Ukraine

Moscow's mayor said about 600 drones headed for the city overnight; Russian missiles struck Kyiv and Kryvyi Rih.

Geopolitics

TASS reported on Sunday that Ukraine's losses from unused port capacity have risen to about $1.75 billion and that agricultural exports have dwindled by roughly 60 percent. The figures come from the Russian state agency alone and are not independently confirmed.

Economy

Russia has turned down Kyiv's offer of a mutual halt to attacks in the Black Sea. Strikes on ports on both sides continue.

Geopolitics

Russia's government said on Friday that fuel supply to filling stations remains strained in several regions. Two are now rationing sales.

Economy

The New York Times reported on Saturday that Russia ran a covert campaign against Moldova's pro-Western government. Poland said a day earlier that it had detained a man recruited by Russian intelligence for a planned killing.

Geopolitics

Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Taras Vysotsky said Ukrainian grain exports have fallen 70 percent since the beginning of August, while opportunities remain to partly increase shipments via rail and Danube ports, TASS reported. Ore exports dropped 27 percent over seven months, with revenue at $1.08 billion and $148 million in July, and Bloomberg reports that crop buyers cut off from the Black Sea are turning to other origins.

Economy

Kyiv has offered Moscow a mutual halt to attacks on civilian ships in the Black Sea, sent via a third country. Moscow says no formal proposal has reached it.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian drones have fully shut Russia's Orsk refinery, with repairs put at up to six months. Bloomberg reports Russian diesel exports at their lowest in years.

Economy

Poland detained a Russian recruited by Moscow's intelligence services over a plot to kill a man with Ukrainian and US passports, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday. He called it the first Russian-ordered attack on a US citizen in a NATO state.

Geopolitics

Gazprom said on Thursday that European underground storage holds 13.4 billion cubic metres less gas than a year ago and is refilling very slowly. Greek politician Panagiotis Lafazanis told TASS that the EU's ban on Russian pipeline gas and LNG by 2027 would hit Greece hardest, and that the planned Vertical Corridor to Ukraine remains only on paper.

Economy

Ukrainian drones hit Novorossiysk and Russia's Krasnodar region overnight into Wednesday, halting all three grain terminals at the country's main wheat port. Three people were killed, among them an eight-year-old.

Geopolitics

Oil tanker rates out of the Black Sea hit a record on Wednesday after a drone barrage, Bloomberg reports. The war's squeeze on the region's ports is feeding through to European grain prices.

Economy

Rosstat put second-quarter growth at 1.3% on Wednesday, above official forecasts. Petrol queues and purchase limits have returned in a dozen regions after Ukrainian refinery strikes.

Economy

Ukrainian and American units faced each other in an exercise in which Ukraine's drones prevailed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Neither the location nor the timing of the exercise has been reported.

Geopolitics

Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to Belgrade on Saturday to meet Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic over artillery shells and restated that Kyiv does not recognise Kosovo's independence, Politico reports. The remarks caused an uproar that reached Pristina, where a "Free Ukraine" banner was taken down the next day, and Albania, which reacted sharply.

Geopolitics

Russian missiles, drones and glide bombs killed at least ten people across Ukraine overnight into Tuesday. Kyiv says North Korean missiles were used.

Geopolitics

An unidentified drone closed Hanover airport's runways for 90 minutes overnight into Tuesday, a week after the explosive drone at Leipzig. Romania destroyed two suspected Russian drones at sea.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian drones killed at least 13 people in the Russian refinery city of Nizhnekamsk on Monday. Russian strikes then hit Zaporizhzhia and Kyiv.

Geopolitics

Russia's Supreme Court struck the only antiwar party, Yabloko, from the September Duma ballot on Monday, granting a suit by the pro-Kremlin party Rodina.

Geopolitics

US officials believe last week's explosives-laden drone at Leipzig/Halle airport came from Russia, American media report. Berlin speaks of a new level of danger but names no culprit.

Geopolitics

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky said Pyongyang plans to station tens of thousands of soldiers in Russia and tied that warning to a request to South Korea, FAZ reported on Monday. Seoul restated that it does not supply weapons to Ukraine, according to TASS, and South China Morning Post wrote that the request for air defence systems may be more than the government can accept.

Geopolitics

Moldova's foreign ministry recalled its ambassador from Moscow for consultations after a drone crashed in the village of Crocmaz near the Ukrainian border, Meduza reported on Monday. According to TASS, Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Galuzin said armed provocations in Transnistria would be regarded as an attack on Russia, while Meduza reported that more than 60,000 residents of the breakaway region have applied for Russian citizenship under a simplified procedure.

Geopolitics

Bloomberg described the shortfall in American ammunition stocks as a global problem that affects allies as well as US forces. In an editorial cited by TASS, the Financial Times argued that an agreement for Ukraine to produce Patriot interceptors is no quick solution, because technology transfer and a certified supply chain would take years.

Geopolitics

The Bank of Russia recommended on Monday that lenders support small and medium-sized businesses affected by what it called terrorist attacks, a reference to Ukrainian drone strikes on warehouses and logistics sites, and urged them not to charge penalties for overdue payments or demand early repayment. Kommersant reports that Russian book publishers are suspending sales on the Wildberries marketplace as drone attacks continue to hit the platform's warehouses.

Economy

Overnight strikes into Sunday killed at least seven people in Russia and Ukraine, authorities on both sides said.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian President Zelensky said on Sunday that Pyongyang is preparing a deployment of that size to Russia. Reuters and Nikkei Asia carried the statement; the figure is not independently confirmed.

Geopolitics

Two drones were spotted over a Bundeswehr base near Bonn that reportedly holds Patriot components, days after an explosives-laden drone was found at Leipzig/Halle airport. Berlin is expanding its drone defences.

Geopolitics

The Pentagon has given US arms makers 21 days to submit plans for faster weapons deliveries. The push follows stockpile depletion in five months of war with Iran.

Geopolitics

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Sunday that Belgrade could divert the Ibar river and leave the Gazivode plant without water, citing the treatment of Serbs, and called Europe's actions against Russia a hybrid war that has the continent on the brink of a larger conflict. Pristina removed the Ukrainian flag after Volodymyr Zelensky's remarks on Kosovo during his visit to Belgrade, and protesters in Tirana marched on the Serbian and Ukrainian embassies.

Geopolitics

Turkish officials said on Sunday that passage through the Turkish Straits to the Black Sea is continuing smoothly after delays linked to the war between Russia and Ukraine. TASS reports that the owner of the MV Reyhan Sari, attacked by a drone in July while carrying coal from the Russian port of Taman to Trabzon, plans to take Ukraine to international arbitration.

Economy

Russian drones destroyed a family home near Kyiv early on Saturday, killing a three-year-old boy and his grandparents. Ukrainian drones set Russia's Ilsky oil refinery ablaze the same day.

Geopolitics

The Pentagon has given US arms makers 21 days to plan faster deliveries. Patriot stocks are reported below 1,700 after the war against Iran.

Geopolitics

After a surge of attacks on ships, Turkey has begun restricting Black Sea traffic, Bloomberg reported on Saturday. Its foreign ministry warns the escalation could hit food security.

Economy

Drones were seen over a German military base days after an explosives-laden drone was stopped at Leipzig/Halle airport. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt calls Germany a daily target of hybrid warfare.

Geopolitics

A drone entered Bulgarian airspace on Saturday and exploded close to the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline, which links Turkey to Ukraine, near the Romanian border. Bulgaria's defence ministry said the drone was of a type widely used by Ukrainian armed forces but that nothing currently suggests a deliberate incident, while Kyiv denied targeting the country.

Geopolitics

Politicians from Germany, France and the United States, among them Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, are pressing the EU to use Russia's frozen assets to finance Ukraine, which could soon run out of money, the FAZ reported on Saturday. The same day the US Senate approved a new Russia sanctions bill, which Chinese state media called political coercion in global energy supply chains.

Economy

Ukrainian drones have increasingly targeted warehouses of Wildberries, Russia's largest e-commerce company, on which many Russians rely, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Billionaire co-founder Tatyana Kim faces her biggest test yet, according to The New York Times.

Economy

Volodymyr Zelensky met Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade on Saturday, and the two agreed to work toward a free-trade agreement by the end of the year and to have Serbia help rebuild Ukrainian cities. Vucic said he would back Kyiv's EU accession and that military cooperation had not been discussed, while pro-Russian demonstrators protested outside the presidency.

Geopolitics

Russian air attacks on a suburb of Kyiv killed at least three people on Saturday, and a drone damaged a football stadium in Odesa. In the Donbass, Russian troops are closing in on the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Geopolitics

The UN food price index rose in July to 131.1 points, its highest reading in more than three years, the FAO said on Friday. Heatwaves, the war in Ukraine and escalation in the Gulf lifted cereal, sugar and vegetable oil costs.

Economy

The US Senate passed the "Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026" on Friday by 86 votes to 11. It would let the president impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on major buyers of Russian oil and gas.

Geopolitics

US intelligence has tied the explosive-laden drone stopped at Leipzig/Halle airport on Tuesday night to Russia, the Wall Street Journal reports. German federal prosecutors are running a counterterrorism investigation.

Geopolitics

Ukraine has completely stopped exporting agricultural products through the Black Sea after Russian strikes on Odesa, a route that carried about 85% of such exports before July, Agrarian Policy Minister Taras Vysotsky said. TASS reports 6,835 vehicles queued at the Polish border and a drone strike on the Turkish cargo ship MV Gulluk near Novorossiysk, while Bloomberg reports that Washington says Kyiv will avoid targeting tankers and a Black Sea oil site.

Economy

Ukrainian drones struck a warehouse of Wildberries, Russia's largest online marketplace, in Yekaterinburg more than 2,000 kilometres inside Russia, sparking a fire, the merged company RWB said. Daily Sabah reports the disruption is hitting tens of thousands of small businesses, while TASS says Ukrainian forces attacked Donetsk-region territory 30 times in a day, wounding 11 people including two children.

Geopolitics

Key US stockpiles of long-range offensive missiles, including ATACMS and PrSM, have run extremely low during the war against Iran, TASS reported citing television coverage, while Trump rejected the reports and vowed to jail those suspected of leaking them. The Pentagon removed the general who coordinated military aid to Ukraine without giving reasons, and Trump answered Volodymyr Zelensky's appeals for more Patriot interceptors by saying, "We want missiles, too."

Geopolitics

Ukraine struck oil facilities deep inside Russia overnight into Thursday, setting the Yaroslavneftorgsintez refinery in Yaroslavl on fire. Russia's Defence Ministry said air defences downed 605 drones over Russian regions, occupied Crimea and the Black and Azov seas.

Geopolitics

Russia says a Ukrainian drone hit the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant on Saturday, cutting external power for one hour. On Thursday its foreign ministry called for a response from the international community.

Geopolitics

Police said the drone carrying an explosive device at Leipzig airport was found next to a Ukrainian aircraft loaded with ammunition, and the federal prosecutor's office is investigating what it calls an attack on Germany's transport and logistics infrastructure. A minister said a ripped detonator stopped the device from going off; a Washington newspaper linked the incident to Russian intelligence, according to Politika, while German investigators have not said who was behind it.

Geopolitics

Ukraine's requests for additional air-defence interceptors are falling flat because Western allies are reluctant to give up missiles they may need for their own defence, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Russian strikes on Ukraine have intensified in the meantime.

Geopolitics

A Ukrainian attack on the Bryansk region killed two civilians and injured six in Novozybkov, damaging several cars and a filling station, TASS reported on Thursday, citing preliminary data. Meduza the same day published what is known about the victims of a Ukrainian drone that came down and exploded on Monday on a beach at Arkhipo-Osipovka, part of Gelendzhik, while people were on the sand and in the water.

Geopolitics

Russia's defence ministry said its forces hit Ukrainian army infrastructure and logistics centres over the past day and that Ukraine lost roughly 1,395 troops across all frontline areas, figures reported by TASS and not independently confirmed. Russian analyst Vitaly Kiselyov told TASS that Kyiv has lost 80% of its ports and uses the remaining civilian port infrastructure to bring in fuel and NATO-issued uniforms.

Geopolitics

Russia's overnight missile and drone attack on Kyiv and its region on Wednesday killed 17 people; Ukrainian defences intercepted none of the ballistic missiles. NATO's secretary general now says he is working urgently to secure interceptors for Ukraine.

Geopolitics

German police found a drone with an explosive device beside a parked Ukrainian Antonov cargo plane at Leipzig/Halle, a NATO and DHL logistics hub, in the night to Wednesday. Germany's interior ministry calls it a professional hybrid threat scenario.

Geopolitics

A Ukrainian drone and missile attack on an industrial facility in Russia's Kursk region killed four people and injured several others, regional governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Wednesday. Meduza, reviewing 40 days of the campaign, counts at least 20 Wildberries warehouses and at least 25 oil refineries and other oil and gas sites hit, knocking out a third of Russia's refining capacity.

Geopolitics

A car bomb in Yekaterinburg critically injured Vladimir Tkachuk, head of the drone producer Uraldronzavod, and killed his bodyguard, who was inside the vehicle, TASS reported on Wednesday. It was the second attack on a Russian drone developer within a week; reporting also tied a Moscow restaurant explosion last week that killed the son-in-law of Aerospace Forces commander Alexander Chayko to an apparent attempt on Chayko himself.

Geopolitics

Russia has begun deploying a missile unit manned by North Korean troops and plans to station it in the Voronezh region, Andrii Cherniak of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate told Reuters in a report published on Wednesday. The claim comes from Ukrainian intelligence and is not independently confirmed.

Geopolitics

President Vladimir Putin announced changes to the Russian military command on Wednesday, appointing Denis Lyamin, former chief of staff of the battlegroup Center, to oversee unmanned systems forces and Colonel General Solodchuk as deputy defence minister for combat service support. TASS says the changes target material and technical supply for the troops; military analyst Boris Rozhin expects a faster pace of drone production and new unmanned units.

Geopolitics

Russia and Ukraine are producing ever larger numbers of innovative aerial weapons while ground combat is largely static, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. Ukraine accused Russia of a war crime after a video showed a drone attacking a vegetable seller in Kherson.

Geopolitics

Russia's UN envoy Vasily Nebenzya said on Wednesday that Ukraine is attacking staff at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in order to cause a man-made disaster. Rosatom head Alexey Likhachev accused Ukrainian forces of using drones at night to mine the access road, disrupting shift changes, food deliveries and emergency medical transport; the claims, carried by TASS, are unverified.

Geopolitics

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth on Wednesday rejected reporting that key US munitions stocks have fallen to dangerously low levels. Reuters had reported a day earlier that the army used "virtually all" its long-range precision missiles in the five-month war with Iran.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian drones killed five people in an industrial zone in the Moscow region overnight into Tuesday and set a Wildberries logistics warehouse ablaze in the Leningrad region. A day earlier, a drone came down on a packed beach near Gelendzhik, killing seven, among them children.

Geopolitics

Russian strikes on the Ukrainian cities of Sumy and Mykolaiv killed four civilians overnight on Tuesday. Ukraine the same day accused Russia of a war crime over a drone that hunted a street vendor in Kherson.

Geopolitics

Türkiye's foreign ministry renewed its call for Black Sea safety on Tuesday after a drone attack injured several crew members on two civilian vessels; TASS said the crew of the Nadezhda are under medical care in Novorossiysk following what it called a Ukrainian drone attack, and reported another ship ablaze off Odesa. Russian insurers have effectively stopped covering war and terrorism risks for cargo ships in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, the business outlet RBC reported, citing industry sources.

Geopolitics

Russia's defence ministry said its troops had taken the community of Baksheyevka in the Kharkiv region and that Ukrainian forces lost roughly 1,435 soldiers across all frontline areas in 24 hours, according to TASS. Duma lawmaker Alexey Chepa said Volodymyr Zelensky's 40-day plan is failing and that Ukraine lacks air defence systems and reserves to plug gaps along the line of engagement.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian agriculture stands to lose $3 billion in 2026 because port closures are blocking exports, TASS reported on Tuesday, citing Reuters. Purchase prices for grains and oilseeds in Ukraine have fallen by an average of 30 percent.

Economy

A Ukrainian drone came down on a crowded beach at Arkhipo-Osipovka near Gelendzhik on Monday, killing seven people, among them three children. Russian officials put the combined toll from the coastal and Crimean strikes at 11.

Geopolitics

The United States signed contracts worth more than $3bn with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to expand production of Patriot and THAAD interceptor parts, as the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine strain supplies, the South China Morning Post and the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. FAZ reported that the war in Iran has significantly reduced American missile stocks and that start-ups from Silicon Valley are meant to help.

Economy

Military expert Andrey Marochko said Russian forces took control of nearly 600 square kilometres and 32 settlements in the war zone during July, the state agency TASS reported on Monday. The figures come from the Russian side and are not independently confirmed.

Geopolitics

Meduza reported that General Alexander Chayko, who commanded troops that carried out the Bucha massacre in Ukraine, appears to have been the target of Saturday's explosion at the Balzi Rossi restaurant on Barrikadnaya Street in Moscow. Russia's Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Italy accused Ukraine of involvement, and Meduza counted at least six attacks on Russian generals away from the front over two years, three of them fatal.

Geopolitics

Sellers on the Russian marketplace Wildberries may have lost 215 to 280 billion roubles because of Ukrainian drone strikes on the company's warehouses, according to an estimate by analyst Sergei Semko cited by Forbes Russia. Bloomberg reported that Kyiv's shifting pattern of strikes is adding uncertainty around Russian oil.

Economy

US envoy to NATO Matthew Whitaker said there is no agreement between NATO and Kyiv on producing Patriot systems by winter and that Washington is 'going to do first things first', TASS reported on Monday. He said talks with Ukraine on the production are moving forward.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian drone attacks on more than a dozen Russian regions killed at least nine people on Sunday, among them a 13-year-old girl in Belgorod region. Russian strikes on Ukraine killed at least five the same day.

Geopolitics

Rosatom says a Ukrainian combat drone struck inside the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant overnight into Sunday. The Russian operator reports no explosion and unchanged radiation levels.

Geopolitics

Washington and Kyiv are discussing a possible transfer of Patriot missile production technology, a Ukrainian member of parliament said, according to TASS on Sunday. President Donald Trump said on Friday that the United States should be very careful about granting other countries licences to manufacture its weapons.

Geopolitics

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the Kremlin is bullying a growing number of Russian men into military service for the war in Ukraine. The scale of the recruitment drive is not given in the summary available to Bota.

Geopolitics

Russian missiles killed at least nine people in Kyiv overnight into Saturday and damaged Lithuania's embassy. Vilnius has since summoned Russia's representative there.

Geopolitics

Bloomberg reported on Saturday that armed conflicts and extreme weather could drive global food prices sharply higher. Heat and drought in Europe are cutting grain output.

Economy

Rosatom said its civilian vessel Yanina sank in the Black Sea after a Ukrainian drone attack and that the entire crew survived, Reuters reported. Rosatom chief Alexey Likhachev called the strike an act of maritime piracy, saying the container ship was carrying civilian goods in international waters, while Kyiv had said earlier that the attack was not intentional, according to Politika.

Geopolitics

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington intends to take a number of steps in the coming weeks to assess whether peace talks can resume, TASS reported on Sunday. Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik said the US still has the resources to fuel the conflict and pursues its own interests in a settlement.

Geopolitics

Russian ballistic missiles hit Kyiv early on Saturday, killing at least nine people. It was the second major attack on the Ukrainian capital in a week.

Geopolitics

Ukraine's military struck a refinery in Volgograd and set warehouses of the online retailer Wildberries on fire, part of a campaign increasingly aimed at Russian oil infrastructure and logistics centres, FAZ reported; the rival retailer Ozon had to evacuate a warehouse. Wildberries founder and CEO Tatyana Kim addressed sellers in a video on Friday after two weeks of strikes, said foreign entrepreneurs had lost billions, called the attacks force majeure and described them as terrorist attacks.

Geopolitics

TASS estimated that Russian forces took 32 communities in July, most of them in the Kharkov region and the Donetsk People's Republic, and the Russian Defence Ministry said its forces hit more than 80 vessels carrying cargo for Ukraine's army during the month. Zelensky said the situation in the Konstantinovka and Slavyansk areas and in the Zaporozhye region is of particular concern, while a Russian diplomat said Ukrainian attacks killed 61 people and injured 327 over the past week.

Geopolitics

Trump told the Financial Times he is not sure whether he will allow Ukraine to produce Patriot interceptors, despite agreements Washington and Kyiv had previously announced, and said the United States had not agreed to hand over Patriot system technology or Tomahawk missiles. He also said the rare earth deal allows the United States to take the resources it needs from Ukraine, while a senior Ukrainian diplomat told NBC News that Kyiv had brokered an agreement with Washington to share Ukrainian drone technology.

Geopolitics

The New York Times reported that a Ukrainian strike on an Iranian vessel, after Iran sent military aid to Russia for its war against Ukraine, raised the question of whether that conflict and the US-Israeli war against Iran are converging. Politika, citing American media, reported that Russia is passing Iran intelligence on US forces that could help Iranian defence and more precise strikes.

Geopolitics

Ukraine's former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, an advocate of drone and robot warfare, said on Friday that political upheaval in Kyiv will not derail the country's tech-heavy military strategy. Bloomberg reports that Ukrainian forces aim to extend the frontline "kill zone" and increase pressure on Putin.

Technology

Warsaw protested to Russia's ambassador on Friday after a missile entered Polish territory during Russia's nightly barrage against Ukraine, Al Jazeera reported. Poland asserts the missile was recently made, which it says shows the bombardment is draining Russia's arsenal.

Geopolitics

A cruise missile came down in a field in south-eastern Poland early on Thursday, tearing a crater about ten metres wide near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia and injuring no one. Poland's prime minister said the recovered fragments point to a Russian Kh-101 and that Poland had not been the target, while Poland and NATO switched on ground-based and airborne air defences. Russia has not commented on the incident, and investigators have yet to identify the debris definitively.

Geopolitics

A Russian missile and drone barrage across Ukraine overnight into Thursday killed at least eight civilians, six of them members of one family in the village of Radushne near Kryvyi Rih. In his evening address, President Zelensky said preliminary data indicated the missile that destroyed the family's house was North Korean, which Reuters' sources say would be the first such use in nearly a year. Russia's Defence Ministry says it struck military airfields, arms plants and logistics sites.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian drones struck Rosneft's Ryazan refinery on Wednesday, forcing one of Russia's largest plants offline for what sources told Reuters will be about two weeks. Overnight into Thursday drones burned three more Wildberries warehouses, one of them 1,400 kilometres from the border, and hit two tankers at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal near Novorossiysk. Oil prices rose after the Black Sea attacks, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Geopolitics

A Russian ballistic missile levelled a Kyiv drone plant owned by the US firm Terminal Autonomy, which makes long-range drones resistant to Russian signal jamming, according to The Guardian. The strike appears to be the first time in the war that Moscow has hit a US company's facility.

Geopolitics

Washington struck a $58.6 billion Patriot missile contract to rebuild an interceptor inventory depleted by the wars involving Iran and Ukraine. After the United States refused its request, Ukraine is now seeking Patriot interceptors from other allies, Bloomberg reports.

Geopolitics

Russian authorities said on Thursday they had stopped a Ukrainian attack on critical infrastructure at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, naming a spent nuclear fuel dry storage facility and a transporter vehicle they describe as unique equipment. The foreign ministry condemned the attempt; the account comes from the Russian state agency TASS and is unconfirmed.

Geopolitics

Russia's defence ministry said on Thursday that its forces had taken Yurchenkovo in the Kharkiv region and Mogritsa and Malaya Slobodka in the Sumy region, and Defence Minister Andrei Belousov congratulated Battlegroup Center on the Mogritsa advance. The Russian-installed head of the Kharkiv regional administration told TASS that Russian units had taken 13 settlements there during July and were pushing toward Kupyansk and Borovaya, claims that are not independently confirmed.

Geopolitics

Russian forces attacked Ukraine with ballistic missiles and long-range aviation overnight from 29 to 30 July 2026, hitting Kyiv, Lviv, Kryvyi Rih and Poltava. At least eight people were killed, six of them members of one family in Kryvyi Rih. Poland scrambled fighter jets and sounded air-raid sirens in Lublin while the strikes reached western Ukraine.

Geopolitics

Trump and Zelensky met on Tuesday to discuss reviving peace negotiations with Russia and plans for Ukraine to build Patriot missiles, and Zelensky said restoring Crimea to Kyiv's control is not currently part of the talks but suggested that could change. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called a possible ceasefire combined with the deployment of foreign forces an "ultimatum" and urged Russians to feel "healthy anger" toward a West he said has turned against Moscow through Ukraine.

Geopolitics

Ukraine said it struck a major Rosneft refinery in Ryazan, and Ukrainian drones set a Wildberries warehouse in the same city ablaze on the morning of 29 July, with photos and videos showing a large fire and part of the building collapsed. Ukrainian drones also damaged an apartment building in Taganrog, killing one person, and in Tula a gunman tried to shoot the head of a Russian drone company in the stairwell of an apartment building, the regional branch of Russia's Investigative Committee reported.

Geopolitics

Moscow and Pyongyang are finalising construction of their first direct road connection, tightening an alliance formed during the war against Ukraine, El País reported. Zelensky says the Kremlin plans to bring another 30,000 North Korean soldiers to fight in Ukraine.

Geopolitics

The Russian state agency TASS, citing a newspaper report, says the standstill at Ukraine's Black Sea ports costs about $70 million a day, and that the three ports of greater Odesa accounted for $2.1 billion of Ukraine's $3.5 billion in exports in June. The Russian analyst Ilya Grashchenkov told TASS the situation is not a blockade as such but a de facto halt to shipping, and that Kyiv cannot replace the lost export routes.

Economy

The Russian foreign ministry denounced Ukraine's attack on an Iranian merchant ship in the Caspian Sea as what it called a real terrorist act, according to the Tehran Times. The episode keeps relations between Kyiv and Tehran under strain.

Geopolitics

Donald Trump received Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Tuesday for a closed meeting of a little over an hour on ending the war with Russia. Zelensky said the two discussed licences that would let Ukraine build its own interceptor missiles for Patriot air defence systems, and called for the diplomatic process to be reinvigorated. Trump wrote afterwards only that the meeting "went very well", before receiving Benjamin Netanyahu separately.

Geopolitics

Senate Republicans and Democrats struck a bipartisan deal on a new Russia sanctions bill co-authored by Lindsey Graham, the senator who died on 11 July, and senators voted 86 to 12 to advance it, a measure that would also give President Donald Trump new tariff powers. A Democratic aide warned that the bill hands the president unchecked discretion to waive sanctions and impose tariffs, and aides said all 100 senators were invited to meet Volodymyr Zelensky around Graham's funeral.

Geopolitics

Ukraine launched more than 390 drones at Moscow and the surrounding region overnight, and Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said 81 drones were destroyed on the approach to the capital, in what TASS estimates was one of the largest such attacks in two years. Regional governor Andrey Vorobyov reported a damaged apartment block and houses in the Moscow region, and Ryazan governor Pavel Malkov said falling drone fragments injured one person and that four drones were downed over his region.

Geopolitics

Ukraine said it did not intend to hit an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, insisted its strike targeted Russian warships and warned Iran against escalation, while Tehran demanded compensation. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the attack expands the geography of what Moscow calls terror, and the FAZ read the operation as a political message to Donald Trump before his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky.

Geopolitics

Russia's defence ministry said its troops took the Krasny Kut community in Donetsk region and that Battlegroup Center inflicted roughly 360 casualties on Ukrainian forces and destroyed an armoured combat vehicle over the past day. A Russian officer told TASS that drone operators are striking beyond Krasny Liman to disrupt Ukrainian logistics as Russian forces push toward Slavyansk and Raigorodok, claims that are unconfirmed by independent sources.

Geopolitics

TASS, citing the analyst Sergey Kuyun, reported that Ukrainian filling stations are running dry, and said a blockade of Ukraine's ports together with sharply higher truck diesel prices is deepening an export crisis. Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tofan said Ukrainian strikes on the Russian port of Novorossiysk triggered a diesel shortage in Moldova, which imports significant volumes of the fuel via the Danube.

Economy

A Ukrainian long-range drone strike on shipping in the Caspian Sea over the weekend of 25 July caused an explosion aboard an Iranian merchant vessel, killing one sailor and injuring others. Kyiv says it hit ships carrying military cargo between Iran and Russia; Tehran says the vessel was purely civilian and has told the EU and Moscow the attack "cannot go unanswered". Iran has summoned Ukraine's chargé d'affaires, while Russian and Iranian ministries coordinate their response.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian drones carried out what the governor of Russia's Udmurt Republic called the most massive attack on the region to date on July 27, 2026, one of several strikes President Volodymyr Zelensky said were aimed at Russian oil facilities. In the days before, drones hit Wildberries logistics centers in St. Petersburg, the Leningrad region and Crimea, and attacks on tankers at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal near Novorossiysk halted loadings and more than halved Kazakhstan's daily oil output before shipments resumed. Moscow has extended its gasoline export ban to the end of 2026 as fuel and power shortages spread across occupied Crimea.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian officials said Russian missiles and drones killed at least six people on Sunday, among them a nine-year-old girl in a supermarket in Chernihiv. In the same night a Ukrainian drone attack hit residential districts of Rostov-on-Don, where the regional governor first reported a married couple killed and later raised the toll to five, including a child. Both capitals deny targeting civilians, and both describe the other side's strikes as terror.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was the first foreign leader received by Britain's new prime minister Andy Burnham, who used the naval base meeting on 27 July to harden his language toward Moscow and to promise Kyiv the rights to a British electronic warfare system. A day later Zelensky is due at the White House, where a US official quoted by CNN says it is time to end the war. In the background, the Trump administration has told Congress that $400m in approved assistance will not be fully delivered before fiscal 2029, while Kazakhstan's president publicly urged Vladimir Putin to freeze the conflict.

Geopolitics

Vladimir Putin signed a decree raising the authorised size of Russia's armed forces to 2,426,130 personnel, with service members rising from 1,510,000 to 1,535,000 as of 1 August, which Meduza describes as the sixth expansion since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and a separate decree added the Sirius federal territory to the list of border areas where foreigners may not own land, according to TASS. An investigation by Novaya Gazeta Europe cited by Meduza concludes that at least 400,000 Russian troops have already returned from the front to civilian life.

Geopolitics

A British analyst quoted by Politika says Russian forces are close to a breakthrough in the Donbas as Moscow increases pressure on two fronts and Kyiv's room for manoeuvre narrows. TASS reports that Russia's acting permanent representative to the UN, Anna Yevstigneyeva, told the Security Council that the army is steadily expanding the area under its control, referred to the capture of Konstantinovka and said Ukrainian attacks on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant risk a major man-made disaster, claims that are contested.

Geopolitics

North Korea is rumoured to be sending tens of thousands of additional soldiers to Russia in support of its war in Ukraine, the South China Morning Post reports, citing analysts who describe the arrangement as mutually beneficial. The report is unconfirmed and would mark a further deepening of defence ties between the two states.

Geopolitics

Disagreements within Ukraine's military leadership risk spilling over into politics and threaten the president's authority, according to Politika. The American Conservative writes that division and strife are undermining Ukraine's already troubled war effort.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited a British naval base on Monday as the first foreign leader received by new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took office on 20 July. London announced it would hand Kyiv the intellectual property behind its "Stone Cloak" electronic jammer so Ukraine can produce it at scale. The visit precedes a meeting between Zelensky and US President Donald Trump in Washington on Tuesday, while the Kremlin said it was too early to comment on reported US-Ukrainian talks about an air ceasefire.

Geopolitics

Russian ballistic missiles killed people in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, while TASS reported that Ukrainian drones wounded twelve people including two minors in Belgorod and hit an apartment building in Rostov-on-Don. TASS also reported two killed and fourteen injured in attacks on settlements in the Donetsk area, and a strike on an ambulance in Gorlovka that Russian officials called a war crime; these accounts come from Russian sources and are not independently confirmed.

Geopolitics

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address that Russia has requested an additional 30,000 soldiers and missile launchers from North Korea, and has been preparing since June to deploy North Korean personnel via the Voronezh region. Bloomberg reported separately that North Korea rejected denuclearisation; the troop figures come from Zelensky and are not independently confirmed.

Geopolitics

Ukraine said it attacked vessels in the Caspian Sea carrying Iranian military hardware to Russia, and Kyiv's envoy to Israel said the struck ship contained drone and missile components. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the attack killed a sailor and 'cannot go unanswered', calling it a violation of the UN Charter, while Zelensky said Russia is passing satellite surveillance to Iran.

Geopolitics

Handelsblatt reported that a combination of Russian attacks has effectively paralysed operations at the ports of Odessa. Ukrainian officials said a vessel struck by Russian fire a week earlier, in an attack that killed ten people, sank on Sunday, according to Reuters and Politika.

Geopolitics

Kazakhstan's oil exports were halted after drone attacks disrupted supplies, Al Jazeera reports, in a spillover from the war between Russia and Ukraine. The interruption poses risks to the Kazakh economy and to energy markets.

Economy

Moscow-installed officials in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region said a nighttime attack on a holiday camp area at Kyrylivka on the Sea of Azov killed at least eight to eleven people, among them children, and injured more than a dozen. On the same weekend Ukraine reported deadly Russian drone strikes in the Sumy and Zaporizhzhia regions, and German media reported missile fire on Kyiv. It follows a Friday in which Russian strikes killed 15 people in Ukraine.

Geopolitics

A rare daytime Russian missile strike hit a private training ground in the Bucha district of Kyiv region on 24 July 2026, where the "Armada" weapons exhibition of Ukrainian drone makers was under way; Ukraine's Prosecutor General reported 10 dead and about 100 injured. Hours earlier, two Russian air bombs on Sloviansk in Donetsk region killed five and damaged the building housing Latvia's honorary consulate. Russia's defence ministry said the Kyiv-region strike targeted those launching drones at Russian civilian infrastructure; Ukrainian prosecutors have opened a case over how the exhibition was organised.

Geopolitics

Overnight into July 24, 2026, Ukrainian drones struck logistics complexes of Russia's largest online retailer Wildberries near St Petersburg, in the Leningrad region and in occupied Simferopol — the fourth such attack in a week. A separate strike on the Avitek plant in Kirov killed six people and injured 26, according to the regional governor. Russia's Defence Ministry said it downed 571 drones over 15 regions, making it one of the largest Ukrainian long-range attacks of the year.

Geopolitics

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, 28 July, according to an announcement by the Israeli leader's office reported by Folha de S.Paulo. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is also expected, placing the Iran war and the war in Ukraine on the same agenda.

Geopolitics