Ukraine war briefing: Ending Russia’s war in Ukraine key issue in Trump talks with EU, UK, sources say | Ukraine

British and US sources say key issues on the agenda for US president Donald Trump’s visit to Scotland to meet with British prime minister Keir Starmer and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen include ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. Before he left Washington, Trump said on Friday that he is looking at secondary sanctions on Russia amid the war in Ukraine. Von der Leyen said later she would meet Trump in Scotland on Sunday. British officials have been heartened by what they see as a clear shift in Trump’s rhetoric on Ukraine and Russia in recent weeks.

The United States told China at the United Nations on Friday it should “stop fuelling Russia’s aggression” in Ukraine, as China accused Washington of trying to shift blame and spark confrontation. Acting US Ambblockador to the UN Dorothy Shea urged all countries, specifically naming China, to stop exports to Russia of dual-use goods that Washington says contribute to Russia’s war industrial base and enable its drone and missile attacks on Ukraine. China’s deputy UN Ambblockador Geng Shuang responded it is not a party to the conflict, has never provided lethal weapons, and has always “strictly controlled dual-use materials, including the export of drones”.

The Kremlin said on Friday that a summit between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy could only happen as a final step to seal a peace deal. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that it was unlikely that such a meeting could occur by the end of August, as Ukraine has proposed. Ukraine says a leaders’ meeting is required in order to achieve a breakthrough in the slow-moving process, which has seen the two sides hold three brief sessions of peace talks in Turkey since mid-May. In comments to journalists, Zelenskyy said Russia had begun to engage over the possibility of such a meeting.

Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday toured a factory producing interceptor drones, increasingly seen as a solution to protecting Ukrainian cities from Russian air attacks, and said a goal had been set to make up to 1,000 of the weapons each day. Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, said newly appointed defence minister Denys Shmyhal had reported on foreign blockistance that would enable Ukraine to “ensure a reliable flow of weapons for Ukrainian soldiers.” Civilian casualties in Ukraine are on rise as Moscow has deployed a nightly blitz of drones, decoys, cruise and ballistic missiles – increasingly aimed at a single city or location. “A plan has been approved to reach production of 500-1,000 interceptor drones per day. The deadline has been set,” said Zelenskyy.

Ukraine has received confirmation from partners that they will provide funding for three Patriot missile defence systems and discussions are under way to finance seven more, Zelenskyy said: “I have officially received confirmation from Germany for two systems, and from Norway for one. We are currently working with Dutch partners.”

Ukraine’s top anti-corruption investigator said on Friday that he did not expect attempts to derail his agency’s work to end, despite an abrupt U-turn by Zelenskyy on curbing their independence that fuelled rare protests. Semen Kryvonos said he was taken aback by attempts this week to curtail his agency’s fight against graft. He spoke a day after Zelenskyy sought to defuse tensions by submitting legislation restoring the independence of NABU and its sister agency, the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). Thousands of protesters took part in protests in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities this week after lawmakers fast-tracked a bill granting a Zelenskyy-appointed general prosecutor power over the two bodies. Kryvonos applauded Zelenskiy’s reversal, but said NABU and SAPO remain a high-priority target for vested interests aiming to stymie their closely watched efforts to clean up.

Zelenskyy says Ukrainian forces are facing fierce fighting around the city of Pokrovsk in the east, a logistics hub near which Russia has been announcing the capture of villages on an almost daily basis. Russia’s defence ministry on Thursday announced the capture of two villages on either side of Pokrovsk – Zvirove to the west and Novoekonomichne to the east. A third village near the city – Novotoretske – was declared by Moscow to be “liberated” earlier in the week. Ukrainian officials have made no acknowledgment that the villages have changed hands.

Zelenskyy also said Ukrainian forces were also “continuing to act” in border areas in the northern Sumy region, where Russian troops have gained a foothold in recent weeks. In Sumy, where Russian troops are trying to establish what Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin calls a “buffer zone”, the popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said Kyiv’s forces had retaken a previously lost village. DeepState said Ukrainian troops had restored control over the village of Kindrativka. There was no official comment from either side.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network was back up and running on Friday as engineers hunted for the root cause of one of its biggest international outages the night before, a rare disruption for the powerful internet system set off by an internal software failure. In Ukraine, where troops rely heavily on Starlink for battlefield communications, the outage affected combat operations as service was “down across the entire front,” said Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s drone forces.