Ukraines

Neighbour Poland has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest backers since Russia invaded in 2022.

Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink could be cut due to the Polish president’s veto of a refugee aid bill, a Polish deputy prime minister said, as a conflict between the government and head of state deepens and undermines the once ironclad support of its war-torn neighbour.

Poland pays for Ukraine to use Starlink, which provides crucial internet connectivity to the country and its military as they try to push back invading Russian forces.

Right-wing Polish President Karol Nawrocki on Monday vetoed a bill extending state financial support provided to Ukrainian refugees and unveiled plans to limit their future access to child benefits and healthcare.

However, Deputy Prime Minister and Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said the vetoed legislation also provided the legal basis for providing Starlink to Ukraine.

“This is the end of Starlink internet, which Poland provides to Ukraine as it wages war,” he wrote on X.

Centrist Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk criticised the veto. But his government does not have the two-thirds majority in parliament needed to overcome the move.

“We cannot punish people for losing their job — particularly not innocent children. This is the ABC of human decency,” Labour Minister Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bak wrote on X.

Gawkowski, stressed that Nawrocki veto jeopardised Ukraine’s use of Starlink.

“We want to continue paying for internet by satellite for Ukraine. Unfortunately, this disastrous decision by the president greatly complicates things, and we will have to inform our partners that this support will finish at the end of September,” he told the PAP news agency.

Nawrocki’s spokesperson however, told the Reuters news agency that the basis for paying for Starlink could still be restored if parliament adopts a bill proposed by the president by the end of next month.

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, around one million refugees have settled in neighbouring Poland. Most of them are women and children.

Poland is a key supporter of Ukraine and a major transit route for Western aid but public attitudes towards Ukrainians have hardened.

Nawrocki, a staunch nationalist, had promised to cut social welfare benefits for Ukrainians during the campaign ahead of his election victory on June 1.

“I will not change my mind and I think that (this aid) should be limited only to Ukrainians who are committed to working in Poland,” Nawrocki, who took office this month, told reporters on Monday.

Nawrocki also said Ukrainians who do not work in Poland should not be allowed to receive free medical treatment as they do now.

“This puts us in a situation in which Polish citizens, in their own country, are less well treated than our Ukrainian guests,” he said.

Gawkowski said that Poland spent 77 million euros ($90 million) between 2022 and 2024 to buy and subscribe to Starlink systems for Ukraine.

A Ukrainian diplomatic source told the Reuters news agency that Kyiv was analysing the possible impact of the move on Ukrainians in Poland, adding they believed “their rights will be protected no less than in other EU countries”.

Ukrainian refugees are currently eligible to receive the monthly family benefit of 800 zlotys ($219) per child if their children attend Polish schools. Other EU countries such as Germany have also proposed cutting benefits recently.

In Poland, the president can propose bills and veto government legislation. The government can similarly also block the president’s proposals.

Ukrainian leader calls for wider international support to get Russia to negotiating table amid faltering peace efforts.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on countries in the Global South to support diplomatic efforts to push Russia to agree to end its war with Ukraine.

In a social media post following talks with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday, Zelenskyy stressed that the conflict “must be brought to an end” and that “the killings and destruction must be stopped”.

“I reaffirmed my readiness for any format of meeting with the head of Russia,” the Ukrainian leader said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“However, we see that Moscow is once again trying to drag everything out even further. It is important that the Global South sends relevant signals and pushes Russia toward peace.”

The comments come as a renewed diplomatic effort, spearheaded by United States President Donald Trump with support from European countries, to push Moscow to end its war in Ukraine has appeared to stall.

On Friday, Trump expressed frustration with Moscow over the lack of progress in efforts to negotiate a peaceful settlement to end the war, despite his recent meeting with Putin in Alaska.

The US president renewed a threat that he would consider imposing sanctions on Russia if there was no momentum within the next two weeks.

Trump has been trying to arrange a summit between Putin and Zelenskyy, which has long been sought by the Ukrainian leader, to discuss an end to the war.

But on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said there were no plans for such a meeting.

Lavrov said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” programme that Putin had made clear he was ready to meet Zelenskyy, provided there was a proper agenda for such a session, something the Russian foreign minister said was lacking for now.

“Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov said.

Amid the push for a diplomatic resolution, fighting has continued to grind on the battlefield.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said in a statement on Telegram on Saturday that its forces in eastern Ukraine had taken two villages in the Donetsk region, Sredneye and Kleban-Byk.

That followed the capture of three other villages in the region a day earlier.

The capture of Kleban-Byk would represent further progress towards Kostiantynivka – a key town on the road to Kramatorsk, where a major Ukrainian logistics base is located.

In a span of a week, global politics had gotten some big headlines. Last Friday, Putin and Trump met in Alaska. The anticipated summit was the talk of the world for quite a while. Speculations to determination, the summit was an icebreaking summit for US and Russian relations. Especially the way President Donald Trump was dealing with Putin with threats and showing a little turn towards a hard line against Putin; however, that hard line again turned into “Brozone” in a three-hour meeting. Initially, it was meant to happen for seven hours. The meeting happened to end the war in Ukraine. After the meeting, nevertheless, there was no peace deal and no commitment. Trump deliberately passed the ball into Ukraine and Europe’s court.

Fast forward to Monday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, with his European counterparts, arrived at the White House. Five European leaders and the secretary general of NATO, along with European Commission leaders, were the participants in this summit. What was the result this time? Well, unlike the last time, when Trump hosted Zelensky in the White House back in February, this time, Zelensky wasn’t bashed for any reason. The meeting was held with all the big names without any disruption, and European leaders knew just the weapon to use against Trump to keep Trump on their side: the art of diplomacy through “flattery.” Still, there was no peace deal or anything. The European leaders thought this time they might sway Trump to go harsh against Putin, which ultimately failed.

Trump, from the very beginning, was determined about some parts in the deal. Ukraine won’t be taken into NATO, and Ukraine must forget about Crimea, which he sees as a fault of the Obama administration. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s appointed special envoy in the Middle East, who basically arrives in every conflicting part of the world as a peace-bringer as Trump’s ambassador, mentioned a part that’s now a cornerstone of the security agenda. Witkoff mentioned “something like NATO’s Article 5.” NATO Article 5 states that an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all members, obligating each ally to take necessary action, including armed force, to assist the attacked party and restore security. It’s a profound part of NATO and what makes this military alliance different from every other alliance that’s out there. In the Alaska summit, Putin has agreed on some kind of “robust security arrangements” to secure the peace deal. So basically, Ukraine might secure its security by not joining NATO; however, there’s a catch. When Witkoff said something like “Article 5,” does it necessarily mean they are going to implement Article 5?

Here the debate comes. Something like Article 5 and implementing Article 5 don’t mean the same thing. And Witkoff wants European contribution to this security to play a bigger role. As Trump mostly follows a “unilateralist policy,” he doesn’t want to be the firsthand guarantor in the security arrangements. Whereas, the European leaders want to see Donald Trump playing a bigger role in this context. The EU already took a big initiative to spend on a military budget higher than ever, reaching 5% of the whole budget for every country before 2031. Back in March, the EU proposed “Sky Shield” for Ukraine. The European Sky Shield for Ukraine is a proposed European-led air protection strategy designed to defend western and central Ukraine from Russian missile and drone attacks during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Sky Shield” aims to protect critical infrastructure, including Ukraine’s operational nuclear power plants, major cities like Kyiv, Lviv, and Odessa, and vital economic corridors. The plan would not include operations in the eastern parts of Ukraine; however, it hasn’t materialized yet.

Trump saw the Russia-Ukraine war as Biden’s war, which he never wanted to drag on in the first place. Before being elected, he boasted about ending the war in Ukraine. Though, he couldn’t stop the war after seven months. This is quite a stigma on his “Peacemaker” appearance. Trump was seen to have fallen out with Putin, even tariffing a major ally, India, for buying Russian crude oil. From almost falling out, the Alaska summit again showed Trump’s humility with Vladimir Putin.

European leaders couldn’t budge Trump from his unwillingness to get involved in the Russia and Ukraine war. There was a motion to send a peacekeeping force to Ukraine from the UK and France. But they couldn’t find their other allies beside them. Germany, Italy, and even Poland rejected the idea of sending their troops to Ukraine, not even as peacekeepers. The US isn’t backing up Ukraine with military and financial aid, likewise the Biden era. Europe has already surpassed the US’s financial aid to Ukraine and is soon going to surpass it in the military sector. In any of the scenarios, there is no sign of a security deal or any comprehensive peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine. And every week, Russia is taking up more land in the Donbass region. It already occupies 20% of the land in Ukraine, and there is no sign that they want to give the land back to Ukraine. Experts are rigid in the idea that Putin won’t give the lands back it occupied. Neither will Ukraine accept a Russian-compelling peace treaty. So the stalemate is firm.

Trump has announced there will be a trilateral summit with the Ukrainian president and Russian president. As the security guarantee fades away and the Russian army occupies more lands every week, the war looks far away from ending. A treaty like the 1994 “Budapest Memorandum” won’t be accepted by the Ukrainian side; likewise, the Minsk agreement won’t be accepted by Ukraine and the EU. The demand is something solid and binding. Some are talking about a “Reassurance Force” that will secure Ukraine and Europe too, or an “Ironclad” agreement like the US-Japan and the US-South Korea security mechanisms. Till the next summit, the world awaits to see a peace deal being activated at the border of Europe.

The Ukrainian president said China has helped Russia, despite also calling for a peaceful resolution to the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ruled out the chance that China could serve as a security guarantor in the event of a future peace deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president’s remarks follow discussions this week between United States and European leaders about how to establish a future peacekeeping force in Ukraine should the war end.

“Why is China not in the guarantees? First, China did not help us stop this war from the beginning,” Zelenskyy told reporters, according to a report by The Kyiv Post media outlet on Thursday.

“Secondly, China helped Russia by opening the drone market,” Zelenskyy said.

Beijing has repeatedly called for a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine war, but its ongoing economic support for Russia has undermined its neutral image with Zelenskyy and Western leaders.

Despite Beijing’s ambitions of playing a greater role in mediating international conflicts, the Ukrainian leader’s remarks suggest that China will have no role in a Russia-Ukraine peace process.

Zelenskyy has said that international security guarantors are needed to ensure that Russia does not resume its attacks on Ukraine after signing a peace deal, and those participating should only be drawn from countries that have supported Kyiv since the Russian invasion in 2022.

In April, Zelenskyy accused China of supplying Russia with weapons and assisting in arms production, in the first direct accusation of its kind from the Ukrainian president.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning denied the claims and called them “groundless” and “political manipulation”.

Beijing was previously accused by the US of supplying Russia’s military with essential components to build missiles, tanks, aircraft, and other weapons.

China has said previously it only traded in “dual-use components” – those that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Questions about Beijing’s role in the war, however, have persisted for years due to the close relationship between the Russian and Chinese leaders, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

Just weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, Putin visited Xi in Beijing and signed a “no limits partnership” between both countries.

Since then, China has helped keep Russia’s economy afloat in spite of sweeping international sanctions.

The EU and the US have both accused China of helping Russia to evade sanctions and continue to trade with Moscow in energy, electronics, chemicals and transportation components, according to the Center for European Policy Analysis.

US vice president says Europe will be expected to play the ‘leading role’ in guaranteeing Kyiv’s post-war security.

European countries will have to shoulder the “lion’s share” of guaranteeing Ukraine’s security in the event of a deal to end Russia’s war in the country, United States Vice President JD Vance has said.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Vance said the US should not have to “carry the burden” of underpinning Kyiv’s post-war security.

“I think that we should be helpful if it’s necessary to stop the war and to stop the killing. But I think that we should expect, and the president certainly expects, Europe to play the leading role here,” Vance said in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

“What he said very clearly is: Look, the United States is open to have the conversation, but we’re not going to make commitments until we figure out what is going to be necessary to stop the war in the first place.”

Vance’s comments came a day after US President Donald Trump ruled out the possibility of US troops in Ukraine, while suggesting that Washington could provide support “by air”.

The issue of post-war security guarantees for Ukraine has been a major question mark over Trump’s push to end the three-and-a-half-year-long conflict.

After hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and top European leaders at the White House for talks on the war on Monday, Trump said that European countries would be the “first line of defence”, but that Washington would provide “a lot of help”.

While Trump has ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine, his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte have raised the possibility of offering Kyiv a security guarantee resembling the 32-member alliance’s collective defence mandate.

Under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, an armed attack against one NATO member nation is considered an attack on all members of the alliance.

While Trump has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to European peacekeepers being stationed in Ukraine, Moscow has repeatedly dismissed the possibility of troops from NATO countries along its border.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that his country would need to be included in negotiations on security guarantees, warning that excluding Moscow would be a “road to nowhere”.

“We cannot agree with the fact that now it is proposed to resolve questions of security, collective security, without the Russian Federation. This will not work,” Lavrov said.

Despite the sticking points between the sides, Vance said on Wednesday that the Trump administration had made “great progress” in its efforts to end the war.

“You can never say with certainty what the outcome in this situation is going to be,” Vance said.

“But we now have the Russians talking to the Ukrainians; they’re talking details about what would be necessary on each side to stop the fighting, to stop the killing.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed key details of his private White House meeting with Donald Trump, saying they discussed US security guarantees, prisoner exchanges, and a trilateral meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

United States President Donald Trump has increased pressure on Ukraine to accept an agreement to end Russia’s war, claiming that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could choose to end the conflict “almost immediately”.

Addressing Zelenskyy a day before his high-stakes visit to the White House on Monday, Trump warned that the return of Russian-occupied Crimea and Ukrainian membership of NATO would be off the table in any negotiated settlement.

“President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.

“Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!”

Trump’s comments came as European leaders were set to accompany Zelenskyy on his visit to Washington, DC, on Monday amid concerns in Brussels and Kyiv that the US president could sign off on a deal that is overly favourable to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Speaking shortly after Trump’s comments on Sunday, Zelenskyy said that previous concessions to Moscow, including in Crimea, had only emboldened Putin to wage more war.

“We all share a strong desire to end this war quickly and reliably. And peace must be lasting,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.

“Not like it was years ago, when Ukraine was forced to give up Crimea and part of our East – part of Donbas – and Putin simply used it as a springboard for a new attack. Or when Ukraine was given so called ‘security guarantees’ in 1994, but they didn’t work.”

Zelenskyy added that Crimea “should not have been given up then, just as Ukrainians did not give up Kyiv, Odesa, or Kharkiv after 2022”.

“Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their independence,” he said.

While Trump has indicated that a deal with Moscow would involve “some swapping, changes in land” between Russia and Ukraine, Zelenskyy has repeatedly ruled out handing over Ukrainian territory to “the occupier”.

In a bid to press Trump to maintain support for Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are attending Monday’s talks at the White House.

Macron said on Sunday that European leaders and Zelenskyy would aim to present a united front in the face of Russian aggression.

“If we show weakness today in front of Russia, we are laying the ground for future conflicts,” Macron said.

Despite Trump dismissing the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said earlier on Sunday that Putin had agreed to support a US-backed security guarantee resembling the 32-member transatlantic alliance’s collective defence mandate during last week’s meeting with the US president in Alaska.

“We were able to win the following concession: That the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” Witkoff told CNN’s State of the Union.

Under Article 5, an armed attack against a NATO member nation is considered an attack against all members of the alliance.

Still, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday sought to temper expectations, saying an agreement to end the war was “a long ways off”.

“We’re not at the precipice of a peace agreement,” Rubio told ABC News’s This Week.

“We made progress in the sense that we identified potential areas of agreement, but there remain some big areas of disagreement.”

European leaders will join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his visit to Washington, DC, seeking an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, after United States President Donald Trump dropped both his push for a ceasefire and the threat of punitive actions against Russia following his Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Securing a ceasefire in Ukraine, more than three years after Russia’s invasion, had been one of Trump’s core demands before Friday’s Alaska summit, to which Ukraine and its European allies were not invited.

Special US envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday that Putin agreed at the summit with Trump to allow the US and European allies to offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defence mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the 3 1/2-year war.

“We were able to win the following concession: That the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” he said on the CNN news programme State of the Union. Witkoff said it was the first time he had heard Putin agree to that.

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, speaking in Brussels on Sunday after meeting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, said the current front lines of the war should be the basis for peace talks.

“We need real negotiations, which means we can start where the front line is now,” Zelenskyy said, adding that European leaders support this and reiterating his long-held position that it was necessary to establish a ceasefire in order to then negotiate a final deal.

But after the summit on Friday with Putin yielded no clear breakthrough, Trump ruled out an immediate ceasefire – a move that aligns with Putin, who has long argued for negotiations on a final peace deal.

According to a New York Times report, after his meeting with Putin, the US president also told European leaders that he had offered to support a plan to end the war that involved Ukraine giving up parts of its territory to Russia.

Ukraine and its European allies have criticised Putin’s stance as a way to buy time and press Russia’s battlefield advances, and they have expressed unease over Trump’s land swap proposal from the outset.

In an effort to try show a firm, united front to the US president in White House talks on Monday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and von der Leyen will accompany Zelenskyy to Washington, DC.

“The talks will address, among other things, security guarantees, territorial issues, and continued support for Ukraine in its defence against Russian aggression,” the German government said in a statement about the trip to the US capital. “This includes maintaining pressure on sanctions.”

Ahead of the visit, von der Leyen said on X that she would welcome Zelenskyy for a meeting in Brussels on Sunday, which other European leaders would join by video, before accompanying the Ukrainian leader on his US trip at his “request” and with “other European leaders”.

This afternoon, I will welcome @ZelenskyyUa in Brussels.

Together, we will participate in the Coalition of Willing VTC.

At the request of President Zelenskyy, I will join the meeting with President Trump and other European leaders in the White House tomorrow.

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) August 17, 2025

Strength and safety in numbers appear to be factors in the group visit, with memories still fresh about the hostile reception Zelenskyy received in February from Trump and US Vice-President JD Vance in a public White House dressing-down, castigating the Ukrainian leader as being ungrateful and “disrespectful”.

No land swaps

While Zelenskyy has welcomed Trump’s efforts to end the war, in a post on social media on Saturday, he warned that “it may take a lot of effort to get Russia to have the will to implement far greater – peaceful coexistence with its neighbors for decades”.

The Ukrainian president has also repeatedly reiterated that Kyiv will not swap any of its land to attain a ceasefire. Ukraine’s constitution forbids the ceding of territory.

According to Zelenskyy, Putin has asked that Russia be handed over all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, a third of which Kyiv still holds.

In exchange, Russian forces would halt their offensive in the Black Sea port region of Kherson and Zaporizhia in southern Ukraine, where the main cities are still under Ukrainian control.

Earlier this month, the Ukrainian president said that  “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier” and pointed out that he doesn’t have the authority to sign off on land swaps. He said that changing Ukraine’s 1991 borders runs counter to the country’s constitution.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has been gradually advancing for months.

In his statement after the Alaska summit, Putin signalled no movement in Russia’s long-held demands, which also include a veto on Kyiv’s desired membership in the NATO alliance.

He also warned Ukraine and its European allies not to “create any obstacles” and “that they will not attempt to disrupt the emerging progress through provocation or behind-the-scenes intrigue”.

Trilateral summit in the works?

The diplomatic focus now switches to Zelenskyy’s talks at the White House on Monday with the European leaders in tow.

In an interview with broadcaster Fox News after his sit-down with Putin, Trump had suggested that the onus was now on Zelenskyy to secure a peace deal as they work towards an eventual trilateral summit with Putin.

“It’s really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done,” Trump said.

European powers, however, want to help set up a trilateral meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy to make sure Ukraine has a seat at the table to shape its future.

They also want security guarantees for Ukraine with US involvement, and the ability to crank up pressure on Moscow if needed.

“They will spell out what they consider essential in terms of security guarantees: what they can do themselves, what falls to the coalition of volunteers, and also what they expect from the United States,” a European government official told the Reuters news agency.

“Indeed, they expect a very robust commitment.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday will meet US President Donald Trump in Washington to discuss an end to the more than three-year war in Ukraine, hours after Trump’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska ended without a concrete deal.

In a post on his Truth Social platform after holding phone conversations with European Union and NATO leaders, Trump said the talks with Putin “went very well”.

“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.”

Trump’s pitch for the peace agreement, analysts say, came after no deal was announced in the Alaska talks. Prior to the meeting, Trump had threatened Moscow to agree to a ceasefire.

Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid, reporting from Moscow, said there has been an atmosphere of success in Moscow.

“Trump’s remarks on the need for a larger peace agreement fall in line with what Putin has been saying for the last few months,” he said.

The Ukrainian leader and his European allies, who have been seeking a ceasefire, welcomed the Trump-Putin talks on Saturday but emphasised the need for a security guarantee for Kyiv.

Zelenskyy, who was publicly berated by Trump and his officials during his last Oval Office meeting, said, “I am grateful for the invitation.” The Ukrainian leader said he had a “long and substantive conversation with Trump”.

“In my conversation with President Trump, I said that sanctions should be tightened if there is no trilateral meeting or if Russia evades an honest end to the war,” the Ukrainian leader said.

He said that Ukraine needed a real, long-lasting peace and not “just another pause” between Russian invasions.

“Security must be guaranteed reliably and in the long term, with the involvement of both Europe and the US,” he said on X following his call with the European leaders.

Zelenskiy stressed that territorial issues can only be decided with Ukraine.

Trilateral meeting

In his first public comment after the Alaska talks, Zelenskyy said he supported Trump’s proposal for a trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the US, and Russia, adding that Kyiv is “ready for constructive cooperation”.

“Ukraine reaffirms its readiness to work with maximum effort to achieve peace,” the Ukrainian president posted on X.

But Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said on Russian state television on Saturday that a potential trilateral meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy has not been raised during the US-Russia discussions.

“The topic has not been touched upon yet,” Ushakov said, according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

Trump rolled out the red carpet on Friday for Putin, who was in the US for the first time in a decade, but he gave little concrete detail afterwards of what was discussed.

Trump said in Alaska that “there’s no deal until there’s a deal,” after Putin claimed the two leaders had hammered out an “understanding” on Ukraine and warned Europe not to “torpedo the nascent progress.”

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Kyiv, said Trump has been heavily criticised by the US media over the meeting in Alaska.

“They are concerned about what has been described as far more of a conciliatory tone by Trump towards Putin, without coming out of that meeting with even a ceasefire,” he said.

Stratford said that the eyes are now on the meeting in Washington as Zelenskyy and Trump try to set up a trilateral meeting with Putin.

“If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin,” the US president said.

During an interview with Fox News Channel after the talks, Trump insisted that the onus going forward might be on Zelenskyy “to get it done,” but said there would also be some involvement from European nations.

Meanwhile, several European leaders on Saturday jointly pledged to continue support for Ukraine and maintain pressure on Russia until the war in Ukraine ends.

Europe’s stance

In a statement, EU leaders, including the French president and German chancellor, outlined key points in stopping the conflict.

They said: “Ukraine must have ironclad security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Russia cannot have a veto against Ukraine‘s pathway to the EU and NATO, the statement said. “It will be up to Ukraine to make decisions on its territory. International borders must not be changed by force.”

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Brussels, said reaching a ceasefire in Ukraine is the priority of European leaders.

“They believe that there needs to be an immediate ceasefire before reaching a comprehensive deal on the future of Ukraine,” he said.

“Then they seek to provide security guarantees by deploying their own forces to make sure Russians will not violate the terms of that agreement,” our correspondent stressed, adding that European countries reject the notion of changing the borders by force.

Names marked with an asterisk* have been changed to protect identities.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Artem* is determined to never join Ukraine’s armed forces.

“If I ever fight, I won’t fight for Ukraine,” the 29-year-old from the westernmost Zakarpattia region told Al Jazeera.

A “conscription patrol” of three police and two military officers rounded him up in late June as he was leaving the Sunday mass at a cathedral in Uzhhorod, the regional capital.

Artem had paperwork proving that he was the only caretaker of his disabled, ailing 66-year-old mother and therefore could not be drafted.

But the patrol detained and brought him to a conscription office, where two officers took Artem to a separate room. He claimed they beat him and tried to force him to “volunteer” for military service.

When he refused, he said they tied and blindfolded him and four more reluctant detainees and took them to a forest outside Uzhhorod.

One of the officers ordered them at gunpoint to run to what turned out to be a fence on the Slovakian border, Artem claimed.

Another officer videotaped the men’s “attempt to illegally cross the border”, which is punishable by up to four years in jail, and said they could “negotiate their release fee”, Artem claimed.

He said that his family paid $2,000 for his release and another $15,000 for a fake permit to leave Ukraine as men of fighting age, 25 to 60, are not allowed to travel abroad.

Artem, who spoke via a messaging app from an Eastern European nation, asked to withhold his real name, personal details and the location of the conscription office he claims to have been beaten in.

A deepening crisis

Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify all of the details of Artem’s story, but some of his allegations corroborate with other cases of conscription-related coercion and corruption in Ukraine amid a dire shortage of front-line troops in the fight against Russia.

Between January and June, the Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman’s office received more than 2,000 complaints about the use of force by conscription patrols that consist of military and police officers.

In one case, patrol officers hit a bicyclist in the central Rivne region with their car in January after he refused to pull over. They beat and tear-gassed him to deliver him to the conscription office and “illegally mobilise”, investigators said. Ultimately, the patrolling officers volunteered to go to the front line to avoid assault charges, they said.

On August 1, police in the central city of Vinnytsia used tear gas to disperse a crowd that tried to storm a conscription office and release some 100 men that they claimed had been detained illegally.

Meanwhile, a privileged few abuse their position to dodge the draft.

In October 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the prosecutor general after several public prosecutors obtained fake disability papers that also entitled them to sizeable “pensions”.

In January, Oleh Druz – the chief psychiatrist for Ukraine’s armed forces, who could declare any conscript unfit for service – was arrested. He now faces up to 10 years in jail for “illegal enrichment”.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Druz reportedly bought several luxurious apartments, two plots of land and several BMW cars – and kept $152,000 and 34,000 euros ($40,000) in cash at home.

For more than two years, conscription patrols have been combing public places, subway stations, nightclubs and even crashing wedding parties in search of men of fighting age – 25 to 60, more than a dozen witnesses from all over Ukraine told Al Jazeera.

They tour regions outside their official jurisdiction. “Fake patrols” of burly uniformed men then blackmail those they catch. A release fee is $400 or more, but those who refuse to pay up are handed over to real conscription offices, the witnesses say.

Several conscription officers are ex-servicemen who often suffer from PTSD, despise draft dodgers and have no qualms about humiliating, abusing and beating them, they say.

Hundreds of thousands of men are understood to be in hiding, causing a dire shortage in the workforce. Across the country, there are far fewer male construction workers, farmhands, cooks and taxi drivers.

Men whose military papers are in order prefer to move around with a witness who can, if needed, videotape an encounter with a conscription patrol.

“I drive around with my mom because there are too many checkpoints anywhere I go,” Ferentz, an ethnic Hungarian taxi driver in Uzhhorod, told Al Jazeera as his mother smiled from the front seat of his old Skoda.

Meanwhile, a societal division is growing.

Current or former Ukrainian servicemen and their families are increasingly indignant about how draft dodgers justify their reluctance to enlist.

“I broke up with many female friends who defend their husbands’ or boyfriends’ right not to fight,” Hanna Kovaleva, whose husband Albert volunteered in 2022, told Al Jazeera. “This [mindset] is disgusting – ‘let someone else die while I’m hiding behind my wife’s skirt.’”

Preemptive emigration

Before he turns 17, Bogdan* is leaving Ukraine – but not in search of better living conditions.

He lives in central Kyiv in a three-bedroom apartment with his parents, goes to a private school and spends weekends in a spacious country house.

But his parents do not want him to be conscripted.

Even though it could only happen only when Bogdan turns 25, they say they are not taking ay risks.

“With this chaos on the front line, you don’t just want your kid to die because of his officer’s mistake,” his father Dmitry* told Al Jazeera.

On September 1, Bogdan will start school in Prague, where his aunt lives.

Crushed and heartbroken – he just started dating a classmate – he says he has no choice.

“I know I sound very unpatriotic, but I don’t want to end up rotting in a ditch,” he told Al Jazeera.

In January, United States President Donald Trump’s administration urged Kyiv to lower the draft age from 25 to 18 – reiterating the previous administration’s request.

As the average age of a Ukrainian serviceman has reached 45 from 42 three years ago, more and more Ukrainians with military backgrounds agree with the request.

Alternatively, men aged 18 and older could serve in a “labour army” that manufactures drones and other war-related items, according to Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, ex-deputy head of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

He said that mobilisation should involve all men of fighting age without exceptions – while Ukraine’s economy should be “reformatted” to primarily serve the army’s needs.

“If unpopular strategic decisions at home are not implemented, the situation only gets worse. No foreigners will fight for us,” Romanenko told Al Jazeera.

During a difficult week in Ukraine’s ground war, Russian troops completed their conquest of Chasiv Yar, a high ground in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, and claimed to have breached the outskirts of Kupiansk, a city with a pre-war population of more than 26,000, in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region.

Both conquests are the result of months-long efforts and have cost the Russians dearly in blood and weapons.

At the same time, Russian forces pushed into Dnipropetrovsk, a Ukrainian region whose borders they first breached over the weekend of June 7-8, capturing the village of Sichneve, which Russians call Yanvarskoye. It was the third claimed conquest in Dnipropetrovsk. Earlier, Russia captured Dachnoye and Malynivka.

Russia also began to launch jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicles to deadly effect, killing 31 people in Kyiv on July 31.

Ukraine responded with deep strikes on Russian transport networks and energy hubs.

Chasiv Yar and the ‘fortress belt’

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its paratroopers overran Chasiv Yar on July 31.

Moscow’s forces began to besiege the city in March 2024, about a month after the fall of Avdiivka, 30km (20 miles) to the south freed up offensive troops.

Russia prioritised this line of attack after conquering the city of Bakhmut in May 2023, following months of battles led by Wagner Group mercenaries.

Since Bakhmut fell, Russian forces have conquered a salient running 27km (17 miles) west of it. Chasiv Yar presented a challenge and a prize – a challenge because it sat astride a canal that formed a natural defensive barrier, and a prize because it is a vantage point from which Russia can survey the remaining free areas of Donetsk.

“Chasiv Yar is a key height in terms of adjusting observation and conducting combat operations,” military expert Vitaly Kiselyov told the Soloviev Live television network in Russia.

“To all appearances, we will be outflanking from the south and the north, gradually puncturing the enemy forces and edging them out, all the more so as we now hold an advantageous height relative to all other settlements,” said Kiselyov.

Another Russian military expert said the capture of Chasiv Yar enabled Russian forces to advance towards the so-called “fortress belt” of heavily defended Ukrainian cities in Donetsk.

“Chasiv Yar is situated on a hilltop, and beyond it, there are very vast expanses of flat terrain. The nearest agglomeration – Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka – is well fortified,” Andrey Marochko told the Russian newswire TASS.

Chasiv Yar sits at the northern end of an attempted Russian encirclement of Konstiantynivka, and on Saturday, the Russian Defence Ministry claimed its forces had captured Aleksandro-Kalinovo, on the southern end of the crab’s claw enclosing Konstiantynivka.

Some analysts disagreed that the fall of Chasiv Yar was as important as Russian analysts made it sound.

“Tactical Russian advances westward in Chasiv Yar do not constitute an operationally significant development in this area,” said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank.

“Russian forces have held most of northern and central Chasiv Yar since late January 2025 and began advancing in southwestern Chasiv Yar in mid-June 2025,” the ISW said.

It added that Ukrainian lines of communication were not further threatened, since “Russian forces have been within tube artillery range of Ukraine’s main logistics route through the fortress belt since late January 2025 and have held positions along the T-0504 Bakhmut-Kostyantynivka highway for several months, and have yet to significantly threaten Ukrainian positions in Kostiantynivka.”

The situation was different in Pokrovsk, some 35km (22 miles) southwest of Chasiv Yar, which Russia has also besieged.

Denis Pushilin, the head of the pro-Russian, self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said Ukrainian lines of communication into Pokrovsk had been impaired.

“The enemy has been largely denied the possibility to deliver ammunition and carry out troop rotation,” Pushilin said.

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii said on Telegram, “The most difficult situation now is in the Pokrovsk, Dobropillia, and Novopavlivka directions,” naming two more settlements that lie behind Pokrovsk in unoccupied Donetsk.

“The enemy is increasing efforts to capture our key agglomerations, looking for vulnerable spots in our defence, and conducting active combat operations simultaneously on several fronts,” he said.

He said Russian forces were forming sabotage groups in the Ukrainian rear in an attempt at “total infiltration”, and that Ukraine was “using anti-sabotage reserves, whose task is to search for and destroy enemy sabotage groups”.

Kupiansk and the ‘buffer zone’

At the northern end of the front, Russia claimed to have entered Kupiansk in Kharkiv on Tuesday.

Russian troops were fighting street battles in Kupiansk, Russian military expert Andrey Marochko told TASS. He said troops were deploying small, mobile groups targeting Ukrainian positions with precise strikes.

Russia’s forays into Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv lie beyond Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, the four regions Russia formally annexed in September 2022.

Russia claims to be creating a buffer zone to protect those regions, but Ukraine believes that claim to be an excuse for further occupation.

Russian low-level officials have suggested that the buffer zone should be at least 30km (20 miles) deep, but the Russian leadership has placed no such limit.

Moscow also continued its long-range strikes against Ukraine.

An overnight drone attack on July 31 killed 31 people in Kyiv. The Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Russia used jet-powered Shahed drones, which travel much faster than the propeller-driven kind, and are difficult to intercept.

The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched eight Iskander-K cruise missiles from Kursk city and 309 Shahed-type and decoy drones. United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it “an absolutely vile, brutal strike”.

The war of words

Even as he pressed on with these offensives, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine was not ready for peace talks.

During a news conference with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday, Putin said, “In principle, we can wait if the Ukrainian leadership believes that now is not the time,” adding that “all disappointments arise from excessive expectations.”

He was referring to the fact that three rounds of direct negotiations have yielded no ceasefire.

United States President Donald Trump repeated last week that he was “disappointed” in Putin, and has in recent weeks allowed US weapons to flow to Ukraine.

On Friday, the US Pentagon said it would sell Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air (AMRAAM) missiles to Ukraine.

Trump also got into a social media spat with Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s National Security Council, after Medvedev objected to Trump’s August 9 deadline for Russia to seal a ceasefire deal.

On Saturday, Trump wrote on his TruthSocial service that he had “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that”.

On the same day, Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on India for buying Russian oil. On Tuesday, he told CNBC, “I’m going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours, because they’re buying Russian oil, they’re fuelling the war machine, and if they’re going to do that, I’m not going to be happy.”

Ukraine’s strikes

Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up its interdiction campaign against Russian energy and transport infrastructure.

On July 31, Russia said it shot down 32 Ukrainian long-range UAVs in its western border regions. As a result of the Ukrainian attack, it said rail services in the Volgograd region were delayed.

Ukraine has been attacking the Russian railways connecting defence factories to the front, said open-source intelligence gatherer Frontelligence Insight.

Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, said a radio factory in Penza, Russia was attacked, which made mobile command complexes and automated combat control systems.

On Saturday, Ukraine unleashed a wide-ranging set of strikes.

Kovalenko said the Radio Plant in Penza was attacked a second time, along with Electropribor, a manufacturer of encryptors, secure modems and switches for military and intelligence agencies.

Ukraine also hit a storage and launch site for Shahed drones at the Primorsko-Akhtarsk military airfield in Krasnodar.

But its biggest hits were against oil refineries.

Ukraine attacked the Ryazan Oil Refinery, one of Russia’s four largest, responsible for more than 6 percent of all refining in Russia, causing a fire. Also hit was the Novokuybyshevsk Oil Refinery near Samara city, where explosions were filmed. Ukraine also struck the Annanafteproduct oil depot in the Voronezh region, setting it alight, and on Sunday, a Ukrainian long-range strike hit an oil depot in Sochi on the Black Sea.

Ukrainian media reported that explosions damaged the main Russian gas pipeline carrying gas from Turkmenistan to Russia, shutting it down indefinitely. The media outlets said it supplied military industries, including the Demikhov Machine-Building Plant, the MiG aircraft company, and the Magnum-K ammunition plant.

We know from headlines that small-scale technologies such as drones have transformed war, most urgently affecting Ukraine’s ability to stay in a bruising battle for its existence against Russia. But it’s done the same for covering war too, especially the kind of fleet, up-close dispatch of which we can now say Ukrainian filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov is a master.

The Associated Press correspondent’s follow-up to his harrowing, Oscar-winning “20 Days in Mariupol,” which rendered the first weeks of Russia’s invasion inside a city under siege, is another intimate perspective on his country’s devastation. But this time it’s from the frontlines of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, specifically one brigade’s nightmarish trek to liberate a Russian-occupied town. In its heart-stopping intimacy — courtesy of helmet-cams, drones and the foxhole connection between citizen soldier and countryman journalist — “2000 Meters to Andriivka” is a war chronicle like no other.

Right away, Chernov introduces us to war’s chaos with bodycam footage from a Ukrainian soldier named Piro. It’s a dugout POV capturing how a lull marked by jokes and cigarettes can quickly become enemy fire, screaming and artillery shells flying. A retreat is abandoned when the platoon’s armored carrier gets stuck. In the ensuing scramble, comrades are hit and we hear a resigned, “That’s it for me.” Suddenly this view feels less like one from a trench but a grave.

No wonder Chernov’s measured narration sounds bleaker. His speculative dread from “Mariupol” has been replaced by a fact-driven weariness. He and AP colleague Alex Babenko press on, embedding themselves in a battalion tasked with a one-mile push to retake the town of Andriivka near a Russian stronghold. The path, however, is a thin ribbon of forest hiding Russians in trenches, fortified on each side by open minefields.

Also, the designation “forest” seems generous: The gnarled and stripped trees look broken, suggesting an open wasteland instead of a battleground that could provide cover. They’ve clearly already seen plenty of destruction, and by the end of the film, they’ll have seen more. Chernov tells us that one soldier described this unrecognizable homeland to him as like “landing on a planet where everything is trying to kill you.”

The first-person footage as the group advances is breathless and dense with gunfire, yelling and the sense that each inch will be hard-won on the way to planting that Ukrainian flag in Andriivka, which, from drone shots, already looks decimated. (The film is broken into chapters indicating meters gained.) “I came to fight, not to serve,” says this brigade’s war dog of a leader, a former warehouse worker named Fedya who at one point is shot but makes his way back to the mission after being evacuated for treatment.

Still, during long foxhole waits, when the only visible smoke is from a cigarette, Chernov’s gentle off-camera queries to Fedya’s men (ranging from the hopelessly young to a 40-something new grandfather) elicit touching optimism for a return to normal life: a shower, a job, friendly rivalries over trivial matters, the chance to smoke less, to fix a toilet back home, to rebuild. Then Chernov’s voiceover comes in for the softly spoken hammer-blow peek into the future: which of these guys will die in later battles or perhaps never be found. This is gutting stuff.

There’s never been as immersive a war documentary as “2000 Meters in Andriivka,” cleaving as it does to the swings between peril and blessed boredom, mixing overhead shots (including a suicide drone’s vantage) and underground views like a dystopian saga. War is hell, but Ukraine’s survival is paramount. The senselessness, however, seems a constant. “Why are you here?” a Ukrainian soldier barks at a captured Russian, who mutters back, “I don’t know why we’re here.”

Aug. 2 (UPI) — Four Ukrainians have been detained in an investigation of “large-scale” governmental corruption, the nation’s two anti-corruption agencies said Saturday.

A member of parliament, two current and former officials, and a member of the National Guard military were involved, according to the nation’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

They allegedly were involved in a plot to take funds appropriated for drones and electronic warfare in 2024 and 2025, NABU posted on Telegram. They also acquired and distributed “unlawful benefits on an especially large scale,” the agency said.

On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law passed unanimously by the parliament that restores the independence of the two agencies. One week earlier, the parliament had passed the law and Zelensky signed it that essentially ends their independence.

The former law sparked large protests and international rebuke, the Kyiv Independent reported.

In his daily video address, he said the schemes were “absolutely immoral.”

“I am grateful to the anti-corruption agencies for their work,” Zelensky posted on X. “There can only be zero tolerance for corruption, clear teamwork in uncovering it, and ultimately, a fair sentence. It is important that anti-corruption institutions operate independently, and the law passed on Thursday guarantees them all the tools necessary for a real fight against corruption.”

Detained were Oleksii Kuznetsov, a member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party; Serhii Haidai, a former Luhansk governor; Andrii Yurchenko, head of Luhansk Oblast’s Rubizhne district and the guard member.

Kuznetsov will be dismissed from the Servant of the People in the parliament during the investigation, party leader David Arakhimia said.

In one scheme, they are accused of inflating a state contract for the purchase of electronic warfare with officials receiving a kickback of 30% of the conteact in exchange for inflating the price.

They were also involved in a similar way in state contracts for drones. A military unit signed a $239,000 contract with a producer with an overpaymernt of $80,000, the agencies said.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko announced the National Guard was implementing “systemic safeguards” to prevent power abuse.

“We are building a system in which honest service is protected, and there will be inevitable responsibility for violations,” Klymenko posted on Telegram.

Ukraine has been purchasing drones and weapons from other nations since Russia invaded the nation in February 2022.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Last week, hundreds of Ukrainians rallied in several cities to protest the government’s attempt to curb the independence of anticorruption watchdogs.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on July 22 signed a bill into law, which would revoke the autonomy of key agencies – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

The rare protest in the war-torn country forced the Ukrainian president to introduce a new draft bill to restore the independence of NABU and SAPO, which have been established to investigate high-level corruption and are widely seen as a symbol of democratic reforms.

So, why did Zelenskyy try to curb powers of the anticorruption agencies, and will his action dent public trust in the government crucial at a time of war against Russia?

Why are Ukrainians protesting?

The nationwide protests erupted in the wake of the July 22 vote in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament, to approve the bill that allows the prosecutor general to oversee the two anticorruption agencies.

The prosecutor general is appointed by the president and approved by the Verkhovna Rada, where Zelenskyy’s Public Servant party holds a majority.

It was seen as an attempt by the government to control the two agencies, which were created in the wake of the 2013-14 pro-democracy Euromaidan protests. Many believe it’s a setback from the years of reforms following the removal of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

The protesters held banners with slogans reading “Sham!” “Don’t make a step back, there’s an abyss there,” and “Corruption applauds” the new bill.

The rallies took place in Kyiv as well as in large cities such as the Black Sea port of Odesa and Lviv, known as Ukraine’s cultural capital.

NABU has been probing a string of senior officials and lawmakers, including those within Zelenskyy’s Public Servant party.

Oleksiy, who enlisted to join the army in 2022, wonders why he should keep fighting on the front lines of eastern Ukraine while officials engage in corruption.

“What’s the point if I go back home and my family is surrounded by corruption everywhere,” the 42-year-old construction manager told Al Jazeera.

“Judges, officials, even school teachers all say, ‘Give, give, give,’” he said, asking to withhold his last name and details of his military service, in accordance with the wartime protocol.

Oleksiy, who is on a break from his service to visit his two children and ailing mother, took part in the largest antigovernment rallies in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Why Zelenskyy backed the bill?

The new law envisaged executive control over NABU and SAPO as the prosecutor general’s office could access their information, give them binding directives, transfer cases and close down investigations.

The bill “could finally destroy the independence of the anticorruption system in Ukraine”, NABU said.

Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the new law “risks weakening Ukraine’s democratic foundations and its future integration with Europe”. She called for the repeal of the law.

Zelenskyy, a former comedian and political rookie who came to power in 2019 on an anticorruption ticket, defended the law, claiming that the NABU and SAPO have to “get rid of Russian influence”.

His allegation followed the arrest of two NABU staffers suspected of working for Russian intelligence, and charges against outspoken anticorruption campaigner Vitaly Shabunin.

Shabunin was accused of “evading military service”, but his supporters called the charges trumped-up, and almost 60 anticorruption and nongovernmental groups signed a joint appeal in his defence.

A Kyiv-based political analyst says there are two popular theories about why Zelenskyy initiated the bill.

“One is that NABU allegedly closed in on Zelenskyy’s inner circle,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta think tank, told Al Jazeera.

NABU accused Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, Zelenskyy’s closest ally and lifelong friend, of taking kickbacks worth $346,000 from a real estate developer in a deal that cost the government $24m.

Zelenskyy’s press office didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s phone calls and text messages.

“Or this is an attempt to control NABU’s actions in order not to overtly politicise them, not to provoke domestic political wars during the war with Russia,” Fesenko said.

“But I think it has to do with the activisation of the NABU on political issues that may have caused suspicion in Zelenskyy’s inner circle. That it wasn’t a fight against corruption but more of a political attack on Zelenskyy,” he said.

The protests, an anticorruption expert told Al Jazeera, have weakened Zelenskyy’s support within domestic political circles. “There was a belief in his high and stable rating,” Tetiana Shevchuk from the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Kyiv-based group, said.

But “he no longer can demand anything from the parliament,” she said.

Zelenskyy is afraid of NABU as the only law enforcement agency that won’t open or close an investigation following a phone call from his administration, she said, referring to the centralisation of power under him.

“NABU is the only body that doesn’t do that,” Shevchuk said.

Fesenko from the Penta think tank says the politicians “underestimated” the bill’s “negative consequences”. They “didn’t think the public response would be that harsh”.

Zelenskyy has promised to submit the new bill – a move applauded by the country’s top anti-corruption investigator.

Semen Kryvonos, director of NABU, however, said that corrupt actors will step up a “dirty information campaign” against the anti-graft agencies.

Meanwhile, protest leaders say they would stop rallies only after the bill has been passed – tentatively, later this week.

Since the 2014 pro-democracy revolution or Revolution of Dignity, attempts have been made to root out endemic corruption.

Many bureaucratic procedures have been simplified and consume less time, money and nerves.

But corruption remains pervasive in the halls of justice. Ukraine ranks 105 out of 180 in Transparency International’s corruption index.

A criminal investigator who spent months putting together a string of lawsuits against a fraudster who duped dozens of people, including several lawmakers, told Al Jazeera that a corrupt judge could annul his work and the fraudster may walk free.

“We can’t guarantee any judge’s honesty,” the investigator said on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, Europe’s worst armed conflict since World War II has bred new forms of corruption.

Some officers extort bribes for letting a serviceman take leave or go to a hospital, pilfer foreign aid such as canned foods, clothes or shoes that end up on store shelves instead of the front line.

“If someone reports such an officer, they may end up in a suicide squad on zero position,” serviceman Oleksiy who took part in the protests claimed, referring to the front line positions most likely to be attacked by enemy drones.

Officers tasked with the conscription campaign have been accused of receiving bribes to smuggle people out of the country. Dozens of conscription officers have been arrested – and some had cash stashes of millions of dollars or euros or even in gold bullion.

Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov was fired in 2023 after scandals involving inflated prices for military procurement, including ammunition, foodstuffs, medical equipment and winter clothing.

His successor Rustem Umerov was investigated for alleged abuse of power, NABU said in January.

Will the curbs on anticorruption bodies affect foreign aid?

The European Union said on Sunday it would freeze $1.7bn, a third of its latest aid package for Ukraine, because of the new law.

But military aid from the EU and the United States is not likely to be interrupted, said Lt Gen Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces.

However, the protests reveal a shocking contrast between hundreds of thousands of servicemen on the front lines and the corrupt officials who dodge the draft and keep thriving on corruption.

“On one side, there are people spilling blood, and corruption remains high and even gets higher in certain areas, and people find it inadmissible,” Romanenko told Al Jazeera.

Ukrainian leader faces domestic international pressure after signing law critics say curbs the powers of the country’s anitcorruption agencies.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has submitted a new draft bill to the country’s legislature, in an effort to calm outrage over a previously passed law that critics say paves the way for corruption.

The country’s anticorruption agencies quickly hailed the bill’s introduction on Thursday, saying it would restore their “procedural powers and guarantees of independence”.

The Ukrainian leader has contended with protests and condemnation from both within Ukraine and from its closest European allies after a separate controversial law was passed on Tuesday.

That law placed the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) under the direct authority of the country’s prosecutor general – a position appointed by the president.

Zelenskyy initially maintained that the law was needed to respond to suspected “Russian influence” within the agencies amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Critics, however, said the law would strip the bodies of their independence and could allow political interference, while failing to address any potential Kremlin-linked operatives.

On Tuesday, thousands of Ukrainians defied martial law – which has been in place since the beginning of Russia’s war – to take to the streets of Kyiv and other major cities to protest against the law.

European officials also questioned the law, noting that addressing corruption remains a core requirement both for Ukraine’s future European Union membership and in assuring aid flows to combat Russia.

Amid the pressure, Zelenskyy backed away from the new law, promising to submit new legislation that would assure “all the norms for the independence of anti-corruption institutions will be in place” and that there would be no Russian “influence or interference”.

Opposition lawmakers have also separately prepared their own legislation to revoke the law passed on Tuesday.

“They heroically solved the problems that they created just as heroically. Grand imitators,” Yaroslav Zhelezniak, from the opposition Holos party, said on Telegram, criticising Zelenskyy and his allies about-turn.

Before the new draft bill’s introduction, Zelenskyy spoke with the leaders of Germany and the United Kingdom on Thursday.

In a statement, Zelenskyy’s office said British Prime Minister Keir Starmer had “offered to involve experts who could contribute to long-term cooperation” on the issue.

In a post on X, Zelenskyy said he invited Friedrich Merz to “join the expert review of the bill”.

“Friedrich assured me of readiness to assist,” he said.

It was not immediately clear when Ukraine’s legislature, the Verkhovna Rada, would vote on the new bill.

July 19 (UPI) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants cease-fire negotiations with Russia next week and said he would be willing to meet directly and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian officials have proposed cease-fire negotiations next week, and Russian officials confirmed their receipt of the proposal for a high-level talk, CNN reported on Saturday.

“We need to do everything possible to achieve a cease-fire,” Zelensky told Ukrainians Saturday during his daily address.

“The Russian side must stop avoiding decisions regarding prisoner exchanges, the return of children and the cessation of killings,” Zelensky said.

“A meeting at the leadership level is essential to genuinely secure peace,” he added. “Ukraine is ready for such a meeting.”

That meeting could be between Putin and Zelensky, the BBC reported.

Ukraine’s call for cease-fire negotiations comes after Russia attacked 10 Ukrainian cities and other locales during the overnight hours from Friday into Saturday.

Russia launched more than 340 explosive drones and decoys and 35 ballistic missiles at targets in Ukraine, many of which the Ukrainian military said it intercepted.

President Donald Trump on Sunday announced the United States will sell Patriot missile-defense systems to NATO, which will provide them to Ukraine.

Trump also threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Russia if Putin does not end its war against Ukraine within 50 days.

Russian and Ukrainian officials last met in Istanbul in early June, but that meeting ended quickly with no cease-fire agreement.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as ‘simply horrific, stupid Russian terror’.

A Russian air raid on a shopping centre and market in Dobropillia in eastern Ukraine has killed at least two people, wounded 22 others and caused widespread damage, officials said, the latest blow to United States President Donald Trump’s calls for Moscow to end its attacks on the neighbouring country.

Vadym Filashkin, the governor of eastern Donetsk region, said a 500kg (1,100-pound) bomb was deployed at 5:20pm (14:20 GMT) on Wednesday, when shoppers were out.

He said two people were killed and 22 injured, with eight nearby apartment blocks and eight cars destroyed.

Video posted online showed areas around the shopping centre on fire with smoke billowing skywards.

“Firefighters are extinguishing the blaze as there is a possibility that people are still inside the shopping centre,” Filashkin told Ukrainian television.

“The occupier dropped the bomb at a time when Dobropillia was crowded with people. Many were out shopping. The occupier specifically targeted the shopping centre. All nearby shopping centres have been either destroyed or damaged.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, described the attack as “simply horrific, stupid Russian terror. There is no military logic to their strikes, only an effort to take as many lives as possible”.

The bombing comes after Russia fired hundreds of drones, artillery and a ballistic missile at Ukraine overnight and early on Wednesday, defying Trump’s call on Monday to reach a peace deal within 50 days or face severe sanctions.

Russia launched 400 Shahed and decoy drones, as well as one ballistic missile, during the night, the Ukrainian air force said. The strikes targeted northeastern Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine, Vinnytsia in the west, and Odesa in the south.

The latest bombardments in Russia’s escalating aerial campaign against civilian areas came ahead of a September 2 deadline set by Trump for the Kremlin to reach a peace deal in the three-year war, under the threat of possible severe sanctions if it does not.

No date has yet been publicly set for a possible third round of direct peace talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine. Two previous rounds delivered no progress, apart from prisoner swaps.

Trump on Monday pledged to deliver more weapons to Ukraine, including Patriot air defence systems, and threatened to slap additional sanctions on Russia. They were Trump’s toughest public comments towards Russian President Vladimir Putin since he returned to the White House nearly six months ago.

But some US lawmakers and European government officials expressed misgivings that the 50-day deadline handed Putin the opportunity to capture more Ukrainian territory before any settlement to end the fighting.

Other US ultimatums to Putin in recent months have failed to persuade the Russian leader to halt attacks.

Tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed in the war, many of them along the more than 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front line, and Russian barrages of cities have killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, the United Nations says.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Heavy thuds that resemble fast hip-hop beats fill the night air when MIM-104 Patriots, air defence systems made in the United States, get to work.

Each Patriot surface-to-air launcher can shoot up to 32 missiles within seconds – and hit Russian ballistic missiles closing in on their targets.

The missiles fly at supersonic speeds, and the collision triggers a bright, split-second blast followed by a thunderous shock-wave.

“That’s the kind of explosion that makes me feel safe,” Ihor Lysenko, a 17-year-old in the capital Kyiv told Al Jazeera. He believes that the “technology is pretty reliable”.

The Patriots were developed in the 1970s to down Soviet missiles. Kyiv first received them in April 2023 from Washington and several of its Western European allies.

Within weeks, they had intercepted Russia’s Kinzhal (Dagger) intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are launched from fighter jets at more than 12km (7.5 miles) above the ground.

The Kinzhals mostly fly in the Earth’s stratosphere to maintain their speed, which, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is 10 times faster than the speed of sound, which he said makes any Western air defence system “useless”.

But in the past two years, about 10 Patriot systems in Ukraine – the exact number is a state secret – stationed in Kyiv and the southern port of Odesa have downed dozens more Kinzhals – along with other cruise and ballistic missiles, including North Korean ones; fighter jets; helicopters; and attack drones.

The latter is similar to hammering a nail with an electronic microscope – a Patriot missile is priced at several million dollars while Russian drones cost 100 times less.

The Patriots are, however, not 100 percent efficient.

During a late April attack on Kyiv, a Russian missile razed a two-storey apartment building, killing 12 people and wounding 87, gouging out windows and damaging roofs in dozens of buildings nearby.

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump announced that he would supply Kyiv with more Patriots – by selling them to Washington’s NATO allies who would pass them on to Ukraine.

“We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need,” Trump told reporters. “Putin really surprised a lot of people. He talks nice, and then he bombs everybody in the evening.”

On Monday, Trump specified the number of systems – 17 – during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

“It’s everything. It’s Patriots. It’s all of them. It’s a full complement with the batteries,” Trump said.

He referred to an unnamed Western nation that had the “17 Patriots ready to be shipped”.

Days earlier, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Berlin was ready to acquire additional Patriot systems.

‘We need hundreds of interceptors’

The new Patriots that will be deployed to large Ukrainian cities will definitely lower the lethality of Russian air raids, but won’t cross any “red lines” for Putin, a Kyiv-based analyst said.

“Russia occasionally cried about red lines when it came to long-range weaponry for strikes on Russia,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta think tank, told Al Jazeera. “There are no red lines with Patriots.”

However, the new Patriots won’t solve Ukraine’s problems with Russian air raids.

“The problem is not just about the Patriots,” Fesenko said. “We don’t just need the Patriots to fight ballistic missiles. Now Russia’s main strike weapon is drones. They cause most of the damage.”

Most damage and deaths are caused by attack drones that fly in swarms of hundreds at heights of up to 5km (3 miles) and cannot be hit by Ukraine’s own air defence systems or mobile air defence teams armed with machineguns.

Ukraine needs up to 25 more Patriot systems to cover its key urban areas, according to Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of the Ukrainian military’s General Staff.

While the details about the new Patriots’ arrival are unknown, some observers said the purpose of Trump’s pledge is clear.

“He does that to support his image that has been tarnished domestically and internationally,” Romanenko told Al Jazeera.

And what Ukraine needs the most is drone interceptors that can fly up to 500 kilometres per hour (310 miles per hour) as Moscow equips new generations of its unmanned vehicles with jet engines, he said.

“The quantity is what matters. If they launch more than 700 [drones per attack], if they are capable of upping it to 1,000, then we need hundreds of interceptors,” Romanenko said.

Moscow scrupulously analyses the routes of its drone swarms and frequently changes them to avoid interception, so Kyiv needs light planes with electronic jamming, helicopters and air defence systems that can down aerodynamic targets, he said.

On Saturday, the Ukrainian air force said the newly supplied, German-made Skynex air defence system shot down six Russian-made Geran drones.

The Skynex has a 35mm automatic cannon that fires up to 1,000 rounds per minute and uses programmable ammunition that detonates near its targets, releasing a cloud of projectiles.

However, there are only two Skynex systems in Ukraine, and there are no details about further supplies.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence has been slow to develop drone interceptors so far, an expert said.

“Everything is on an amateur level,” Andrey Pronin, one of the pioneers of Ukrainian drone warfare who runs a school for drone pilots in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.

He said he was part of a team that developed an interceptor drone capable of catching up to Russian loitering munitions.

But even though the interceptor was battle-tested, Ukraine’s Defence Ministry didn’t show any interest, he said.

“The ministry is such a hole. Things haven’t moved at all,” he said.

July 11 (UPI) — Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome on Friday.

The meeting, called the Coalition of the Willing, also was attended by U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg.

Zelenskyy said that strengthening Ukraine’s air defense is a top priority.

Ukrainian intelligence says Russia plans to launch attacks with up to 1,000 drones at a time. Ukraine’s defense against these attacks are interceptor drones, but there must be more investment in their production, according to a statement from Zelensky. He also said Ukraine is ready to purchase a large defense package from the United States.

To prevent Russia’s ongoing attacks, Zelensky said there needs to be more sanctions against Russia. Graham and Blumenthal discussed a bill they are sponsoring that addresses that.

“We also touched on the bill introduced by Senators Graham and Blumenthal regarding additional restrictive measures against Russia and those supporting its war effort,” Zelensky said on X. “Without a doubt, this is exactly the kind of leverage that can bring peace closer and make sure diplomacy is not empty.”

Blumenthal added that other nations at the conference were supportive of the bill.

“Deeply inspired & energized by strong solidarity among European heads of state — hearing from Sen. Graham & me about our Russia Sanctions bill at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome,” he said on X. “Powerful commitment to Ukraine’s cause & our legislation.”

He hinted that the sanctions would hurt Russia-supporting nations.

“Momentum building for our Russia Sanctions bill, shown by repeated statements of support from heads of state in Rome at the Ukraine Recovery Conference,” he tweeted. “Bone crushing sanctions should help halt China, India & Brazil from fueling Russia’s war machine by buying its oil & gas.”

In recent weeks, Russia has intensified its attacks, launching record numbers of drones at Kyiv and other civilian targets. The United States has begun sending arms to Ukraine after a pause.

The Ukraine Recovery Conference is a two-day event focused on building political and private-sector support for the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.