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Here’s where things stand on Thursday 17 July 2025:

Fighting

• A Russian air raid on a shopping centre and market in Dobropillia, eastern Ukraine, killed at least two people, wounded 22 others and caused widespread damage on Wednesday, the regional governor, Vadym Filashkin, said. Filashkin said the building was struck by a 500kg (1,100-pound) bomb at 5:20pm (14:20 GMT).
• Russia launched 400 Shahed and decoy drones, as well as one ballistic missile, on Wednesday night, the Ukrainian air force said. The strikes targeted the northeastern city of Kharkiv, the central city of Kryvyi Rih, Vinnytsia in the west, and Odesa in the south.
• A Ukrainian drone killed one person and injured six others in the Russian city of Belgorod, and injured one person in a village northeast of the city, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said.
• A Ukrainian drone attack injured one person in Russia’s western Smolensk region, the regional governor, Vasily Anokhin, said.
• Russian forces shot down three Ukrainian drones flying towards Moscow early on Thursday, the capital’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said on Telegram. Sobyanin made no mention of casualties or damage.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defence units destroyed 48 Ukrainian drones in a three-and-a-half-hour period ending at 11:30pm (20:30 GMT).

Weaponry

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that his country would seek to produce at least half of its weaponry at home within six months of his new government. “The production volumes are truly large, but we need more,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
• Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa said his country had no plans to transfer United States-purchased Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine in response to a reporter’s question at the White House.

Diplomacy, politics and aid

• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is set to meet British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday in London for talks that are expected to focus heavily on the war in Ukraine. The two leaders are expected to sign a wide-ranging friendship treaty that will include a mutual assistance clause that a German government official, quoted by the Reuters news agency, described as “highly significant” in light of Russia’s invasion.
•  The European Commission on Wednesday proposed the establishment of a fund of up to 100 billion euros ($115bn), as part of what EU budget commissioner Piotr Serafin described as a  “long-term commitment to Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction”.

At least two killed in ‘horrific’ Russian attack on Ukraine’s Dobropillia

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.

Europe assumes financial burden of Ukraine war, angering Russia

Trump casts European purchases of US weapons for Ukraine as a victory as the UN warns civilians are being killed at a record rate.

The United States and Germany have struck a deal to provide Ukraine with weaponry to protect cities from nightly Russian attacks.

Germany was prepared to pay for the systems as part of a broader US deal to sell Europe arms destined for Ukraine.

Details began to emerge on July 10 when Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany would buy US-made air defence systems.

“We are also prepared to purchase additional Patriot systems from the US to make them available to Ukraine,” Merz was quoted as saying on the sidelines of a Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump told NBC News that the US would sell NATO US-made weapons, including the Patriots, that NATO would give to Ukraine.

Adding to the crescendo, US Senator Lindsey Graham told CBS on Sunday: “In the coming days, you will see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves.”

Meanwhile, Russia continued to capture Ukrainian villages.

On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed to have seized Zelyonaya Dolina in the eastern region of Donetsk and Sobolevka in Kharkiv in the northeast. Nikolayevka in Donetsk fell on Sunday, Malinovka in Zaporizhia on Monday and Novokhatskoye in Donetsk on Wednesday.

Yet even at this accelerated rate of 15sq km (6sq miles) a day, Russia would need 89 years to capture the rest of Ukraine, The Economist magazine estimated.

Russia continued to pound Ukraine’s cities with combinations of drones and missiles every night over the past week.

The biggest attack came early on Saturday. The Ukrainian air force said it downed or electronically suppressed 577 of 597 drones launched overnight and 25 of 26 Kh-101 cruise missiles.

June also saw the highest monthly civilian casualties in three years with 232 people killed and 1,343 injured, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said.

Trump: ‘We’re getting our money back in full’

Trump announced on Monday at the White House that he had approved $10bn in weapons sales to Ukraine, which were to be paid for by Ukraine’s European allies.

“We’ve made a deal today where we’re going to be sending them weapons and they’re going to be paying for them,” he said.

He  doubled down on that financial message, telling reporters on Tuesday that after spending billions to help Ukraine, “we’re getting our money back in full.”

Graham played on the same theme.

“Stay tuned for a plan where America will begin to sell to our European allies tremendous amounts of weapons that can benefit Ukraine,” he told CBS.

Trump said he would send 17 Patriot systems to Ukraine. It was not clear if this meant 17 batteries or 17 launchers. “It’s everything. It’s Patriots. It’s all of them. It’s a full complement with the batteries,” Trump said.

A Patriot battery usually contains six launchers, each typically carrying four missiles.

The particulars of the deal have remained murky and perhaps deliberately so.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, who was in Washington, DC, on Monday, didn’t disclose details.

“But one thing is clear – and this is a message to all other European NATO members: Everyone must open their wallets. It’s about urgently raising the funds needed, especially for air defence, because Ukraine is under enormous pressure,” Pistorius said.

Russia has increased its attacks on Ukraine’s cities since the beginning of the year. In June alone, Moscow launched 330 missiles and 5,000 drones against Ukraine.

While Patriots are too expensive to use on drones, they are the only weapon in Ukraine that can shoot down ballistic missiles and are also effective against cruise missiles.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in April that Ukraine needed 10 more Patriot systems to protect its cities – presumably referring to complete batteries.

Germany’s head of defence planning, Major General Christian Freuding, said on Saturday that Pistorius and his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, had discussed a German offer to buy two Patriot systems for Ukraine. It was not clear if Pistorius’s visit to Washington, DC, was related to that.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters the Patriot systems were “already being shipped, … coming in from Germany”.

Separately, Zelenskyy told Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, when they met in Kyiv on Monday that Ukraine was ready “to purchase American weapons, particularly air defence systems”.

Russia reacts with fury to US-German deal as Trump weighs sanctions

Moscow has balked at the Western deal for Ukraine.

“Mr Merz is a fierce proponent of confrontation on all fronts and of aggressively mobilising Europe,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Germany, France and the United Kingdom were “attempting to raise Europe for war, … a direct war against Russia”.

Trump also announced possible secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil.

“We are very, very unhappy with Russia – I am,” he said Monday in the White House while sitting next to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. “I am disappointed in President [Vladimir] Putin because I thought we would have a deal two months ago.”

Trump said he was putting Putin on 50 days notice.

“We’re going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days. It’s very simple. And they’ll be at 100 percent.”

The tariffs would be levied on goods the US imports from countries that buy Russian oil, an idea Graham has aggressively pursued in recent weeks, naming China, India and Brazil as the worst offenders.

“We would like to understand what is behind this statement about 50 days,” Lavrov said. “Earlier, there were also the deadlines of 24 hours and of 100 days. We’ve seen it all and really would like to understand the motivation of the US president.”

Lavrov was referring to Trump’s campaign boast that he would end the war in Ukraine in a day and Kellogg’s self-imposed 100-day goal to bring about a ceasefire.

Some observers are sceptical about whether Trump will get tough on Putin, whom he has openly admired.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, shrugged off Trump’s remarks.

“Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care,” he wrote on social media.

But Peskov on Tuesday called Trump’s remarks “very serious”, adding: “Something in them concerns President Putin personally.”

On Wednesday, the normally restrained Peskov sounded even more alarmed that Europe was now willing to foot the bill for the war without US assistance.

“What we are observing so far is that the Europeans are displaying a completely aggressive militarist stance, declaring their intention to spend enormous funds to purchase weapons, to further provoke the continuation of war,” Peskov said.

“Of course, it is very hard to predict anything amid such an emotional state, bordering on irrationality, which reigns on the European continent,” he added.

The only thing that assuaged Russian concerns was indecision over sending Ukraine Germany’s Taurus missiles, which can strike deep inside Russia with large warheads.

That news suggested that Europeans “still have some sense of reason left”, Peskov said on Wednesday.

European defence and reconstruction without the US

Europe’s willingness to spend on defence may also have brought forth the dawn of more independence from the US.

Last week, the UK and France announced a scaling-up of their Combined Joint Force to a corps level, a reorientation of that force from overseas expeditions, “refocusing it on defending Europe” and upgrading it “to war-fighting readiness”.

They announced new procurement of Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles and joint research on a generation of missiles that would “harness the power of AI”.

They also issued the Northwood Declaration on closer nuclear coordination. “Any adversary threatening the vital interests of Britain or France could be confronted by the strength of the nuclear forces of both nations,” the UK Ministry of Defence said.

France and Britain are the only European states with a nuclear deterrent.

The US Senate Armed Services Committee, meanwhile, approved $500m in security assistance for Ukraine as part of its draft language for the next fiscal year – the only military aid announced under the Trump administration.

Under former President Joe Biden, the US spent $64.6bn on military aid to Ukraine, according to a tracker run by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Biden also left $4bn unspent in the form of a presidential authority to draw down weapons from US stockpiles and send them to Ukraine. Trump has not exercised that authority, insisting that the US needs to be paid back.

As Trump touted $10bn in weapons sales, the European Commission announced 10 billion euros ($11.6bn) in investments in Ukraine, leveraged through 2.3 billion euros ($2.7bn) in loans and grants from European institutions.

The announcement came at the Ukraine Recovery Conference.

The money is for rebuilding critical infrastructure and networks and helping small businesses.

“We need a Marshall Plan-style approach,” Zelenskyy declared upon arrival in Rome, referring to the post-World War II system of grants from the US that rebuilt the European economy.