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Here’s where things stand on Tuesday 29 July 2025:

Fighting

• A Russian drone attack on a 25-storey residential building in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, injured eight people, including a four-year-old girl, the head of the city’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, said.
• The overnight attack was part of a barrage of “324 drones, four cruise missiles and three ballistic missiles”, across the country, the Ukrainian Air Force said. The attack was focused on Starokostiantyniv, home to a major air base, the Air Force added.
• Ukraine’s Air Force said it downed 309 drones and two missiles, while 15 drones and two missiles hit targets in three locations, without specifying where. The attack started a fire in Kropyvnytskyi, in central Ukraine, local officials said, but no injuries were reported.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed the attack hit a Ukrainian air base and an ammunition depot containing stockpiles of missiles and components for drone production.
• Polish and allied aircraft were activated on Monday to ensure the safety of Polish airspace as Russian missiles reached western Ukraine, near the border with Poland, the Operational Command of the Polish army said.
• Russian troops have taken control of the settlements of Boikivka and Belhiika in eastern Ukraine, the Russian Defence Ministry said.
• Russia’s national airline, Aeroflot, was forced to cancel more than 50 round-trip flights on Monday, disrupting travel across the country, after two pro-Ukraine hacking groups claimed to have inflicted a massive cyberattack on the carrier.

Politics and diplomacy

• United States President Donald Trump has set a new deadline of “10 or 12 days” for Russia to reach a peace deal in its war on Ukraine, or face tough new sanctions.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed Trump for taking a “clear stance”, and thanked him “for his focus on saving lives and stopping this horrible war”.
• Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that a framework trade agreement struck between the European Union and the US was “anti-Russian”, likening it to a de facto ban on buying Russian oil and gas.

Weapons and military aid

• The EU defence and space commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, told European news website Euractiv that non-EU countries, including Ukraine, could join the EU’s secure communication satellite network IRIS². The EU system would provide Ukraine with an alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink, which the Ukrainian military has relied on for telecommunications services during the war.
• Ukraine’s Defence Procurement Agency increased its share of domestically produced weapons to more than 71 percent during the first half of 2025, the Kyiv Independent media outlet reports.

Why did Zelenskyy try to curb autonomy of Ukraine’s anti-graft agencies?

The Ukrainian president’s move to strip the autonomy of anticorruption watchdogs prompts protests, forcing U-turn.

Last week, hundreds of Ukrainians rallied in several cities to protest the government’s attempt to curb the independence of anticorruption watchdogs.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on July 22 signed a bill into law, which would revoke the autonomy of key agencies – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

The  rare protest in the war-torn country forced the Ukrainian president to introduce a new draft bill to restore the independence of NABU and SAPO, which have been established to investigate high-level corruption and are widely seen as a symbol of democratic reforms.

So, why did Zelenskyy try to curb powers of the anticorruption agencies, and will his action dent public trust in the government crucial at a time of war against Russia?

Why are Ukrainians protesting?

The nationwide protests erupted in the wake of the July 22 vote in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament, to approve the bill that allows the prosecutor general to oversee the two anticorruption agencies.

The prosecutor general is appointed by the president and approved by the Verkhovna Rada, where Zelenskyy’s Public Servant party holds a majority.

It was seen as an attempt by the government to control the two agencies, which were created in the wake of the 2013-14 pro-democracy Euromaidan protests. Many believe it’s a setback from the years of reforms following the removal of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

The protesters held banners with slogans reading “Sham!” “Don’t make a step back, there’s an abyss there,” and “Corruption applauds” the new bill.

The rallies took place in Kyiv as well as in large cities such as the Black Sea port of Odesa and Lviv, known as Ukraine’s cultural capital.

NABU has been probing a string of senior officials and lawmakers, including those within Zelenskyy’s Public Servant party.

Oleksiy, who enlisted to join the army in 2022, wonders why he should keep fighting on the front lines of eastern Ukraine while officials engage in corruption.

“What’s the point if I go back home and my family is surrounded by corruption everywhere,” the 42-year-old construction manager told Al Jazeera.

“Judges, officials, even school teachers all say, ‘Give, give, give,’” he said, asking to withhold his last name and details of his military service, in accordance with the wartime protocol.

Oleksiy, who is on a break from his service to visit his two children and ailing mother, took part in the largest antigovernment rallies in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Why Zelenskyy backed the bill?

The new law envisaged executive control over NABU and SAPO as the prosecutor general’s office could access their information, give them binding directives, transfer cases and close down investigations.

The bill “could finally destroy the independence of the anticorruption system in Ukraine”, NABU said.

Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the new law “risks weakening Ukraine’s democratic foundations and its future integration with Europe”. She called for the repeal of the law.

Zelenskyy, a former comedian and political rookie who came to power in 2019 on an anticorruption ticket, defended the law, claiming that the NABU and SAPO have to “get rid of Russian influence”.

His allegation followed the arrest of two NABU staffers suspected of working for Russian intelligence, and charges against outspoken anticorruption campaigner Vitaly Shabunin.

Shabunin was accused of “evading military service”, but his supporters called the charges trumped-up, and almost 60 anticorruption and nongovernmental groups signed a joint appeal in his defence.

A Kyiv-based political analyst says there are two popular theories about why Zelenskyy initiated the bill.

A Kyiv-based political analyst says there are two popular theories about why Zelenskyy initiated the bill.

“One is that NABU allegedly closed in on Zelenskyy’s inner circle,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta think tank, told Al Jazeera.

NABU accused Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, Zelenskyy’s closest ally and lifelong friend, of taking kickbacks worth $346,000 from a real estate developer in a deal that cost the government $24m.

Zelenskyy’s press office didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s phone calls and text messages.

“Or this is an attempt to control NABU’s actions in order not to overtly politicise them, not to provoke domestic political wars during the war with Russia,” Fesenko said.

“But I think it has to do with the activisation of the NABU on political issues that may have caused suspicion in Zelenskyy’s inner circle. That it wasn’t a fight against corruption but more of a political attack on Zelenskyy,” he said.

The protests, an anticorruption expert told Al Jazeera, have weakened Zelenskyy’s support within domestic political circles. “There was a belief in his high and stable rating,” Tetiana Shevchuk from the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Kyiv-based group, said.

But “he no longer can demand anything from the parliament,” she said.

Zelenskyy is afraid of NABU as the only law enforcement agency that won’t open or close an investigation following a phone call from his administration, she said, referring to the centralisation of power under him.

“NABU is the only body that doesn’t do that,” Shevchuk said.

Fesenko from the Penta think tank says the politicians “underestimated” the bill’s “negative consequences”. They “didn’t think the public response would be that harsh”.

Zelenskyy has promised to submit the new bill – a move applauded by the country’s top anti-corruption investigator.

Semen Kryvonos, director of NABU, however, said that corrupt actors will step up a “dirty information campaign” against the anti-graft agencies.

Meanwhile, protest leaders say they would stop rallies only after the bill has been passed – tentatively, later this week.

Why has Ukraine struggled to control corruption? Has war-related corruption increased?

Since the 2014 pro-democracy revolution or Revolution of Dignity, attempts have been made to root out endemic corruption.

Many bureaucratic procedures have been simplified and consume less time, money and nerves.

But corruption remains pervasive in the halls of justice. Ukraine ranks 105 out of 180 in Transparency International’s corruption index.

A criminal investigator who spent months putting together a string of lawsuits against a fraudster who duped dozens of people, including several lawmakers, told Al Jazeera that a corrupt judge could annul his work and the fraudster may walk free.

“We can’t guarantee any judge’s honesty,” the investigator said on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, Europe’s worst armed conflict since World War II has bred new forms of corruption.

Some officers extort bribes for letting a serviceman take leave or go to a hospital, pilfer foreign aid such as canned foods, clothes or shoes that end up on store shelves instead of the front line.

“If someone reports such an officer, they may end up in a suicide squad on zero position,” serviceman Oleksiy who took part in the protests claimed, referring to the front line positions most likely to be attacked by enemy drones.

Officers tasked with the conscription campaign have been accused of receiving bribes to smuggle people out of the country. Dozens of conscription officers have been arrested – and some had cash stashes of millions of dollars or euros or even in gold bullion.

Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov was fired in 2023 after scandals involving inflated prices for military procurement, including ammunition, foodstuffs, medical equipment and winter clothing.

His successor Rustem Umerov was investigated for alleged abuse of power, NABU said in January.

Will the curbs on anticorruption bodies affect foreign aid?

The European Union said on Sunday it would freeze $1.7bn, a third of its latest aid package for Ukraine, because of the new law.

But military aid from the EU and the United States is not likely to be interrupted, said Lt Gen Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces.

However, the protests reveal a shocking contrast between hundreds of thousands of servicemen on the front lines and the corrupt officials who dodge the draft and keep thriving on corruption.

“On one side, there are people spilling blood, and corruption remains high and even gets higher in certain areas, and people find it inadmissible,” Romanenko told Al Jazeera.

Inmates, pregnant woman among 27 killed in Russia’s attacks on Ukraine

Ukrainian drone attacks kill at least one person in Russia’s southern Rostov region.

At  least 27 people, including 16 inmates and a pregnant woman, have been killed in Russian air attacks on mostly southeastern Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and regional officials.

The attacks came overnight on Tuesday, a day after United States President Donald Trump set Russia a new deadline of “10 or 12 days” to reach a peace deal in its war on Ukraine or face tough new sanctions, shortening a 50-day deadline he had set earlier this month.

Ivan Fedorov, head of the military administration in Zaporizhia, on Tuesday said Russia carried out eight overnight air attacks on his region alone, hitting a prison near the city of Zaporizhzhia.

“Russia bombed a penal colony near Zaporizhzhia overnight – 16 killed, 35 injured. Civilians continue to suffer. Another blatant war crime,” Fedorov said in English on X.

Zelenskyy said a pregnant woman was among three people killed in a Russian missile attack on the city of Kamianske in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, targeting a hospital.

Also  in Dnipropetrovsk, a person was killed and several wounded in the Synelnykove district, according to Serhiy Lysak, head of the Dnipropetrovsk military administration.

In  a separate attack on the village of Velyka Mykhailivka in the Odesa region on Monday night, a “75-year-old woman was killed. A 68-year-old man was wounded. A private house was damaged,” Lysak said on Telegram.

Russian forces also struck a grocery store in a village in the northeastern Kharkiv region, police was cited as saying by the AP news agency, killing five and wounding three civilians.

Authorities in the southern Kherson region reported one civilian killed and three wounded over the past 24 hours, the AP report said.

Reacting to the developments, Andriy Yermak, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on social media: “Russian President [Vladimir] Putin’s regime, which also issues threats against the United States through some of its mouthpieces, must face economic and military blows that strip it of the capacity to wage war.”

Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia had launched 37 drones and two missiles overnight, adding that its air defence systems had downed 32 of the drones.

In Russia’s southern Rostov region, multiple Ukrainian drone attacks killed one person, according to Russian authorities.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence, which reports only how many drones were destroyed, not how many Ukraine launched, said its defence units downed a total of 74 drones overnight, including 22 over the Rostov region.

“A car was damaged on Ostrovsky Street. Unfortunately, the driver who was in it died,” Yury Slyusar, acting governor of the Rostov region, said in a post on Telegram.

He said the attack had targeted several places, including Salsk, Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, Volgodonsk, Bokovsky, Tarasovsky and Slyusar.

Drone debris also fell on Salsk train station, damaging a freight train and passenger train, with passengers being evacuated, Slyusar added.

Power was disrupted at the station, forcing the suspension of train traffic, Russia’s Railways said on Telegram. No casualties were reported.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which has often said its attacks inside Russia are in response to Moscow’s relentless strikes on Ukraine.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in their attacks, but thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict, the majority of them Ukrainian.

Kyiv has been trying to repel Russia’s summer offensive, which has made new advances into areas on the eastern front line largely spared since the start of the 2022 offensive.

Over the weekend, the Russian army said its forces had captured the settlement of Maliyevka in Dnipropetrovsk, weeks after it seized the first village in the region – claims Kyiv has contested.