United States President Donald Trump’s diplomatic efforts to bring peace to Ukraine remained stalled during the past week, as Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to meet with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ukraine’s allies, on the other hand, began to commit to provide troops, hardware and air cover in the event of a ceasefire. European allies agreed on the need for a NATO Article 5-type defence clause that would trigger their entry into the war should Russia renew hostilities.
Against this diplomatic background, Russia’s assaults on Ukraine raged on with offensives that threatened the northeast city of Kupiansk.
On Thursday, Moscow’s troops attacked Kyiv, killing at least 14 – a deadly assault almost a month after another bloody offensive in the Ukrainian capital that killed 32, including five children and a pregnant woman.
Ukraine responded this week with a defence that rolled back some Russian gains in the eastern Donetsk region and dealt further damage to Russia’s already wounded oil refining industry, critical to its war effort.
Peace distant as battles rage
On Friday, Russia’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov told NBC News that Putin was not ready to meet with Zelenskyy – something Trump has pitched – as he blamed Ukraine for hindering a peace process.
“There are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelenskyy said no to everything,” Lavrov claimed.
Meanwhile, British defence intelligence assessed that based on current rates of progress, Russia would need about four and half years to complete the conquest of the four oblasts – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.
Russian forces deepened their penetration of Kupiansk, a city on elevated ground on the west bank of the Oskil River, in Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region.
Geolocated footage showed they had advanced within the city on August 24. On Tuesday, Russian military analyst Andrey Marochko said they had reached Komsomol Park, about 3km (2 miles) from its northern outskirts, saying “the enemy’s position in the city has deteriorated,” though Russian military reporters said the city was a grey zone.
Deep State Map, a Ukrainian front-line map compiling open-source information, suggested that on Sunday, Russian forces also extended their encirclement of Kupiansk from the west and began to infiltrate its western suburbs.
The effort to seize the city began in late June. They entered Kupyansk’s northern extremities on August 5, and, according to some reports, captured settlements immediately to its west.
A Ukrainian counteroffensive in August and September 2022 had pushed Russian forces east of the Oskil River. They began to claw their way back last year and have recaptured a fraction of their conquests in Kharkiv.
The heart of the fight across the 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front remains Donetsk, where Russia aims to seize the “fortress belt” of heavily defended cities – from north to south: Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhivka and Kostiantynivka.
Andrey Marochko, a Russian military expert, on Saturday claimed Russian forces had “established a foothold” on the outskirts of Kostiantynivka (Konstantinovka to Russians), the southernmost of the four cities.
Two days later, Denis Pushilin, the Russian occupation governor of Donetsk, also said there had been clashes on the outskirts of the city. But Russia’s Ministry of Defence said clashes were taking place near the city and did not confirm troops had entered it.
The ministry said its forces had seized three settlements in Donetsk on Saturday and two in neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk on Sunday and Monday.
Ukraine scored successes, too. Commander in chief Oleksandr Syrskii said his troops had cleared Russian invaders from Volodymyrivka. Military analyst Konstantin Mashovets said Ukrainian forces had pushed Russian troops out of Nove Shakhove, Zapovidne and Kucheriv Yar.
All four villages lie east of Dobropillya, and these weekend operations were the continuation of a successful counterattack in mid-August, which stymied a Russian effort to seize Dobropillya.
The Russian push for Dobropillya was a variation on months-long efforts to surround Pokrovsk. Mashovets said their failure had reset Russian tactics to an original plan of attacking Pokrovsk directly – a costly and so far failed enterprise.
Operations in the air
Russia continued to assail Ukraine’s cities with just more than 1,000 drones and 41 missiles between August 21-27. Ukraine stopped 87 percent of the drones and three-quarters of the missiles.
While holding its line of defence, Ukraine counterattacked Russia directly with successful strikes against energy infrastructure, designed to disrupt supplies to the front line and to disrupt Russia’s war economy.
On August 22, Ukraine struck the Unecha oil pumping station, which pressurises the Druzhba oil pipeline supplying Russian allies Slovakia and Hungary. Russian authorities said the damage would suspend pipeline deliveries for days.
A day later, Russia said it downed 17 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Flights were cancelled in Tambov and Ulyanovsk, east and southeast of Moscow, after a drone was downed headed for the city. Other airports also suspended operations.
On Sunday, Russians in the Samara region woke to a damaged refinery in Syrzan, while the Leningrad, a gas processing complex owned by Novatek on the Baltic Sea, was damaged. Footage posted online showed a fire at Novatek’s Ust-Luga fuel export terminal.
A separate strike 60km (37 miles) from the Ukrainian border forced the Kursk nuclear power plant to lower its output of electricity, after a drone damaged a transformer.
On Monday, footage posted by Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, showed the Novoshakhtinsk refinery struck on August 21 still on fire for a fifth straight day. Satellite imagery confirmed that six storage tanks at the facility had been destroyed.
According to the Reuters news agency’s calculations, Ukrainian attacks on 10 plants in recent days have disrupted at least 17 percent of Russia’s refinery capacity, amounting to 1.1 million barrels per day.
Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Ukraine’s strikes had caused petrol shortages and raised regular unleaded and premium gasoline prices.
The Moscow Times estimated that regular unleaded gasoline has risen by 38 percent this year, and premium by 49 percent.
Ukraine has also been striking Russia’s weapons stockpiles and supply routes. UK Defence Intelligence on August 22 confirmed the recent sinking of the Olya-4 with a satellite image. It said the vessel “regularly” crossed the Caspian Sea ferrying Iranian war materiel to Russia.
Ukraine has been working feverishly to expand its range, firepower and stockpile. On Monday, it unveiled a new antiship cruise missile, the Long Neptune, a modified version of the R-360 Neptune, capable of travelling 1,000km (620 miles)
A week earlier, Ukraine unveiled the FP5, or Flamingo, a cruise missile with a 3,000km (1,860-mile) range and a 1,150kg (2,535lb) payload of high explosives. Fire Point, a Ukrainian startup with European funding, currently builds one of these missiles per day, and hopes to reach seven a day by October.
Ukraine’s reasons for wanting its own capability include the ability to fire them without restrictions.
Pentagon sources told the Wall Street Journal that the Trump administration has restricted the use of long-range rocket artillery inside Russia. The ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) rockets, with a 300km (190-mile) range, were supplied to Ukraine after Russia brought North Korean soldiers to help defend Kursk in the summer of 2024. Trump reportedly forbade the use of the rockets some months into this year.
Ukraine’s Kovalenko denied the restriction had been reimposed.
