Russia Watch

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The EU on Tuesday said Ukrainian lawmakers were responsible for “a serious step back” as they voted to remove the independence of two anti-corruption agencies. Opponents say the new rules neuter the agencies ability to investigate those close to the upper echelons of politics by placing them under the command of a Prosecutor General, directly appointed by the president.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday renewed his offer to meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, but hopes of progress were low as delegations prepared to hold another round of talks.

Russian forces, meanwhile, pounded four Ukrainian cities in nighttime attacks that officials said killed a child.

Putin has spurned Zelenskyy’s previous offers of a face-to-face meeting to end Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. But the Ukrainian leader insists that lower-level delegations like the ones expected for talks in Istanbul on Wednesday don’t have the political heft to stop the fighting. The sides remain far apart on how to end the war begun by Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

“Ukraine never wanted this war, and it is Russia that must end the war that it itself started,” Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post.

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US president’s remarks follow report saying he encouraged Kyiv to step up strikes inside Russian territory.

United States President Donald Trump has said Ukraine should not target Moscow after he reportedly asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy if Kyiv could strike the Russian capital if he provided long-range weaponry.

Trump made the comments after The Financial Times on Tuesday reported that the US president had encouraged Zelenskyy to step up strikes deep inside Russian territory during their phone call on July 4.

The report, which cited two unnamed people familiar with the discussion, said Trump had also asked his Ukrainian counterpart whether he could hit Moscow and St Petersburg if supplied with weapons with enough range.

In response to a question on Tuesday about whether Zelenskyy should target Moscow, Trump told reporters at the White House that he should not.

Trump also told reporters that “we’re not looking” at providing Kyiv with longer-range missiles.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to confirm the discussion in a statement provided to multiple media outlets, but said it had been taken out of context.

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Russia’s economy is facing fresh turmoil as its once-buoyant property market plunges into crisis, with sales of new apartments collapsing by nearly 39% over the past year, according to new government data. From July 2024 to June 2025, just 458,727 apartments were sold across the country, representing a staggering 38.7% drop in the number of transactions compared to the previous 12 months.

The total area of property sold fell by 37.2%, down to 21.9 million square metres, according to a report by the state-owned housing firm Dom.RF. The figures are echoed by real estate platform Cian, which recorded a 39% decline in property deals year-on-year, down to 477,000 units.

The dramatic decline has been linked to the abolition of Russia’s preferential mortgage program on July 1, 2024.

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Ukraine said it struck a Russian air base on Saturday, while Russia continued to pound Ukraine with hundreds of drones overnight as part of a stepped-up bombing campaign that has dashed hopes for a breakthrough in efforts to end the more than 3-year-old war.

Ukraine’s military General Staff said that Ukrainian forces had struck the Borisoglebsk air base in Russia’s Voronezh region, describing it as the home base of Russia’s Su-34, Su-35S and Su-30SM fighter jets.

Writing on Facebook, the General Staff said it hit a depot containing glide bombs, a training aircraft and “possibly other aircraft.”

Russian officials did not immediately comment on the attack.

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KYIV, Ukraine — Russia fired more than 100 drones at civilian areas of Ukraine overnight, authorities said Monday, as the Kremlin dismissed the country’s transport chief after a weekend of travel chaos when Russian airports grounded hundreds of flights due to the threat of Ukrainian drone attacks.

At least 10 civilians were killed and 38 injured, including three children, in Russian attacks over the previous 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said.

Russia recently has intensified its aerial strikes on civilian areas after more than three years of war. Over the past week, Russia launched some 1,270 drones, 39 missiles and almost 1,000 powerful glide bombs at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday.

Russia’s bigger army is also trying hard to break through at some points along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620 miles) front line, where Ukrainian forces are severely stretched.

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UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned Saturday Russia’s biggest drone and missile attack yet in the three-year war in Ukraine.

“The Secretary-General strongly condemns the latest series of large-scale drone and missile attacks by the Russian Federation,” Guterres said in a statement referring to the assault Friday and also calling for a full, immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

Hours-long Russian bombardments sent Ukrainians scurrying for shelters across the country.

AFP journalists in Kyiv heard drones buzzing over the capital and explosions ringing out throughout the night as Ukrainian air defense systems fended off the attack.

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At least four people were killed and more than 30 injured in another round of Russian strikes on Ukraine overnight, just days after a series of phone calls between US president Donald Trump, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The latest attack will once again pose questions on what’s next for Ukraine as the US ceasefire proposal, pursued by Trump, appears to be failing to make any further progress.

Zelenskyy’s top aide Andriy Yermak said in an update on Telegram that “one of the important principles of defence is the destruction of the enemy’s ability to produce weapons,” as he called for “Russia’s military-industrial complex … to be weakened in various ways: from sanctions to direct strikes.”

The western world must realise that Russia’s scaling up of weapons production only brings us closer to the day when it will be used not only against Ukraine.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin fired his transport minister on Monday following massive disruptions of Russian civilian airspace caused by Ukrainian drone raids.

The Kremlin provided no specific details or reasons for the dismissal of Roman Starovoit, who had served as the governor of Russia’s Kursk region before being reappointed transport minister in May 2024.

However, his firing comes after almost 300 flights were grounded at major airports over the past weekend due to the latest Ukrainian drone raid.

On Saturday and Sunday, 485 fights ended up getting cancelled, according to the Russian federal aviation agency, Rosaviatsiya.

In total, from early morning on Saturday until Monday morning, so

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DONALD Trump issued a bleak warning that Putin wants to “keep killing people” after Russia launched its largest-yet barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine.

In a middle finger to the US, the onslaught hit just hours after Putin and Trump had a fruitless 60-minute phone call – which touched on the possibility of fresh American sanctions.

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Green Party lawmakers reportedly want to spend at least €8.5 billion on weapons for Kiev

A group of German lawmakers from the Green Party has called on Chancellor Friedrich Merz to urgently increase military aid to Ukraine, claiming that Berlin must contribute more in light of a slowdown in US arms deliveries, according to a letter obtained by Bild.

The letter, signed by Bundestag deputies Robin Wagener, Sara Nanni, Sebastian Schafer and Anton Hofreiter, criticized the federal government’s recently announced increase in military assistance from €7.1 billion to €8.3 billion as insufficient.

The lawmakers pointed to the US decision to pause certain weapons shipments to Kiev as a critical factor, arguing that Berlin should raise the figure to at least €8.5 billion and commit to maintaining that level through 2029.

The Green MPs, who have been among Kiev’s most vocal supporters in the Bundestag, reportedly said the government still had room to maneuver within the approved budget framework and argued that Germany’s constitutional limits on debt spending could be sidestepped through special exemptions.

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KYIV – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed new agreements with allies that he said would provide “hundreds of thousands” of new drones to the fight against Russia, while US President Donald Trump hinted at possible additional sanctions against Moscow as it continues to reject his cease-fire push.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy on July 5 said separate agreements with a US firm and European allies — including Denmark and Sweden — would give Ukraine the ability to hit important targets inside Russia, including defense industry assets, airbases, and oil refineries.

Ukraine is “preparing new steps that will make Russia truly feel that it will pay for this war. There must be accountability for the aggressor. And there will be – entirely just and keenly felt.”

The remarks come in uncertain times for Kyiv regarding the supply of weapons from its most important ally. On July 2, Ukrainian officials reacted with shock as the United States announced plans to halt some unspecified supplies of weapons it previously provided to Ukraine, citing its own dwindling stockpiles.

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RUSSIA’S former transport minister has reportedly been found dead just hours after being fired by Vladimir Putin.

Roman Starovoit, who had held the post for less than a year, was dismissed earlier Monday amid escalating turmoil in Russia’s transport sector.

Hours later, he was reportedly found dead in a car at his home in the Odintsovo neighbourhood – marking another grim twist in the Kremlin’s growing shadow of sudden deaths.

Major channels with links to the Russian security forces reported the cause of death as suicide, claiming the minister was found dead with gunshot wounds.

The firearm, according to Russian media, was an award pistol issued to him in 2023 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Some accounts say it was a Yarygin PYa pistol (Rook), or a Makarov.

Unconfirmed reports suggest he was killed using his own weapon.

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Russia said Sunday it had captured two more settlements in east Ukraine, one in the Donetsk region and one in the Kharkiv region.

Ukraine did not immediately comment on Russia’s claims.

Moscow has been grinding forward on the front line for over a year, pressing its advantage against overstretched and outmanned Ukrainian troops.

On Sunday, Russia said it had captured the village of Piddubne in Donetsk and Sobolivka in Kharkiv.

Piddubne was home to around 500 people before the conflict and lies just 7 kilometers (4 miles) from the border of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region.

The Sobolivka village lies some 3 kilometers (2 miles) west of the town of Kupiansk, outside of areas Russia claims it is holding, according to battlefield maps by the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

In two separate Telegram posts, the Russian Defense Ministry said its army units had “liberated” the settlements of Poddubnoye and Sobolevka, using Russian spellings for the localities.