Kremlin says US’s peace push has been useful; rejects idea of European peacekeeping troops on Ukraine’s soil.

Russia is opposed to European proposals on security guarantees for Ukraine and will not allow the presence of NATO troops on its neighbour’s territory, the Kremlin has said.

Speaking to reporters in Moscow on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said while Moscow welcomed recent efforts by United States President Donald Trump to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, he reiterated that Russia would not accept a European troop deployment there as part of security guarantees for Kyiv, as that would equate to a NATO presence in its neighbour’s territory – something it had long opposed.

“In fact, at the very beginning, it was the advancement of NATO military infrastructure and the infiltration of this military infrastructure into Ukraine that could probably be named among the root causes of the conflict situation that arose,” said Peskov.

“So we have a negative attitude towards these discussions.”

Security guarantees against future Russian aggression loom as a key consideration in efforts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying he wants guarantees as part of a potential peace deal to be as close as possible to NATO’s Article 5, which holds an attack against one member state to be an attack on all.

Trump has said the US will not put troops on the ground in Ukraine as part of any future security guarantees, indicating that European countries should shoulder most of the burden of guaranteeing Ukraine’s security. Russia insists there must be no troop presence from NATO countries deployed in Ukraine, and instead says it should be one of the guarantors of Ukraine’s security.

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In comments to reporters, Peskov described Trump’s efforts to end the war as “very important” and said this month’s US-Russia presidential summit in Alaska had been “very substantive, constructive and useful”, adding that Moscow hoped the efforts would continue.

But while security guarantees were “one of the most important topics” in the negotiations, Russia did not believe it was helpful to discuss them in public, he said.

Zelenskyy calls for action

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Wednesday that his teams were “accelerating the process of defining the details” of future multilateral security guarantees for Ukraine, and said the time was right to organise leaders’ discussions on the key priorities and timelines around the arrangements.

“Our teams are actively preparing the architecture of strong and multilateral security guarantees for Ukraine, with everyone involved – Europeans, Americans, and our other partners in the Coalition of the Willing,” he said.

“Military commanders, defense ministers, and security advisors – at different levels, we are preparing the components of future security,” he added. “It is already time to organise the format for the leaders’ discussions to determine the key priorities and timelines.”

He said Russia is “currently sending negative signals regarding meetings and further developments”.

“The Russians will only react to real pressure in response to all this. Pressure is needed. We are counting on it.”

Ukraine and the US have been pushing for a face-to-face meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders to advance peace negotiations, with the US president suggesting he would consider further sanctions on Moscow amid concerns Russia was stalling.

Energy infrastructure attacked

The latest comments came after Ukraine was hit by another barrage of drone attacks overnight, targeting critical energy infrastructure, and the Kremlin claimed it had captured a village in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

In a post on X, Zelenskyy said 100,000 households in three regions – Poltava, Sumy and Chernihiv – had been left without electricity following the wave of attacks by nearly 100 drones that included strikes on energy facilities.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said in a statement on Telegram that the attacks had targeted infrastructure in six regions, significantly damaging gas transport infrastructure in Poltava and hitting equipment at a key substation in Sumy, the Reuters news agency reported.

“We regard the Russian attacks as a continuation of the Russian Federation’s deliberate policy of destroying Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure ahead of the heating season,” the ministry said.

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Power had since been restored in Poltava, Governor Volodymyr Kohut said in a statement on Telegram.

Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukrainian gas production and import infrastructure in recent weeks, which it says are legitimate targets because they help Ukraine’s war effort.

The Ukrainian air force said it had downed 74 drones out of 95 launched by Russia overnight, with 21 drones striking nine locations around the country, Reuters reported.

Zelenskyy said the overnight wave of attacks – which had been “aimed specifically at civilian infrastructure” – had also struck a school in the Kharkiv region, and a residential apartment building in Kherson, resulting in injuries.

He said the ongoing attacks reiterated the need for the global community to do more to pressure Russia to stop its war.

“New steps are needed to increase pressure on Russia to stop the attacks and to ensure real security guarantees.”

The AFP news agency reported that at least two people had been killed in recent Russian attacks. It said two farm workers were killed by Russian artillery fire in Novovorontsovka, a village in the Kherson region, on Wednesday morning, according to Governor Oleksandr Prokudin.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed its forces had taken control of the village of Ozarianivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

A young pregnant woman, football-loving boy and 30 others were killed in the Ukrainian capital on July 31.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Several framed photos on the yellow ground drown amid bouquets of wilting flowers under a wind-shaken strip of red tape.

Above them are towering rectangles of damaged concrete – remnants of a blast-gutted apartment building.

Sasha Paremsky, 11, stood in front of the scene, quietly describing a boy in one of the photos.

“The scariest thing is to see my friend’s photo there. We’d just met to play football before … this,” he told Al Jazeera with a pause.

“This” was the Russian missile attack that killed 32 people, including five children, and wounded more than 150 on July 31. More than a dozen of those injured were children.

The Kremlin said the attack targeted “military factories, a military airstrip’s infrastructure and an ammunition depot”.

In reality, an Iskander ballistic missile hit the nine-storey apartment building next to the Paremsky family home in this rustically quiet neighbourhood that has no factories, military bases or sites, and sits more than 10km (6 miles) west of central Kyiv.

“People cried for help from under the debris. Everything was on fire,” Paremsky said, recalling the hours after the attack. He and his parents helped survivors and rescue workers dig up the wounded and the dead.

Witnesses described the strike’s sound as a snake-like hiss that evolved into an eardrum-popping boom.

“I hear the hissing, and one moment later, I am thrown away from the window” by the shockwave, said Hanna, a survivor.

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Among the dead were 23-year-old Mykyta and Sofia Lamekhovs and their two-year-old son Lev, who had fled Sloviansk, the first Ukrainian town that was briefly seized by Moscow-backed separatists in 2014 and is close to the front line again.

“They were such a beautiful couple, I saw them the day before,” one of the neighbours sighed. “She had just gotten pregnant.”

Just one of the many families killed or destroyed otherwise by the russian missile strikes on Kyiv on July 31 just because they were Ukrainians. Could have been any of you. pic.twitter.com/wazFzVDbtp — Olga Klymenko (@OlgaK2013) August 2, 2025

The strike was the second-deadliest wartime assault in Kyiv. A missile and drone attack in July 2024 killed 33 people, including five children, and damaged Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital.

The recent attack was the horrifying pinnacle of months-long, almost nightly pummelling of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

Each involved hundreds of drones and dozens of cruise and ballistic missiles – and followed the Kremlin’s daytime assurances of its readiness to start peace talks, but with a list of conditions that looked like a capitulation demand.

And yet, for many survivors, the most dreadful aftermath is not Moscow’s narratives or United States President Donald Trump’s indecisiveness towards harsher sanctions on Russia.

It is losing hope for help.

“So, [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy was here. And [Kyiv mayor Vitali] Klitschko. They all said we’d get help. And here were are, with no windows, no subsidies, nothing,” Tamara, a resident, told Al Jazeera.

Most residents covered their windows, gouged out by the blast, with plastic film because the one-time subsidy payment of 10,000 hryvnia ($241) barely covers the cost of a single plastic window.

Hanna claimed that when she was trying to receive the subsidy, a city official told her she had not been listed in the official registry of tenants.

To get registered, she would need the help of a “firm” that would charge her 10,000 hryvnia ($241) to get the job done within a day or two, she claimed to have heard from the official.

Such “firms” often work next to government offices and represent “hidden corruption,” according to experts.

But in this case, the charge seems overtly high.

“It’s very strange that, according to the resident, the cost of the subsidy is equal to the cost of assistance,” Serhii Mitkalyk, head of the Anti-Corruption Headquarters, a nongovernmental group in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.

A natural gas pipe that leaked after the blast has been shut off, leaving residents with no fuel for their stoves. Locals accused authorities of refusing to provide a discount for the electricity they now have to use for cooking.

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“We are left alone to do everything by ourselves with no help,” Hanna said.

District and city administrations have not commented on the residents’ claims, asking for written requests that remain unanswered.

Al Jazeera has previously reported on years-long delays in the reconstruction of war-damaged apartment buildings and houses.

There are high “corruption risks” during the actual renovation of damaged buildings.

“The biggest abuses are seen during centralised procurement [of construction materials] for reconstruction,” anticorruption expert Mitkalyk said.

“Our organisation monitors such tenders and identifies cases where prices for construction materials are inflated by 20–30 percent compared to market prices,” he said.

“Some of these cases have already become the subject of criminal proceedings and court rulings, but in general, this is the usual work of law enforcement agencies in the field of recovery,” he said.

And then, there is the sheer size of the problem.

Some 60 million square metres (646 million square feet) of housing have been destroyed since 2022, and at least $86bn is needed to rebuild them, authorities said earlier this year.

About 4.6 million Ukrainians are internally displaced, and some 600,000 are registered to get new housing.

In May, the government reported that some 100,000 Ukrainian families have used eVidnodlennya (eRestoration), a programme to compensate the loss of damaged or destroyed real estate.

One can use their smartphone to apply for a subsidy, upload documents and get a money transfer – or go to a government office in person.

However, almost a quarter – 24 percent – of applicants could not get them because of bureaucratic problems, Olena Shulyak, head of the ruling Servant of the People party said on August 1.

Some had no smartphones, others lacked documents, and many cannot get to government offices from areas near the front line, she said.

But the most vulnerable group of homeless Ukrainians – those from Russia-occupied areas that make up some 19 percent of Ukraine’s territory – cannot use the programme because officials are unable to inspect their damaged or destroyed property.

The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament, voted in a law that simplifies the procedure in December, but Zelenskyy has not signed it yet.

“No real refugee who lost everything in occupied areas got a single penny of this money,” Petro Andriushchenko, former mayor of Russia-occupied southeastern city of Mariupol, wrote on Telegram in May. “The lives of real internally displaced persons have not improved a bit. Not at all. All of this is the great government scam.”

AN underground school and a bakery are among the vital projects being supported in Ukraine thanks to Edinburgh donations.

Humanitarian charity Edinburgh Direct Aid International is operating in war-torn Kharkiv, drawing from its experience of crisis response.

Among its volunteers in the area is Maggie Tookey, a retired teacher and volunteer international aid worker.

In a letter from the ground, she recounts the looming threat of Russian troop advances in the east, but maintains a message of hope.

This included a letter of thanks, translated from Ukrainian, from an underground school kept operational in part by donations from Edinburgh locals. A vital bakery has also been kept running as a result of that support.

Maggie Tookey’s letter from Kharkiv, Ukraine (July 30)

MY first night here in Kharkiv was an absolute pounding for around four hours, until 5am. The Russians have escalated all types of firepower but mainly these awful Shaheed drones that buzzed over the city. There were a number of people dead and injured by morning.

Things are not looking too good here but we hope for the best.

I visited Oskil yesterday near Izium in the occupied territories. It was a lovely visit. I’ve attached a letter translated from Ukrainian, from the Oskil school manager and staff – we provided around $7500 for equipment. This letter, translated with the help of Meriam from Volunteersk, gives their reaction to our help. It’s uplifting in difficult times.

Meriam and I then moved on to visit Studenok where we have the underground school we helped to create and equip. We met with the community leaders. The school/community centre has been much in use. The World Food Programme has held agricultural classes for local farmers to help them increase the quantity and quality of their crops. Lots of social and educational activities have been taking place, but of course now it’s the summer break.

Now for the bad news.

The Russians are 6km closer than around seven weeks ago. Some days the front line is 16km away, and some days it’s 20km, depending on the military successes or failures of either side that day. Certainly, the sound of shelling sounded much louder than when I was last there in February this year. They’re creeping forward.

Huge new trenches have been dug close to Studenok and some military are within the community. Oskil is also closer to the front line.

Around 100 people have left the Studenok community in the last few weeks for safer places.

The leaders feel that they must prepare better this time for the possible arrival of Russians if it comes to that. Last time, people died by Russian snipers. There’s only one road out over a wooden bridge, and if that is blown, they only have a rough back road patrolled constantly by these first-person view (FPV) Russian drones. They plan to start moving the elderly and disabled soon if the situation doesn’t stabilise. Maybe it will. Maybe Donald Trump will come up trumps.

Bakery

THE replacement bakery to which EDA has contributed after it was destroyed in Kup’yansk was relocated to settlements further back towards Kharkiv but still within the Kup’yansk District.

Before rebuilding began, it became clear that even these more distant locations were unsafe and vulnerable to drones. It would have been a huge waste to lose yet another bakery and its expensive equipment, let alone the baker and his wife, who were lucky to escape the last bombing with surface injuries.

The Russians are now so close to the town, and small groups enter before being driven back by the Ukrainians. Shelling has escalated greatly and the number of drones makes life almost impossible. Despite this, about 1000 people still require help and medical support, and Ruslan continues to risk his life to deliver vital medicines. Even for him, the stress is mounting.

Now the new bakery is constructed on the edge of Kharkiv. This will be staffed by 16 IDPs [Internally Displaced Persons] from Kup’yansk working in two shifts.

They have been trained in bakery skills and bread will still be taken to the edge of Kup’yansk and to settlements to the north and south

of Kharkiv, which are also under threat and where bakeries can no longer function.

It will be completed in around a month. EDA has contributed three major items of expensive equipment:

A steam convection oven

An industrial dough mixer

An industrial flour sifter.

I’ll make another visit to the emerging bakery before I leave.

Edinburgh Direct Aid International

EDAI was formed in 1992.

It is an Edinburgh-based humanitarian charity that delivers direct aid and provides assistance to those suffering as a result of man-made or natural disasters.

EDAI is currently active in Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon.

You can find out more about its work online at www.edinburghdirectaid.org

The Guardian’s Russian affairs reporter, Pjotr Sauer, has written a piece about Putin’s trip and what it may mean for the war in Ukraine. Here is an extract of his story:

Key on the agenda, analysts say, will be for Putin and Xi to align their positions on the war in Ukraine amid US efforts to end the fighting. “It is an important time for them to talk about where the war is headed and how likely it is to be stopped in the near future,” said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre.

Gabuev said Moscow wanted to know whether it could expect any further assistance from China and how Beijing would respond if the US were to ask it to put pressure on Russia to end the fighting…

China has emerged as an economic lifeline for Russia during the war in Ukraine, and Kyiv has been increasingly outspoken about what it says is China’s direct aiding of Moscow’s war effort.

Bilateral trade climbed to more than $240bn last year, two-thirds higher than before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Beijing is now the leading buyer of Russian oil and coal and will shortly surpass Europe as Moscow’s main market for natural gas…

The talks are also likely to touch on deepening military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow, a development that has alarmed western governments.

While China has stopped short of providing direct military aid, US officials say Beijing has supplied about 70% of the machine tools and 90% of the semiconductors Russia needs to rebuild its war machine. In return, China is believed to be receiving assistance in sensitive defence technologies.

China claims it is a neutral mediator in the war in Ukraine, but the two countries have pulled closer together since the start of the invasion.

Zelenskyy accused Moscow of using “the time meant for preparing a leaders-level meeting to organise new massive attacks” and called for “tougher” banking and energy sanctions on Russia. He said Russia’s latest attack had shown “its utter disregard for words”.

The cities of Dnipro and Pavlograd in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk also came under attack early on Saturday , causing fires, the regional governor, Sergiy Lysak, wrote on Telegram, warning residents to take cover.

The Ukrainian air force said it had downed 510 of 537 drones and 38 of 45 missiles launched by Russia in the overnight attack. It recorded five missile and 24 drone hits at seven locations, according to its statement on Telegram. Russia confirmed it had launched the attacks, saying they were against “military” targets.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on X “Russians launched nearly 540 drones, 8 ballistic missiles, and 37 other types of missiles against civilian life”. He said 14 regions were targeted, including Kyiv and Chernivtsi in the south-west of the country bordering Romania.

Russia launched a sweeping attack across Ukraine overnight on Saturday, with one person killed and 24 injured, including three children, when a five-storey residential building was hit in Zaporizhzhia. The regional governor, Ivan Fedorov, said the attack on Zaporizhzhia cut power to 25,000 residents.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said she had asked the bloc’s governments to submit proposals next week for another package of sanctions against Russia after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Copenhagen.

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said he expected that Russia would only stop its war against Ukraine once it could no longer wage it for economic and military reasons, given that diplomatic efforts in recent weeks had failed. “All efforts of the past weeks have been answered with an even more aggressive approach by this regime in Moscow against the population in Ukraine,” Merz said at a regional event in North Rhine-Westphalia on Saturday. “This will also not stop until we ensure together that Russia, at least for economic reasons, and perhaps also for military reasons can no longer continue this war.”

The chief of Russia’s general staff, Valery Gerasimov, said on Saturday that Russian forces were waging non-stop offensives along the entire frontline in Ukraine and have the “strategic initiative”. Since March, Russia has captured more than 3,500 sq km of territory in Ukraine and taken control of 149 villages, Gerasimov added. “At present, the strategic initiative lies entirely with Russian forces,” he asserted.

Russian troops have taken control of the village of Komyshuvakha in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the Russian defence ministry said, adding that its forces had successfully carried out strikes with high-precision weapons on Ukrainian missile and aviation enterprises, as well as military airfields in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military said that it had struck Russian oil refineries in Krasnodar and Syzran overnight. The military recorded multiple explosions and a fire at the Krasnodar oil refinery in Russia’s south and said there was also a fire in the Syzran oil refinery area in Samara region. Russian authorities in Krasnodar said falling drone debris damaged one of the refinery’s units.

Twenty Ukrainian drones, including 18 over Russian-annexed Crimea, were shot down early on Saturday morning, the Russian defence ministry said. The other two drones were shot down over Russia’s western Smolensk region.

Andriy Parubiy, a Ukrainian politician who previously served as the parliament speaker, was shot dead in western city of Lviv on Saturday. Prosecutors have opened a murder investigation and said police were still searching for the shooter but have not mentioned possible motives at this stage.