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Here’s where things stand on Monday 28 July 2025:

Fighting

• Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, early on Monday, wounding five people and damaging a residential building, according to the head of the city’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko.
• A Russian drone hit a Ukrainian bus carrying 39 evacuees in the eastern Sumy region, near Ukraine’s border with Russia, on Sunday, killing three people and wounding 19 others, according to the regional governor.
• Two others were killed in a landmine explosion in Sumy’s Esman community on Saturday, while two more were killed in Russian attacks on the front-line Donetsk region, according to officials, taking the death toll from attacks across Ukraine on that day to at least six.
• Ukraine’s forces also launched drone attacks at Russia on Sunday, with the governor of the Leningrad region reporting that at least 10 Ukrainian unmanned aircraft were downed over the areas surrounding the city of St Petersburg. Falling debris injured a woman, Governor Alexander Drozdenko said.
• St Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport was closed during the attack, with 57 flights delayed and 22 diverted to other airports, according to a statement.
• The Kremlin, meanwhile, confirmed that the large-scale televised Navy Day parade in St Petersburg had been cancelled for security reasons. Russian President Vladimir Putin still watched naval drills featuring 150 vessels and 15,000 military personnel in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, and the Baltic and Caspian Seas, from St Petersburg’s naval headquarters.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said that air defence units downed a total of 291 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones on Sunday, below the record 524 drones downed in attacks on May 7, ahead of Russia’s Victory Day parade on May 9.

Politics and diplomacy

• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to uphold independent anticorruption bodies, amid a firestorm of criticism after the country’s parliament voted to revoke the autonomy of two anticorruption agencies.
• “Ukraine has already achieved a lot on its European path,” von der Leyen said in a post on X after a call with Zelenskyy. “It must build on these solid foundations and preserve independent anti-corruption bodies, which are cornerstones of Ukraine’s rule of law.”
• Zelenskyy, who has submitted draft legislation to restore the independence of the two agencies, thanked the EU and said it was important that the bill be “adopted without delay”.
• Russia opened a regular air link between Moscow and the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, with the first flight between the cities in decades taking off at 16:25 GMT on Sunday, according to the Sheremetyevo airport’s website. The route will be serviced once a month, Russia’s Ministry of Transport said.
• Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Beate Meinl-Reisinger told the German media outlet Welt that the country was willing to engage in a “national debate” about joining NATO, after decades remaining neutral.

Trump gives Russia 10 or 12 days to end war on Ukraine

The US president says he is disappointed in Russia’s Putin as he shortens a 50-day deadline he set this month.

United  States President Donald Trump has set a new deadline of 10 or 12 days for Russia to end its war in Ukraine, underscoring his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin for prolonging the conflict.

Speaking in Scotland, where he is holding meetings with European leaders and playing golf, Trump on Monday said he was disappointed in Putin and shortened a 50-day deadline he had set this month.

“I’m going to make a new deadline of about … 10 or 12 days from today,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “There’s no reason in waiting. … We just don’t see any progress being made.”

There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin.

The US president has repeatedly voiced exasperation with Putin for continuing attacks on Ukraine despite US efforts to end the war and has threatened both sanctions on Russia and buyers of its exports unless progress is made.

Before returning for a second term in the White House in January, Trump, who views himself as a peacemaker, had promised to end the three-and-a-half-year-old conflict within 24 hours.

“There’s no reason to wait. If you know what the answer is going to be, why wait? And it would be sanctions and maybe tariffs, secondary tariffs,” Trump said. “I don’t want to do that to Russia. I love the Russian people.”

But the US president, who has also expressed annoyance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has not always followed up on his tough talk about Putin with action, citing what he deems a good relationship that the two men have had previously.

“We thought we had that settled numerous times, and then President Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever,” Trump said. “And I say that’s not the way to do it.”

Pro-Ukraine hacker group claims Aeroflot cyber-attack

Pro-Ukraine hacker group claims Aeroflot cyber-attack

Russia’s national airline, Aeroflot, said it had cancelled dozens of flights after pro-Ukrainian hackers claimed an attack on the carrier’s IT systems.

A statement from hacking group Silent Crow said it carried out the attack with the help of a Belarusian group Cyberpartisans.

Silent Crow said on Telegram that its “prolonged and large-scale operation… completely destroyed” Aeroflot’s IT systems.

Aeroflot said it had cancelled more than 40 flights – mostly within Russia but also including routes to Belarus and Armenia – which the Kremlin said was “worrying”.

The airline said an issue with its information system had also led to widespread delays.

Silent Crow also threatened to release “the personal data of all Russians who have ever flown Aeroflot”.

“Glory to Ukraine! Long live Belarus!”, the post concluded.

The Belarusian group Cyberpartisans said on its website: “We are helping Ukrainians in their fight with the occupier, carrying out a cyber strike on Aeroflot and paralysing the largest airline in Russia.”

Anton Gorelkin, a Russian MP, said in a statement: “We must not forget that the war against our country is being waged on all fronts, including the digital one.”

Hacker groups routinely exaggerate their successes and whether this latest attack causes any lasting disruption remains to be seen. We have not been able to verify any of Silent Crow’s claims.

However, the Russian prosecutor’s office confirmed there had been “a failure in the operation of the Aeroflot information system as a result of a hacker attack” and said a criminal investigation had been opened.

A number of passengers would be transferred to flights operated by other carriers, the transport ministry said.

Pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian hacking groups have been extremely active since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – but it is hard to know when their boasts about various cyber-attacks are backed up with facts.

These gangs are often run by volunteers who target organisations and exaggerate their attacks to make headlines and degrade enemy morale.

This attack is a rare one that is having a visible and immediate impact on a major Russian company, affecting tens of thousands of civilians as well as the firm.

Silent Crow said they worked with the long-established Belarusian hacker group Cyber Partisans, which has been carrying out attacks against targets in Russia and Belarus since 2022. Cyber Partisans describes itsself as “a highly organised hacktivist collective that is fighting for the liberation of Belarus from dictatorial rule”.

Whilst many groups claim to be “hacktivists” – activist hackers – evidence points to some of having close ties with security services of the countries they support.

Since Moscow’s troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, travellers in Russia often face disruption – usually owing to attacks by Ukrainian drones.

Earlier in July hundreds of flights were cancelled at Moscow’s four main airports following a sustained Ukrainian drone attack, affecting tens of thousands of people.