Throughout a troublesome week in Ukraine’s floor struggle, Russian troops accomplished their conquest of Chasiv Yar, a excessive floor in Ukraine’s jap Donetsk area, and claimed to have breached the outskirts of Kupiansk, a metropolis with a pre-war inhabitants of greater than 26,000, in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv area.
Each conquests are the results of months-long efforts and have price the Russians dearly in blood and weapons.
On the similar time, Russian forces pushed into Dnipropetrovsk, a Ukrainian area whose borders they first breached over the weekend of June 7-8, capturing the village of Sichneve, which Russians name Yanvarskoye. It was the third claimed conquest in Dnipropetrovsk. Earlier, Russia captured Dachnoye and Malynivka.
Russia additionally started to launch jet-powered unmanned aerial automobiles to lethal impact, killing 31 folks in Kyiv on July 31.
Ukraine responded with deep strikes on Russian transport networks and vitality hubs.
Chasiv Yar and the ‘fortress belt’
Russia’s Ministry of Defence stated its paratroopers overran Chasiv Yar on July 31.
Moscow’s forces started to besiege town in March 2024, a few month after the autumn of Avdiivka, 30km (20 miles) to the south freed up offensive troops.
Russia prioritised this line of assault after conquering town of Bakhmut in Might 2023, following months of battles led by Wagner Group mercenaries.
Since Bakhmut fell, Russian forces have conquered a salient working 27km (17 miles) west of it. Chasiv Yar offered a problem and a prize – a problem as a result of it sat astride a canal that shaped a pure defensive barrier, and a prize as a result of it’s a vantage level from which Russia can survey the remaining free areas of Donetsk.
“Chasiv Yar is a key top when it comes to adjusting commentary and conducting fight operations,” navy skilled Vitaly Kiselyov advised the Soloviev Reside tv community in Russia.
“To all appearances, we will probably be outflanking from the south and the north, step by step puncturing the enemy forces and edging them out, all of the extra in order we now maintain an advantageous top relative to all different settlements,” stated Kiselyov.
One other Russian navy skilled stated the seize of Chasiv Yar enabled Russian forces to advance in direction of the so-called “fortress belt” of closely defended Ukrainian cities in Donetsk.
“Chasiv Yar is located on a hilltop, and past it, there are very huge expanses of flat terrain. The closest agglomeration – Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka – is effectively fortified,” Andrey Marochko advised the Russian newswire TASS.
Chasiv Yar sits on the northern finish of an tried Russian encirclement of Konstiantynivka, and on Saturday, the Russian Defence Ministry claimed its forces had captured Aleksandro-Kalinovo, on the southern finish of the crab’s claw enclosing Konstiantynivka.
Some analysts disagreed that the autumn of Chasiv Yar was as necessary as Russian analysts made it sound.
“Tactical Russian advances westward in Chasiv Yar don’t represent an operationally vital growth on this space,” stated the Institute for the Examine of Conflict (ISW), a Washington-based suppose tank.
“Russian forces have held most of northern and central Chasiv Yar since late January 2025 and commenced advancing in southwestern Chasiv Yar in mid-June 2025,” the ISW stated.
It added that Ukrainian strains of communication weren’t additional threatened, since “Russian forces have been inside tube artillery vary of Ukraine’s most important logistics route via the fortress belt since late January 2025 and have held positions alongside the T-0504 Bakhmut-Kostyantynivka freeway for a number of months, and have but to considerably threaten Ukrainian positions in Kostiantynivka.”
The state of affairs was completely different in Pokrovsk, some 35km (22 miles) southwest of Chasiv Yar, which Russia has additionally besieged.
Denis Pushilin, the pinnacle of the pro-Russian, self-proclaimed Donetsk Individuals’s Republic, stated Ukrainian strains of communication into Pokrovsk had been impaired.
“The enemy has been largely denied the likelihood to ship ammunition and perform troop rotation,” Pushilin stated.
Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii stated on Telegram, “Essentially the most troublesome state of affairs now could be within the Pokrovsk, Dobropillia, and Novopavlivka instructions,” naming two extra settlements that lie behind Pokrovsk in unoccupied Donetsk.
“The enemy is rising efforts to seize our key agglomerations, in search of weak spots in our defence, and conducting lively fight operations concurrently on a number of fronts,” he stated.
He stated Russian forces have been forming sabotage teams within the Ukrainian rear in an try at “complete infiltration”, and that Ukraine was “utilizing anti-sabotage reserves, whose job is to seek for and destroy enemy sabotage teams”.
Kupiansk and the ‘buffer zone’
On the northern finish of the entrance, Russia claimed to have entered Kupiansk in Kharkiv on Tuesday.
Russian troops have been combating avenue battles in Kupiansk, Russian navy skilled Andrey Marochko advised TASS. He stated troops have been deploying small, cellular teams concentrating on Ukrainian positions with exact strikes.
Russia’s forays into Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv lie past Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, the 4 areas Russia formally annexed in September 2022.
Russia claims to be making a buffer zone to guard these areas, however Ukraine believes that declare to be an excuse for additional occupation.
Russian low-level officers have instructed that the buffer zone must be not less than 30km (20 miles) deep, however the Russian management has positioned no such restrict.
Moscow additionally continued its long-range strikes towards Ukraine.
An in a single day drone assault on July 31 killed 31 folks in Kyiv. The Ukrainian Inside Minister Ihor Klymenko stated Russia used jet-powered Shahed drones, which journey a lot sooner than the propeller-driven sort, and are troublesome to intercept.
The Ukrainian Air Drive reported that Russian forces launched eight Iskander-Ok cruise missiles from Kursk metropolis and 309 Shahed-type and decoy drones. United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer known as it “a completely vile, brutal strike”.
The disagreement
Whilst he pressed on with these offensives, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine was not prepared for peace talks.
Throughout a information convention with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday, Putin stated, “In precept, we are able to wait if the Ukrainian management believes that now shouldn’t be the time,” including that “all disappointments come up from extreme expectations.”
He was referring to the truth that three rounds of direct negotiations have yielded no ceasefire.
United States President Donald Trump repeated final week that he was “disenchanted” in Putin, and has in latest weeks allowed US weapons to stream to Ukraine.
On Friday, the US Pentagon stated it might promote Superior Medium-Vary Air-to-Air (AMRAAM) missiles to Ukraine.
Trump additionally bought right into a social media spat with Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Nationwide Safety Council, after Medvedev objected to Trump’s August 9 deadline for Russia to seal a ceasefire deal.
On Saturday, Trump wrote on his TruthSocial service that he had “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned within the acceptable areas, simply in case these silly and inflammatory statements are extra than simply that”.
On the identical day, Trump introduced a 25 % tariff on India for purchasing Russian oil. On Tuesday, he advised CNBC, “I’m going to lift that very considerably over the following 24 hours, as a result of they’re shopping for Russian oil, they’re fuelling the struggle machine, and in the event that they’re going to try this, I’m not going to be glad.”
Ukraine’s strikes
In the meantime, Ukraine stepped up its interdiction marketing campaign towards Russian vitality and transport infrastructure.
On July 31, Russia stated it shot down 32 Ukrainian long-range UAVs in its western border areas. On account of the Ukrainian assault, it stated rail companies within the Volgograd area have been delayed.
Ukraine has been attacking the Russian railways connecting defence factories to the entrance, stated open-source intelligence gatherer Frontelligence Perception.
Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Heart for Countering Disinformation, stated a radio manufacturing unit in Penza, Russia was attacked, which made cellular command complexes and automatic fight management methods.
On Saturday, Ukraine unleashed a wide-ranging set of strikes.
Kovalenko stated the Radio Plant in Penza was attacked a second time, together with Electropribor, a producer of encryptors, safe modems and switches for navy and intelligence businesses.
Ukraine additionally hit a storage and launch website for Shahed drones on the Primorsko-Akhtarsk navy airfield in Krasnodar.
However its largest hits have been towards oil refineries.
Ukraine attacked the Ryazan Oil Refinery, certainly one of Russia’s 4 largest, accountable for greater than 6 % of all refining in Russia, inflicting a hearth. Additionally hit was the Novokuybyshevsk Oil Refinery close to Samara metropolis, the place explosions have been filmed. Ukraine additionally struck the Annanafteproduct oil depot within the Voronezh area, setting it alight, and on Sunday, a Ukrainian long-range strike hit an oil depot in Sochi on the Black Sea.
Ukrainian media reported that explosions broken the principle Russian fuel pipeline carrying fuel from Turkmenistan to Russia, shutting it down indefinitely. The media retailers stated it equipped navy industries, together with the Demikhov Machine-Constructing Plant, the MiG plane firm, and the Magnum-Ok ammunition plant.
