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Here’s where things stand on Monday 7 July 2025:

Fighting

• Russian forces launched missile and drone attacks on the eastern Ukrainian province of Donetsk, killing four people in the town of Kostiantynivka and another in nearby Druzhkivka, according to officials.
• Donetsk Governor Vadim Filashkin urged residents of the front-line towns to evacuate, saying: “It is dangerous to stay here! Evacuate to safer regions of Ukraine!”
• Elsewhere in Ukraine, large-scale Russian drone attacks wounded three civilians in Kyiv, two in Kharkiv, and damaged port infrastructure in the central region of Mykolaiv, according to the governor.
• A woman who was wounded in a Russian attack on the city of Poltava in central Ukraine on July 3 died in hospital, taking the death toll from that attack to three, local officials said.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that Russian forces seized the village of Piddubne in the Donetsk region and the village of Sobolivka, near the town of Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region.
• Ukraine, too, launched drone attacks on Russia, injuring two civilians in Belgorod near the border and disrupting flights at airports in the capital, Moscow.
• Russia’s aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, said that the Ukrainian attacks forced at least three airports in Moscow, St Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod to ground some 287 flights on Sunday.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defences shot down 120 Ukrainian drones during nighttime attacks, and 39 more before 2pm Moscow time (11:00 GMT) on Sunday.
• Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin later said that Russian air defence units downed six Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow.

Sanctions

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a new sanctions package, “targeting numerous Russian financial schemes, particularly cryptocurrency-related ones”.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russian President Vladimir Putin is not attending the BRICS summit in Brazil this week, since he is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his role in the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Brazil is a signatory to the Rome Statute, and would be required to enforce the arrest warrant.
• Putin, speaking via a videolink, told the BRICS leaders that the era of liberal globalisation is obsolete and that the future belongs to swiftly growing emerging markets, which should enhance the use of their national currencies for trade.

Brazil hosts BRICS summit; Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi skip Rio trip

Leaders expected to decry US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs while presenting the bloc as a defender of multilateralism.

Leaders of the growing BRICS group are gathering in Brazil for a summit overshadowed by United States President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies while presenting the bloc as a defender of multilateralism.

The leaders, mainly from the developing world, will be discussing ways to increase cooperation amid what they say are serious concerns over Western dominance at their two-day summit that begins in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.

The BRICS acronym is derived from the initial letters of the founding member countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The bloc, which held its first summit in 2009, later added Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as full members. It also has 10 strategic partner countries, a category created last year, that includes Belarus, Cuba and Vietnam.

But for the first time since taking power in 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping will not be attending in person, instead sending Prime Minister Li Qiang.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will also miss in-person attendance as he is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his role in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Brazil, as a signatory to the Rome Statute, would be required to enforce the arrest warrant.

The notable absences are raising questions over the group’s cohesion and global clout.

Ukraine’s sky defenders stuck in relentless battle

Ukraine’s sky defenders stuck in relentless battle

As the evening light ebbed away a handful of Ukrainian troops emerged from the treeline to face an unequal fight. Their mission – to shoot down 21st Century killer drones with weapons designed in the dying days of World War One.

In Ukraine’s north-eastern region of Sumy, bordering Russia, this is a nightly battle.

Just after we joined the troops, there was danger in the skies, and tension and adrenaline on the ground.

The commander – codenamed Jaeger – was glued to a screen showing clusters of red dots, each indicating an Iranian-designed Shahed drone, one of Russia’s key weapons. By early evening, there were already 30 in the skies over Sumy, and the neighbouring region of Chernihiv.

Two flatbed trucks were driven out into a clearing – on the back of each a heavy machine gun and a gunner, scanning the skies. The trucks were flanked by troops, light machine guns at the ready.

We could hear the whirring of the propellers before we could see the drone – barely visible as it sliced through the sky. The troops opened fire – all guns blazing in unison – but the drone disappeared into the distance. These low-cost long-range weapons are terrorising Ukraine.

As often in war, there were flashes of humour. “You’ll know when the next drone is coming, when that short guy gets nervous,” said Jaeger, pointing at one of his team.

As darkness closed in, the drones kept coming and the troops kept trying – sending tracer fire streaking across the sky. But how do they feel when these suicide drones get through?

“Well, it’s not very good, “Jaeger says sombrely, glancing away. “You feel a slight sadness but to be honest – as you have seen – you don’t have time for emotions. One comes in and another can come right behind it. You work in this rhythm. If it’s taken down – good, if not, you know there are other teams behind you who will also engage it.”

He and his men are a “mobile fire unit” from Ukraine’s 117 Territorial Defence Brigade – all locals trying to defend not just their hometown but their country. Most Russian drones fly through this region and deeper into Ukraine.

“They come in massive waves, often flying at different altitudes,” says Jaeger. “When there is heavy cloud cover, they fly above the clouds, and we can’t see them. And it’s very hard to detect them when it’s raining.”

A hundred Shahed drones a night is standard for Sumy.

His unit includes a farmer (“now I do something else in the fields,” he jokes) and a builder. Jaeger himself is a former forest ranger, and mixed martial arts fighter.

Now he fights an enemy he can barely see.

“It’s the same thing every single day, over and over again,” he says. “For us, it’s just like Groundhog Day.”

“The worst thing is that years are passing by,” adds Kurban, the builder, “and we have no idea how long all this is going to last”.

Many of the drones in the skies over Sumy that night were headed for the capital, Kyiv. Jaeger and his men knew it. So did we. The knowledge was chilling.

An air raid alert warned the residents of Kyiv of incoming drones. Russia aimed more than 300 at the capital overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force, trying to overwhelm its air defences. By morning six locations had been hit, and the victims were being reclaimed from the rubble. In the days that followed the death toll climbed to 30.

In Ukraine’s fourth summer of full-scale war the fields around Sumy are dotted with corn and sunflowers, not yet in bloom, and a crop of dragon’s teeth – triangles of concrete which can stop tanks in their tracks.

The picture was very different last autumn. Ukrainian troops had turned the tables with a cross-border attack on Russia, capturing territory in the neighbouring region of Kursk.

By March of this year, most were forced out, although Ukraine’s military chief said recently it still holds some territory there. By May, President Zelensky warned that 50,000 Russian troops were massed “in the direction of Sumy”.

By June, more than 200 villages and settlements in Sumy had been evacuated, as the Kremlin’s men slowly shelled their way forward.

President Putin wants “a buffer zone” along the border, and is talking up the threat to the city of Sumy.

“The city…is next, the regional centre,” he said recently. “We don’t have a task to take Sumy, but I don’t rule it out.” He claims his forces are already up to 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) inside the region.

The head of Ukraine’s army, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, claims his troops have halted the Russian advance, but the war has already closed in on Margaryta Husakova, 37, menacing her village. She warned her sister not to come because there were explosions.

“She came anyway,” Margaryta says, “and everything was fine for a month, quiet and peaceful, until we got on that bus”.

On the morning of 17 May, the sisters set out with other relatives for a trip to the city.

“I remember how we came, got on the bus, how we laughed, were happy,” says Margaryta. “Then we started to leave, and it happened.”

The bus was ripped apart by a Russian drone, in an attack that killed nine people – all civilians – including her mother, her uncle and her sister.

Margaryta was pulled from the wreckage with a shattered right arm – now held together by steel rods.