Here are the key events on day 1,249 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is how things stand on Sunday, July 27:
Fighting
- Falling debris from destroyed Ukrainian drones disrupted railway power supply and train operations in part of the Volgograd region, the administration of the region in Russia’s south said on Sunday. There were no injuries as a result of the attacks, the administration said on Telegram, quoting Governor Andrei Bocharov.
- Russia downed 99 drones overnight over 12 Russian regions, the Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea, the Russian Ministry of Defence said.
- Meanwhile, Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles in an overnight attack that killed three people in Ukraine’s Dnipro and the nearby region on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said. Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted 183 drones and 17 missiles, but hits from 10 missiles and 25 drones were recorded in nine locations.
- Drones once again targeted Moscow, said the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, and an industrial facility in the Penza oblast southeast of the capital, according to the region’s governor, Oleg Melnichenko. In the Rostov region, officials said, Ukrainian drones killed two people, and another in Russia’s Kursk region on the country’s border, regional Governor Alexander Khinshtein said.
- Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday its forces captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine, Zelenyi Hai in the Donetsk region and Maliivka just inside the Dnipropetrovsk region.
- Ukrainian drones hit a radio and electronic warfare equipment plant in Russia’s Stavropol region in an overnight attack on Saturday, an official from the SBU security service told the Reuters news agency. “Each such attack stops production processes and reduces the enemy’s military potential. This work will continue,” the official told the agency. Attacks targeting the plant continued on Sunday.
Weapons and military aid
- Indian firm Ideal Detonators Private Limited, which shipped $1.4m worth of the explosive compound octogen with military uses to Russia in December, said on Saturday it complies with Indian rules and the substance it had shipped was for civilian industrial purposes. The US government has identified the compound as “critical for Russia’s war effort” and has warned financial institutions against facilitating any sales of the substance to Moscow.
Diplomacy
- Russia will launch direct passenger flights from Moscow to North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, on Sunday, Russian authorities said, as the two former communist bloc allies move to improve ties following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The start of regular flights between the capitals for the first time since the mid-1990s, according to Russian aviation blogs, follows the resumption of Moscow-Pyongyang passenger rail service, a 10-day journey, in June.
- Pope Leo discussed the war in Ukraine on Saturday with Metropolitan Anthony, a senior cleric in the Russian Orthodox Church, in a possible effort to ease ties between the churches strained by Russia’s invasion.
Ceasefire
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Peace talks and a settlement in Ukraine have never been on the real agenda of the West, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday, in her first comments on negotiations since Russian and Ukrainian officials held talks on Wednesday. If the West wanted “real peace” in Ukraine, it would stop supplying Kyiv with weapons, Zakharova said in comments reported by the TASS news agency.
