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Here’s where things stand on Saturday 2 August 2025:

Fighting

• Ukrainian rescuers recovered more than a dozen more bodies from the rubble of a collapsed apartment block in Kyiv overnight, bringing the death toll from Thursday’s attack by Russia to 31.
• A two-year-old was among five children found dead as a result of what is now Russia’s worst air strike of the year on Ukraine’s capital, which also injured 159 people, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said as he announced the end of a more than 24-hour-long rescue operation at the site.
• Russia launched more than 3,800 drones and nearly 260 missiles for its attacks on Ukraine throughout July, Zelenskyy said.

Military aid

• NATO countries, Ukraine and the United States are developing a new mechanism that will focus on getting US weapons to Ukraine from the Priority Ukraine Requirements List, known under the acronym PURL, the Reuters news agency reports, citing three sources familiar with the matter.
• As part of the PURL mechanism, Ukraine would prioritise the weapons it needs in tranches of roughly $500m, and NATO allies would then negotiate among themselves who would donate or pay for items on the list.
• Germany said it will deliver two Patriot missile defence systems to Ukraine after reaching an agreement with the US that Berlin will be first in line to receive the latest Patriot systems to replenish the weapons donated to Kyiv.
• A top adviser to President Zelenskyy said Russia is providing North Korea with technology for Shahed-type attack drones and assisting in their production.

Ceasefire

• British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Zelenskyy welcomed US President Donald Trump’s new deadline for Russia to make progress towards ending its more than three-year-long war on Ukraine. Zelenskyy said he had discussed with Starmer the potential formats for a summit of leaders to discuss peace in Ukraine.
• Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said Moscow hoped for more peace talks with Ukraine but that the momentum of the war was in Moscow’s favour, signalling no shift in his stance despite a looming sanctions deadline issued by Trump. Putin also said that the first batch of mass-produced Oreshnik ballistic missile systems had been delivered to the Russian army.
• In a post on X responding to Putin’s remarks, Zelenskyy repeated his willingness to sit down with the Russian leader, saying Ukraine wants to “move beyond” statements and lower-level meetings on the matter.
• “If these are signals of a genuine willingness to end the war with dignity and establish a truly lasting peace … then Ukraine once again reaffirms its readiness to meet at the level of leaders at any time,” Zelenskyy said.

Regional developments

• President Trump said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in “the appropriate regions” in response to remarks from the former Russian president and deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, about the risk of war between the two nuclear-armed countries.
• Europe must start seeing Ukraine as a European country, and the Ukrainian military as a European army, Ilya Yashin, a prominent Russian opposition activist, said in Belgrade.
• “The Ukrainian army is not only protecting Ukraine, it is protecting Europe from Russian aggression,” Yashin told hundreds of Russians who now live in Serbia.

Ukraine drone attacks kill three in Russia, cause fire at oil refinery

At least three people are killed in several regions of Russia while fire breaks out at an oil refinery in central Russia after it was hit.

A serviceman from the mobile air defence unit of the 115th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces fires a Browning machinegun towards a Russian drone

Ukrainian  drone strikes have killed at least three people and wounded two others overnight in western Russia, regional governors said, as a fire broke out at an oil refinery in central Russia after it was hit.

One woman was killed and two others wounded in an attack on an enterprise in Penza, the region’s governor, Oleg Melnichenko, wrote on Telegram on Saturday.

The second death of an elderly man happened inside a house that caught fire due to falling drone debris in the Samara region, Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev posted on Telegram.

In the Rostov region, a guard at an industrial facility was killed after a drone attack and a fire in one of the site’s buildings, acting Rostov Governor Yury Slyusar said. “The military repelled a massive air attack during the night,” destroying drones over seven districts, Slyusar posted on Telegram.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military said it struck Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery on Saturday, causing a fire on its territory.

In a statement on Telegram, the Unmanned Systems Forces also said they hit the Annanefteprodukt oil storage facility in the Voronezh region. The statement did not specify how the facilities were hit, but Ukraine’s military specialises in drone warfare, including long-range strikes.

Separately, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency said its drones had hit Russia’s Primorsko-Akhtarsk military airfield, which has been used to launch waves of long-range drones at targets in Ukraine.

The SBU said it also hit a factory in Penza that it said supplies Russia’s military-industrial complex with electronics.

At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine had no response to Moscow’s vast long-range strike capacity but it has since built up a fleet of long-range kamikaze drones able to carry explosive warheads for many hundreds of kilometres (miles).

Russia’s Defence Ministry said in its daily report that its defence units had downed a total of 338 Ukrainian drones overnight.

In Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, overnight Russian drone attacks also left three people wounded, Governor Serhiy Lysak wrote on Telegram. Several buildings, homes and cars were damaged, he added.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces captured the village of Oleksandro-Kalynove in the Donetsk region on Saturday. Russian forces now control almost 20 percent of Ukraine in its east and south after three and a half years of the grinding war.

Kyiv, however, denies any Russian presence in the Dnipropetrovsk area.

Al Jazeera reported that while there have been indications of a ceasefire in the past, the situation on the ground remains the same.

“As tensions escalate, it appears that diplomacy will be a possible way out,” he said, adding that the United States’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkofff, who has close relations with Russian officials, is expected in Moscow soon to negotiate a truce.

US President Donald Trump on Friday said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in “the appropriate regions” in response to remarks from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about the risk of war between the nuclear-armed adversaries.

The US has been trying to negotiate a truce but so far, Kyiv and Moscow have mainly engaged in prisoner exchanges.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said only Russia’s President Vladimir Putin could end the war and renewed his call for a meeting between the two leaders.

“Ukraine calls for moving beyond the exchange of statements and technical-level meetings to talks between leaders. The United States has proposed this. Ukraine has supported it,” he said on X.

“What is needed is Russia’s readiness,” he added.

Putin, who has consistently rejected calls for a ceasefire in the more than three-year conflict, said on Friday that he wanted peace but that his demands for ending Moscow’s military offensive were “unchanged”.

Those demands include that Ukraine abandon territory and end ambitions to join NATO.