Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature

Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature

These talks are expected later today, and will bring you all the key updates.

Meanwhile, a Russian delegation departed from Moscow for Turkey to hold a third round of peace negotiations with Ukraine , Reuters said, quoting Russian news agencies.

I will keep monitoring this and bring you a longer update later.

Elsewhere, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk is presenting his new cabinet in Warsaw after a major reshuffle in the aftermath of the lost presidential election in June.

If you want to get up to date on what’s going on Ukraine , check our daily briefing here:

2h ago 08.23 BST Morning opening: Ukraine faces criticism over anti-corruption agencies reform Jakub Krupa

Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s decision to approve a contentious bill weakening Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies is facing growing criticism at home and abroad – just hours before another round of peace talks with Russia in Istanbul.

Last night, around 1,500 people protested against the reform in Kyiv, first urging him to veto the bill, and then opposing his decision to sign it into law. Large protests also took place in other cities.

0:50 Protests in Ukraine as Zelenskyy approves law to weaken anti-corruption agencies – video

As my colleague Luke Harding reported from Kyiv, in his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said he had spoken with the Nabu chief, Semen Kryvonos, and other top prosecutors.

Anti-corruption bodies, Zelenskyy said, would continue to function “but without any Russian influence. It all must be cleansed.”

“There must be more justice. Of course, Nabu and Sapo will continue their work,” he said. “It’s also important that the prosecutor general be committed to ensuring real accountability for those who break the law. This is what Ukraine truly needs.”

But international criticism of the reform could prove equally tricky, with EU commissioners and ministers from allied countries also coming out against the reform.

Enlargement commissioner Marta Kos said the EU was “seriously concerned” about the law, warning that “the dismantling of key safeguards protecting Nabu’s independence is a serious step back.”

“Independent bodies like Nabu & Sapo, are essential for ’s EU path. Rule of Law remains in the very center of EU accession negotiations,” she said.

She later added she had a “frank” conversation with the new Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko.

EU defence commissioner Andrius Kubilius added:

“In war trust between the fighting nation and its leadership is more important than modern weapons – difficult to build and to keep, but easy to lose with one significant mistake by the leadership. Transparency & open European dialogue is the only way to repair the damaged trust.”

This morning the reactions continue, with France’s European minister Benjamin Haddad saying it was not too late for Ukraine to reverse its decision.

“It is not too late to go back on this,” he told France Inter radio. “We will be extremely vigilant on the subject.”

Elsewhere, I will be keeping an eye on the peace talks in Istanbul, the government reshuffle in Poland, and the meeting of France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz in Berlin tonight.

I will bring you all key updates from across Europe today.

It’s Wednesday, 23 July 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.

Good morning.

Ukraine on Tuesday was waiting for further details of the “billions of dollars” worth of US military equipment promised by Donald Trump, amid confusion as to how many Patriot air defence systems will be sent . On Monday, Trump said an unnamed country was ready to immediately provide “17 Patriots”. Ukraine is believed so far to possess six functioning Patriot air defence “batteries” – the truck-based radar and launch systems that fire the missiles. It was unclear if Trump was referring to the launch systems, the interceptor missiles that are their ammunition, or whether he understood the difference.

Donald Trump has said Volodymyr Zelenskyy should not bomb Moscow . His statement came soon after the Financial Times (£) reported he had asked Zelenskyy whether he could bomb Moscow , and privately encouraged Ukraine to step up deep strikes on Russia. “No, he shouldn’t target Moscow,” the US president said on Tuesday when asked if the Ukrainian president should attack the Russian capital. Asked if he intended to supply Ukraine with weapons that could reach deeper into Russian territory, Trump replied: “We’re not looking to do that.”

Several European countries said they were willing to buy US arms for Ukraine as outlined by Trump but did not yet know what was being asked of them. Washington officials have suggested that European countries will give up some of their own stocks of weapons for Ukraine and then buy replacements from the US. It would get weapons to Ukraine more quickly, but leave the donor countries waiting for new systems for their own defence.

Some US lawmakers voiced concern that Trump’s latest deadline – 50 days this time – for Putin to make peace gives him time to grab even more Ukrainian territory. Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, said: “The 50-day delay worries me that Putin would try to use the 50 days to win the war, or to be better positioned to negotiate a peace agreement after having murdered and potentially collected more ground. Tillis and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, lead a US Senate group that facilitates work between Congress and Nato.

Russian drones and missiles attacked widely separated areas of Ukraine, officials said in the early hours of Wednesday, with at least two people reported killed. National emergency services reported two deaths in drone strikes east of the north-eastern city of Kharkiv near the town of Kupiansk. In Kharkiv itself, the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said at least 17 explosions were recorded in a 20-minute drone attack in which three people were injured. The head of the military administration in the south-eastern town of Kryvyi Rih, Oleksander Vilkul, said an extended missile and drones attack knocked out power and water supplies and caused injuries. The Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said air defence units had gone into action in the capital.

Earlier, a Russian attack on Tuesday afternoon killed three people in Kupiansk and Sumy, Ukrainian authorities said. Russian officials said a Ukrainian drone attack on the western city of Voronezh wounded 27 people.

The Institute for the Study of war assessed that Ukrainian forces recently advanced in northern Sumy oblast; while Russian forces recently advanced near Kupiansk, Borova, and Toretsk.

The EU was unable to approve a new package of sanctions against Russia on Tuesday as Slovakia demanded more guarantees that it would not be harmed by a separate EU plan to phase out Russian gas. The EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she was “really sad” the sanctions did not get approved, adding that “the ball is in Slovakia’s court” and she hoped a deal could be reached on Wednesday.

Russia and Ukraine struck each other with hundreds of drones on Sunday, throwing Russian air travel into disarray, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Ukrainian deals with western partners allowing Kyiv to scale up production of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Six Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow, said its mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, while another two were reported outside Russia’s second largest city, St Petersburg. Rosaviatsiya, Russia’s civil aviation authority, reported temporary airport closures in the two cities and other regional centres and said dozens of flights had been delayed.

In Ukraine on Sunday, Russian drones injured three civilians in Kyiv and at least two in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, located in the north-east, officials said. A Russian attack involving Shahed drones also targeted port infrastructure in Mykolaiv in central Ukraine, according to its governor, Vitaliy Kim. He reported warehouses and the port’s power grid were damaged but there were no casualties.

Russia killed four civilians and injured a fifth with a glide bomb and a drone in the frontline town of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine, prosecutors said. The drone struck a car in which a married couple were travelling, killing the 39-year-old woman and 40-year-old man on the spot.

Donald Trump has said he will send Patriot air defence missiles to Ukraine and that they are “desperately” needed to defend the country because Russian president Vladimir Putin “talks nice but then he bombs everybody in the evening”. The US president did not give a number of Patriots he plans to send to Kyiv but said the European Union would reimburse the US for their cost. “They are going to pay us 100% for that, and that’s the way we want it,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. The moves come amid a souring of Trump’s relations with Putin and just two weeks after Washington said it would pause some arms deliveries to Kyiv.

US senators touted a bipartisan bill that would arm Trump with “sledgehammer” sanctions to use against Russia, ahead of the latest visit to Ukraine by US special envoy Keith Kellogg. Trump said he would make a “major statement … on Russia” on Monday. Republican senator Lindsey Graham – a top ally of Trump – said on Sunday he had majority backing in the Senate for his bill, which was gaining momentum as US-led peace efforts in Ukraine struggled. The bill would allow Trump “to go after Putin’s economy and all those countries who prop up the Putin war machine”, he told broadcaster CBS. Trump has indicated he would be open to the sanctions bill after repeatedly saying he is “disappointed” with Putin over Moscow’s deadly missile barrages against Ukraine.

Nato secretary general Mark Rutte is set to meet Trump this week on the heels of the US president announcing plans to sell Nato allies weaponry that it can then pass on to Ukraine. Nato said Rutte would be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday and would meet with Trump, secretary of state Marco Rubio and defence secretary Pete Hegseth as well as Congress. French defense minister Sebastien Lecornu, meanwhile, said in an interview published on Sunday in La Tribune Dimanche that European officials had been making the case to the Trump administration to bolster air defence capabilities with any coming packages. He said France was in a “capacity hole” and would have to wait until next year before being able to provide Ukraine new ground-to-air missiles.

Ukraine’s SBU security service has announced it tracked down and killed Russian agents they said had assassinated one of their members. A two-strong team – a man and a woman – had killed Col Ivan Voronich in Kyiv on Thursday, it said. “A special operation was conducted this morning, during which members of the Russian FSB agent group put up resistance and they were eliminated,” the SBU statement on Sunday said. It did not specify how many people had been killed but the SBU posted a video in which two bodies were visible. The team that killed Voronich had spent time getting to know his daily schedule and routes, the SBU said.

The UN nuclear watchdog said it had heard hundreds of rounds of small arms fire late on Saturday at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Sunday that the large number of shots – repeatedly fired for about an hour from 10pm local time – was unusual and that it was seeking further information.

Kyiv has proposed to Moscow a new round of peace talks next week, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Saturday in the hours after Russian strikes across Ukraine claimed more lives. “Security council secretary Umerov … reported that he had proposed the next meeting with the Russian side for next week,” Zelensky said in his evening address. “The momentum of the negotiations must be stepped up.”

At talks last month, Russia outlined demands including Ukraine ceding more territory and rejecting all forms of western military support. Kyiv dismissed them as unacceptable and at the time questioned the point of further negotiations if Moscow was not willing to make concessions. Two rounds of talks in Istanbul between Moscow and Kyiv have failed to result in any progress towards a ceasefire, instead yielding large-scale exchanges of prisoners and the bodies of soldiers.

Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine overnight into Saturday with hundreds of drones, killing at least one person. Zelenskyy said Russia fired more than 300 drones, along with more than 30 cruise missiles, into 10 regions. Russia now often batters Ukraine with more drones in a single night than it did during some entire months in 2024, and analysts say the barrages are likely to escalate.

Two people died after a Russian missile hit Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, an important industrial hub, into which Russia’s forces have recently advanced. Russia launched its biggest ever attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad early on Saturday, as part of the large wave of strikes across the country. According to the regional governor, Sergiy Lysak, the strike destroyed “an outpatient clinic, a school and a cultural institution” in the Vasylkivska township, with some private houses and cars damaged as well.

One person died in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, which was hit with more than 20 drones and a missile, said the mayor, Hennadii Trukhanov, while five people were rescued from a fire in a residential high-rise building. According to Zelenskyy, six other people were wounded in the attack on Odesa, including a child, and critical infrastructure was damaged in Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy region.

Russia’s defence ministry said it shot down 71 Ukrainian drones overnight into Saturday. The Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said 13 drones were shot down as they approached the Russian capital. Russia had to suspend trains for about four hours, causing extensive delays in the southern Rostov region, when it came under a Ukrainian drone attack that wounded one railway worker.