LIVE UPDATES: Russia-Ukraine war

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Here’s where things stand on Monday 4 August 2025:

Fighting

  • A Russian attack killed three people in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhia region on Sunday, Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
  • A Ukrainian drone attack sparked a major fire at an oil depot in Sochi in southern Russia, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region, Veniamin Kondratiev, said on Sunday. The fire was extinguished hours later after 120 firefighters were deployed, officials said. Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, briefly halted flights at Sochi’s airport during the fire.
  • Ukraine’s military says it used drones to target several sites inside Russia, including refineries, an airfield and an electronics plant.
  • The governor of the Voronezh region in southern Russia said four people were injured in a Ukrainian drone attack that caused several fires,
  • A Russian attack injured seven people and destroyed dozens of houses and apartments in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said on Telegram early on Sunday.
  • The Ukrainian air force said on Sunday that Russia launched 76 drones and seven missiles against Ukraine. It said 60 drones and one missile were intercepted, but 16 drones and six missiles hit eight different locations across Ukraine.
  • The Russian Ministry of Defence said its air defence units destroyed 93 Ukrainian drones overnight, including one over the Krasnodar region and 60 over the waters of the Black Sea. It did not specify how many drones were fired 

Trump says US envoy Witkoff to travel to Russia ‘next week’

Witkoff will discuss Russia’s war on Ukraine as Trump says again that he wants a ‘deal where people stop getting killed’.

a man in a suit in front of a gold eagle crest on a white wall
US President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, smiles during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia, on April 25, 2025

United States President Donald Trump said his special envoy Steve Witkoff will visit Russia next week to continue talks on the war in Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Trump said Witkoff would visit, “I think next week, Wednesday or Thursday.”

Responding  to questions from reporters on what Russia could do to avoid looming sanctions, the US president replied: “Yeah, get a deal where people stop getting killed.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that officials are happy to meet with Trump’s envoy.

“We are always glad to see Mr Witkoff in Moscow,” he said. “We consider [talks with Witkoff] important, substantive and very useful.”

Trump has threatened to impose “very severe tariffs” on Russia if it fails to reach a ceasefire deal with Ukraine soon.

Trump also said that two nuclear submarines he deployed following an online row with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev were now “in the region”.

Trump has not said whether he meant nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed submarines. He also did not elaborate on the exact deployment locations, which are kept secret by the US military.

Trump’s latest comments come after he recently described Russia’s actions in its war on Ukraine as “disgusting“, after a Russian attack on an apartment block in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, killed 31 people on Thursday.

The attack capped off a month when there were a record 6,297 Russian long-range drone attacks on Ukraine, a 14-fold increase from July 2024.

Ukraine is looking forward to receiving a US-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system, which Trump has promised will be delivered, albeit with funding from Ukraine’s European allies, not the Trump administration.

Ukraine  has also continued to launch its own attacks on Russia, with its most recent attacks on Sunday killing three people across the country and causing a major fire at an oil refinery.

A Ukrainian drone attack on Monday morning sparked a fire at a railway station in Russia’s Volgograd region, the regional administration said on Telegram.

As fighting has continued, Russian and Ukrainian officials have held several meetings in recent months in Istanbul, Turkiye.

The latest meeting secured an agreement to exchange 1,200 prisoners, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Sunday.

Witkoff, a real estate magnate and Trump golf partner, has already met with Russian President Vladimir Putin multiple times in Moscow in his role as a White House special envoy.

As a special envoy to the Middle East, he is also Trump’s representative in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, which saw him visit Tel Aviv, Israel, on Saturday, where he met with the families of captives held in Gaza.