This is where the war stands on Thursday, July 25, 2024:
Fighting
- Russia launched a series of attacks on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and the surrounding region, killing three people, wounding at least six and damaging the office of a Swiss mine-clearing NGO, local officials said.
- The attack on Kharkiv came as Russia also launched a barrage of drones on southern Ukraine from Russian territory and the occupied Crimean peninsula. The attack wounded three people and damaged port infrastructure as well as commercial and residential buildings in the city of Izmail on the River Danube, local officials said.
- The Ukrainian air force said it shot down 17 of the 23 drones, most of them over the southern Odesa region.
- Ukraine’s navy, meanwhile, said Russia had pulled all its vessels out of the Sea of Azov, a body of water connected to the Black Sea.
- In the Russian capital, Moscow, a car bomb exploded injuring an officer from Russia’s military intelligence agency and another person, according to local media. Turkey later announced that a Russian citizen suspected of involvement in the attack had been arrested in the city of Bodrum, having arrived there from Moscow by plane.
- Russia’s Defence Ministry also said it scrambled a Su-27 fighter jet to escort two British Typhoon fighter jets and an RC-135 reconnaissance plane over the Black Sea.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in the city of Guangzhou and told him that Kyiv is open to talks with Russia, provided that Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity were fully respected.
- Kuleba, however, said Ukraine does not see a readiness from Russia to negotiate in “good faith”.
- The Kremlin told reporters that Kuleba’s remarks on a willingness to hold talks appeared to tally with Russia’s position, but more details were needed.
- Russia banned 13 Japanese business leaders from entering the country in retaliation for Tokyo’s sanctions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Japan lodged a protest over the entry ban.
- The European Commission said it is seeking more information on Hungary and Slovakia’s request for mediation with Ukraine after Kyiv placed Russian producer Lukoil on a sanctions list, stopping supplies to the two countries via a pipeline that crosses Ukrainian territory.
- The United States warned India’s banks that financial institutions that do business with Russia’s military-industrial base risk losing access to the country’s financial system, the Reuters news agency reported, citing a letter from the US Treasury Department.
- Latvia has appealed a decision by the European Union Court of Justice that annulled sanctions imposed on Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman and his business partner Petr Aven. The pair were sanctioned in 2022-23 on allegations of supporting the Kremlin’s actions or policies against Ukraine.
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lauded the fact that Ukraine was participating in the Olympic Games in wartime and added that the athletes’ presence in Paris would help people back home maintain “normal lives”.
Economy
- Fitch downgraded Ukraine’s credit rating further into default territory at “C” from “CC”, citing a recently concluded in-principle agreement with a group of creditors to restructure $20bn of international bonds.
