Here are the key events on day 1,242 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
This is how things stand on Sunday, July 20:
Fighting
- Russian forces launched a missile attack on Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, killing two people and damaging “an outpatient clinic, a school and a cultural institution”, according to the central region’s governor, Serhiy Lysak.
- Another Russian missile attack on the Black Sea port of Odesa killed at least one person overnight and wounded six others, including six children, officials said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces launched “more than 300 strike drones and over 30 missiles” against Ukrainian cities during the overnight attack.
- The attacks also damaged critical infrastructure in the Sumy region, “leaving several thousand families without electricity”, the Ukrainian president added.
- In Russia, the Mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, said early on Sunday that Russian air defences downed at least 15 Ukrainian drones heading for the capital.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said early on Sunday that its air defence units destroyed 40 Ukrainian drones, including 21 over the Bryansk region, on the Ukrainian border.
- This came hours after the ministry said its air defence units shot down six missiles and 349 drones over Russian territory on Saturday.
- Earlier, Russia had to suspend trains for about four hours overnight in the southern Rostov region when it came under a Ukrainian drone attack, which injured one railway worker.
- The acting governor of the Rostov region, on Ukraine’s eastern border, said Ukrainian drones had also caused fires and knocked down power lines.
Politics and diplomacy
- Zelenskyy said Ukraine sent Russia a proposal offering a new round of peace talks to take place next week, after negotiations stalled last month.
- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha accused Russia of deporting Ukrainians to Georgia and leaving them stranded there without proper documents, hundreds of miles from their home. He said Ukraine has brought back 43 people so far, but more people remain in “difficult conditions” at the border.
- Earlier, Volunteers Tbilisi, an aid group, said at least 56 Ukrainians, mostly prisoners who completed their sentences and were subsequently ordered to leave Russia, were being held in “inhumane” conditions in a basement near the Russian-Georgian border.
- India said it did not support “unilateral sanctions” by the European Union, after Brussels imposed penalties on Russia that included a Rosneft oil refinery in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
