Putin said Western efforts to draw Ukraine into NATO were a key driver of the war, reiterating that Russia’s security concerns must be addressed before any peace deal can be reached.

“For the Ukrainian settlement to be sustainable and long-term, the root causes of the crisis must be addressed,” he said.

The Russian president highlighted talks he held with US President Donald Trump in August, describing the discussions as “opening a way to peace”. He praised diplomatic efforts from Beijing and New Delhi, saying their proposals could “facilitate the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis”.

Putin met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday to discuss Ukraine and said he would expand on those talks in bilateral meetings with leaders on the sidelines of the summit. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are also attending.

Moscow and Beijing have promoted the SCO as a counterweight to Western-led alliances, with Putin arguing the world needs a “system that would replace outdated Eurocentric and Euro-Atlantic models”.

Despite repeated calls from Trump for Moscow and Kyiv to negotiate, peace efforts have faltered. Russia has rejected ceasefire proposals and demanded that Ukraine cede more territory, conditions Kyiv has dismissed as unacceptable.

“For the Ukrainian settlement to be sustainable and long-term, the root causes of the crisis must be addressed,” said Putin.

Part of the source of the conflict “lies in the ongoing attempts by the West to bring Ukraine into NATO”, he said.

Putin also held talks with Modi and Erdogan, and is expected to meet Pezeshkian later on Monday as he seeks to bolster diplomatic backing amid the drawn-out conflict.

Here are the key events on day 1,285 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Monday, September 1:

Fighting

• Russian attacks on Ukraine killed at least five people on Monday, including two in Kherson, one in Zaporizhzhia, and two in Donetsk, according to regional governors. The attacks wounded dozens more.
• In Zaporizhzhia alone, Russian forces launched 286 drone attacks, 10 missile attacks and five air strikes on 16 settlements in one day, Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
• A Russian drone attack overnight damaged a power facility near the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, leaving more than 29,000 customers without electricity on Sunday morning, the region’s governor said. The hardest hit city was the seaport of Chornomorsk.
• The Reuters news agency also reported that a civilian bulk carrier flying the flag of Belize sustained minor damage after hitting an unknown explosive device near Chornomorsk.
• Russian drones also targeted Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region early on Sunday, damaging energy infrastructure and leaving 30,000 households without electricity, including part of the city of Nizhyn, said local Governor Viacheslav Chaus.
• The Ukrainian military said Russia had attacked Ukraine with 142 drones overnight and its air defence forces managed to shoot down most of them but the drones struck 10 locations.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised to retaliate to Russian attacks on his country’s power facilities with more strikes deep inside Russia.

• Ukraine’s armed forces dismissed Russia’s claims of a successful summer offensive, saying Russian forces failed to gain full control of any major Ukrainian city and “grossly exaggerated” figures regarding captured territories.
• In Russia, four people wounded injured in Ukrainian drone attacks on the Kursk region, including two Interior Ministry employees, Kursk’s Governor Alexander Khinshtein said in a post on Telegram.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that its forces shot down 112 Ukrainian drones, two aerial bombs and three rocket launchers in a 24-hour period, according to TASS.
• The capacity of Russia’s Kursk nuclear power plant’s third reactor was completely restored after it had been halved following a drone attack, TASS reported on Sunday, citing the plant.

Politics and diplomacy

• The Kremlin accused European powers of hindering United States President Donald Trump’s peace efforts and said that Russia would continue its operation in Ukraine until Moscow saw real signs that Kyiv was ready for peace.
• “The European warring party is maintaining its fundamental course; it is not giving in,” spokesperson Kremlin Peskov said from the sidelines of the SCO summit in China.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was bracing himself for the Russia-Ukraien war “to last a long time”. He told German public broadcaster ZDF that diplomatic efforts to bring the conflict to an end could not come “at the price of Ukraine’s capitulation”.
• Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, announced additional funding for European Union member states bordering Russia and Belarus during a visit to Poland’s border, near Belarus, where she called Putin a “predator” who could only be kept in check through “strong deterrence”.
• Von der Leyen also told the Financial Times that Europe is drawing up “pretty precise plans” for a multinational troop deployment to Ukraine as part of proposed post-conflict security guarantees.
• She said Trump had assured Europe that “that there will be [an] American presence as part of the backstop”.
• In an article published in the People’s Daily, China’s state newspaper, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote that his country will “continue to pursue” its “peace diplomacy” between Russia and Ukraine “with patience”.
• Pope Leo called for a ceasefire and dialogue in the Ukraine war. “It is time for those responsible to renounce the logic of arms and to take the path of negotiation and peace with the support of the international community,” he said in his Sunday prayer with pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square.

Weapons

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected a new missile production line and missile-manufacturing automation process, state media KCNA said on Monday. North Korea has sent missiles, as well as soldiers and artillery ammunition to Russia to support Moscow in its war against Ukraine.
• Norway, which shares a border with Russia, said it will buy new frigates worth some 10 billion pounds ($13.51bn) from the United Kingdom, in its biggest ever military investment.

The announcement came hours after overnight Russian strikes on energy sites left 60,000 Ukrainians without electricity.

Ukraine intends to strike deep into Russia following a large Russian drone attack that left 60,000 Ukrainians without electricity, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

Speaking on Sunday after a meeting with his top general, Oleksandr Syrskii, the Ukrainian president confirmed the new planned strikes on X.

Both sides have intensified their air strikes in recent weeks, with Moscow attacking Ukraine’s energy and transport systems as well as launching deadly strikes in recent days on civilian areas in Kyiv and Zaporizhia, and Ukraine targeting Russian oil refineries and pipelines.

Overnight, Russian drones hit four energy facilities in Ukraine’s Odesa region, according to the private energy company DTEK. The strikes left 29,000 people without electricity, local authorities reported.

The port city of Chornomorsk near Odesa, where one person was injured, was the worst-affected place, regional Governor Oleh Kiper wrote on Telegram. “Critical infrastructure is operating on generators,” he said.

DTEK said emergency repair work would start following the all-clear from the Ukrainian military, which reported that in total, Russia had attacked Ukraine with 142 drones, all but 10 of which it claimed to have downed.

The Russian military suggested on Sunday that it had shot down 112 Ukrainian drones in the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov blamed Europe for the continuation of the war and for hampering United States President Donald Trump’s peace efforts.

“The European warring party is maintaining its fundamental course; it is not giving in,” he said from the sidelines of a summit in China, in a reference to the European Union’s arms deliveries to Ukraine.

His words came just days after a Russian air strike killed at least 23 people and damaged EU diplomatic offices in central Kyiv.

Speaking just hours before Trump’s deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he thought the war, which began more than three and a half years ago, would not finish soon.

“I am preparing myself inwardly for this war to last a long time,” he told the public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday, noting that diplomatic efforts to bring the conflict to an end could not come “at the price of Ukraine’s capitulation”.

Elsewhere, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, travelled to Poland on Sunday as part of her tour of EU states that border Russia and its ally Belarus.

Speaking alongside the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, von der Leyen called Putin a “predator” who could only be kept in check through “strong deterrence”.

The EU Commission president also said that member states bordering Russia and Belarus would receive additional funding from the bloc, calling the defence of its borders a “shared responsibility”.

While the EU continues to highlight Russia’s security risk for the wider continent, the Kremlin has sought to embellish its military achievements in a bid to make its victory in Ukraine seem inevitable, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US think tank.

In its latest assessment of the conflict, ISW said that Russian army chief General Valery Gerasimov’s claims on Saturday about Russian gains were exaggerated.

The Russian general had suggested that the Kremlin’s forces had captured 3,500sq km [1,351sq miles] of territory and 149 settlements since the start of March.

“Gerasimov’s claims notably inflate Russian gains by roughly 1,200 square kilometres [463sq miles] and 19 settlements,” the ISW said.

Here are the key events on day 1,284 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Sunday, August 31:

Fighting

• Russia launched “massive” strikes against Ukraine overnight on Saturday, with a total of 14 regions hit, according to Ukrainian officials.
• At least one person was killed and 30 others wounded in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, while residential buildings were hit and scores of homes left without gas or electricity. The cities of Dnipro and Pavlohrad in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk also came under attack early on Saturday, causing fires.
• Ukraine’s Air Force said it had downed 510 of 537 drones and 38 of 45 missiles launched by Russia in the overnight attack.
• In Ukraine’s Kherson, a 74-year-old man was also killed when Russian forces shelled the city, according to officials.
• The chief of Russia’s general staff, Valery Gerasimov, said that Russian forces are waging a nonstop offensive along almost the entire front line in Ukraine and have the “strategic initiative”.
• In a speech to his deputies, Gerasimov also said that Russian forces now control 99.7 percent of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, 79 percent of the Donetsk region, 74 percent of the Zaporizhia region and 76 percent of the Kherson region. He went on to claim that Russian troops have almost completely blockaded the city of Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, and control about half of its area.
• But Ukrainian military spokesperson Viktor Trehubov said that Kyiv’s forces had scored front-line successes, keeping Russian troops from seizing targets in the Donetsk region and halting further advances into the Dnipropetrovsk region. In one area, he said, Kyiv’s troops had surrounded Russian units.
• Ukraine’s military also claimed attacks in Russia, saying it had struck the Krasnodar and Syzran oil refineries overnight on Saturday, setting off fires at both facilities.
• Russia’s TASS state news agency also said that Ukrainian shelling left more than 17,000 people without power in the border town of Rylsk in Russia’s Kursk region.
• Kursk’s Acting Governor Alexander Khinshtein said that 201 bodies have been found in the Russian region since January 1, following Ukraine’s invasion of the Russian region, and that 590 people are still missing.

• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that its forces shot down 233 Ukrainian drones, one guided bomb and four missiles in a 24-hour period, according to TASS.

Politics and Diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been pushing for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused the Kremlin of using “the time meant for preparing a leaders’-level [peace] meeting to organise new massive attacks”, and called for more international sanctions on Moscow and its backers.
• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke with Zelenskyy over the phone and reaffirmed his support for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, saying that “India extends full support to all efforts” to restore peace and stability, according to a statement from New Delhi.
• The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said the bloc will examine how to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction after the war. But confiscating the assets – which are worth 210 billion euros ($245.85bn) – now is not politically realistic, she said.
• Kallas’s comments come after some EU countries, including Estonia, Lithuania and Poland, called for the assets to be seized now and be used to support Kyiv. But EU heavyweights France and Germany – along with Belgium, which holds most of the assets – have rebuffed the idea.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz condemned Russia’s continuing attacks on Ukraine, saying that diplomatic efforts in recent weeks had been “answered with an even more aggressive approach by this regime in Moscow against the population in Ukraine”.
• “This will also not stop until we ensure together that Russia, at least for economic reasons, and perhaps also for military reasons … can no longer continue this war,” Merz added in comments at an event in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
• United States President Donald Trump outlined how his policy on Ukraine fits with his America First agenda, saying, “We’re not spending any money in the war”, describing this as a “big difference” in comparison with the “hundreds of billions of dollars” the US was previously spending.
• He also told The Daily Caller that the US will not send ground troops to Ukraine and that the US now sells equipment to NATO. “We don’t sell it to Ukraine. We sell it to NATO. They pay for the equipment,” Trump said.

Weapons

• Ukraine’s Defence Minister Denys Shmyhal announced that the US State Department had approved the sale of Patriot air defence systems for Ukraine for an estimated cost of $179.1m and satellite communications services worth $150m.

At least one person has been killed and 24 wounded, including two children, in attack that targeted Zaporizhia.

A “massive” overnight Russian attack on central and southeastern Ukraine has killed at least one person, with homes and businesses damaged in multiple cities, authorities have said, while Kyiv has struck two Russian oil refineries.

“At night, the enemy carried out massive strikes” on Zaporizhia, Ukraine’s state emergency service said on Telegram on Saturday.

At least one person was killed and 24 others were wounded, including two children, according to regional military administration chief Ivan Fedorov.

“Russian strikes destroyed private houses, damaged many facilities, including cafes, service stations and industrial enterprises,” Fedorov said.

Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region also came under attack early on Saturday, the governor said, reporting strikes in Dnipro and Pavlohrad.

“The region is under a massive attack. Explosions are being heard,” Serhiy Lysak wrote on Telegram, warning residents to take cover.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Dnipropetrovsk had been largely spared from intense fighting.

But Kyiv acknowledged on Tuesday that Russian troops had entered the region, after Moscow claimed it had gained a foothold there.

Dnipropetrovsk is not one of the five Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Crimea – that Moscow has publicly claimed as Russian territory.

The Ukrainian air force said it struck down 510 of 537 drones and 38 of 45 missiles launched by Russia in its overnight attack, adding that it recorded five missile and 24 drone hits at seven locations.

In the meantime, the Ukrainian military said that it struck Russian oil refineries overnight. The military said it recorded multiple explosions and a fire at the Krasnodar oil refinery. There was also a fire in the Syzran oil refinery area in the Samara region.

Kyiv reeling from deadly attack

The new Russian attacks come two days after a huge Russian drone and missile attack rocked Kyiv and its residents, one of the worst on the capital in the war now in its fourth year, which authorities said killed up to 25 people.

Authorities said 22 of those killed, including four children, had been residents of an apartment building destroyed in the city’s eastern Darnytskyi district.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday said the strike, which damaged the offices of the European Union and British Council, was the second-largest attack since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

On Saturday, Zelenskyy said that Moscow had used preparation time for a summit of leaders to launch new massive attacks on his country. “The only way to reopen a window of opportunity for diplomacy is through tough measures against all those bankrolling the Russian army and effective sanctions against Moscow itself – banking and energy sanctions,” he wrote on X.

Meanwhile, European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Saturday that it was not possible to imagine giving back Russian assets frozen inside the bloc due to the war unless Moscow had paid reparations.

“We can’t possibly imagine that … if … there is a ceasefire or peace deal that these assets are given back to Russia if they haven’t paid for the reparations,” she told reporters before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Copenhagen.

Zelenskyy has urged allies to swiftly elevate talks on security guarantees for Ukraine to the level of leaders, as EU defence ministers meeting Friday in the Danish capital pledged to train Kyiv’s troops on Ukrainian soil in the event of a truce.

The Ukrainian president said he expected to continue talks with European leaders next week on “NATO-like” commitments to protect Ukraine, adding that United States President Donald Trump should also be involved.