Russian troops surge toward Kostiantynivka; Moscow’s culture minister visits Pyongyang. What we know on day 1,222

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Ukraine’s top commander said on Saturday his forces faced a new onslaught against a key city on the eastern front of its war against Russia, while Moscow said it was making progress in another sector farther south-west. Russian troops are focused on capturing all of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine and the city of Kostiantynivka has been a major target. Ukrainian forces have for months defended the city against fierce assaults.

Top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, writing on Telegram, said the area around Kostiantynivka was gripped by heavy fighting. “The enemy is surging towards Kostiantynivka, but apart from sustaining numerous losses, has achieved nothing,” Syrskyi said. “The aggressor is trying to break through our defences and advance along three operating sectors.”

Russia’s defence ministry, in a report earlier in the day, said Moscow’s forces had seized the village of Chervona Zirka – further south-west, near the administrative border of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia’s slow advance through eastern Ukraine, with Moscow claiming a string of villages day after day, has resulted in destruction of major cities and infrastructure.

Meanwhile Russia’s culture minister, Olga Lyubimova, arrived in North Korea on Saturday with a 125-strong delegation of performers. Lyubimova, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said that thanks to agreements clinched between Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un, “cooperation in the cultural sphere between our countries has reached unprecedented heights”. She said a series of concerts and lectures would take place in the North Korean capital in the coming days.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow and Pyongyang have drawn closer together, with the two leaders signing a treaty, including a mutual defence pact. After months of silence, North Korea and Russia disclosed the deployment of North Korean troops and the role they played in Moscow’s offensive to evict Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region.

Moscow has insisted that progress towards a settlement of the war depends on Ukraine recognising Moscow’s control over four Ukrainian regions: Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Russian forces control about one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory, but they do not fully hold any of the four regions.

A Ukrainian pilot was killed and his F-16 fighter jet lost while repelling a large-scale Russian night-time missile and drone attack, the Ukrainian military said on Sunday. It was the third such loss of an F-16 in the war, the military said. “The pilot used all of his onboard weapons and shot down seven air targets. While shooting down the last one, his aircraft was damaged and began to lose altitude,” the air force said on the Telegram app.

Russia used hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles in the attack in western, southern and central Ukraine overnight, damaging homes and infrastructure and injuring at least six people, local authorities said. The sounds of explosions were heard in Lviv, Poltava, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Cherkasy regions, regional governors said.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said it is “extremely important” for Kyiv to maintain friendly ties with neighbouring Poland, where the incoming nationalist leader Karol Nawrocki opposes Ukraine’s Nato bid. Nawrocki won Poland’s presidential election this month after a campaign in which he criticised Ukraine and accused Zelenskyy of “indecent” behaviour towards his allies. Poland is one of Ukraine’s closest allies and has served as a crucial logistics hub for western military aid to help Kyiv’s war effort against Russia’s now more than three-year-long invasion.

Zelenskyy hosted outgoing Polish president Andrzej Duda in Kyiv on Saturday, ahead of Nawrocki’s inauguration on 6 August. “Poland is now preparing for the inauguration of its new president, (Karol) Nawrocki,” Zelenskyy told reporters alongside Duda. “We will do everything in our power to ensure that relations between our countries only grow stronger.” Poland has taken in more than a million Ukrainians since Russia’s invasion of the country began in 2022. But anti-Ukrainian sentiment has grown in recent years.

Passing the package, Musk said, would be ‘political suicide’ for the Republican party

The billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Saturday criticized the latest version of Donald Trump’s sprawling tax and spending bill, calling it “utterly insane and destructive.

“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!” Musk wrote on Saturday as the Senate was scheduled to call a vote to open debate on the nearly 1,000-page bill.

Ukrainian military claims strike on four Su-34 bombers at Marinovka base about 900km from border; Russian attack on Samar wounds 25. What we know on day 1,221

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Ukraine’s military has said it struck four warplanes at an airbase in central Russia’s Volgograd region as part of a drive to hit Russian war assets. It said on Telegram it had hit four Su-34 aircraft at the Marinovka base outside the city of Volgograd, about 900km (550 miles) from the Ukrainian border. The post on Friday said the operation was conducted by the military’s special operations branch, together with the SBU security service and other services of the military. “According to preliminary information, four aircraft were hit, specifically SU-34 planes, as well as technical-operational facilities where different warplanes are serviced and repaired,” the statement said. There was no immediate comment from the Russian military.

Ukraine’s military said the damage to Marinovka was being assessed and described the Su-34 as Russia’s main aircraft used in bombing raids on Ukrainian territory. Volgograd governor Andrei Bocharov on Friday listed the region’s Kalanchyovsky district where Marinovka is located among three areas targeted by Ukrainian drones and said traffic on the bridge over the Don River in the district was temporarily restricted.

A Russian missile attack killed at least five people and wounded 25 in the industrial city of Samar in Ukraine’s south-east on Friday, officials said – the second strike on the city in three days. At least four of the wounded were in severe condition and taken to hospital, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram. Officials gave no immediate details on damage in the city, where an attack on an infrastructure facility on Tuesday killed two people.

Two people were killed and at least 14 wounded when a Russian drone smashed into a residential high-rise in Odesa, authorities said on Saturday. Three children were among the wounded in the overnight attack in the Ukrainian Black Sea city, with one in critical condition, regional governor Oleh Kiper said. Footage posted by the state emergency service showed firefighters battling a blaze and rushing residents down a dark stairwell in the 21-storey building.

In the Kherson region to the east, authorities urged residents on Friday to prepare for extended periods without power after a Russian attack hit a key energy facility. Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said the attack caused power cuts in some settlements in the region, which is close to the front lines with Russian forces.

Russia said its troops had captured the village of Nova Kruhlyakivka in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region. The report on Friday from Russian state news agency Tass, citing the defence ministry, could not be independently verified.

Russian president Vladimir Putin said Russia and Ukraine’s demands for peace were “absolutely contradictory”, after two rounds of talks have failed to bring a ceasefire. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators exchanged memorandums on how to end the war at talks in Istanbul this month and the Russian president said in Minsk on Friday: “As for the memorandums, as expected, nothing surprising happened ... these are two absolutely contradictory memorandums.”

At the press conference in Minsk after a meeting with allies in Belarus, Putin also denounced what he called an “aggressive” pledge by Nato members to increase their defence spending to 5% of GDP. US president Donald Trump called Nato’s decision a “big win” for western civilisation. Putin also said on Friday that Russia was ready to hold a new round of peace talks with Ukraine, potentially in Istanbul, although the time and venue had yet to be agreed.