WAR IN UKRAINE: July 25, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 517
Ukrainian air defenses repelled a Russian drone attack on the Kyiv region in the early hours of Tuesday, officials said. Kyiv city military administration head Serhiy Popko said in a Telegram post that Russia used Iran-made Shahed drones in the sixth attack on the capital this month. No casualties or damage was reported, he said - CNN
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk, said early on July 25 that the number of victims caused by an attack on the city of Kostyantynivka the previous day had risen. Two people, including a 10-year-old boy, were killed, and seven others, including four children aged between 5 and 12, were wounded in the shelling of the banks of a local reservoir where people were bathing, Kyrylenko said, adding that cluster munitions were used in the attack on civilians. The report could not immediately be verified - RFE/RL
The Moldovan Foreign Ministry and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis unanimously pointed out that the brutal attack on the Danube River ports poses significant risks to Ukraine's grain exports and global food security.
Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency discovered mines at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, agency chief Rafael Grossi said Monday — after previous claims by Kyiv that the site had been mined. Having explosives on the site is “inconsistent with the IAEA safety standards and nuclear security guidance,” he said - CNN
Odesa military commissar Yevhen Borysov, who bought a villa in Spain for €4 million, is detained in Kyiv He is suspected, among other things, of illicit enrichment and military service evasion. Borisov was searched for two days. According to law enforcement, he tried to escape from the investigation by changing his phone numbers, cars, and location.
The US Department of State has commented on Secretary of State Antony Blinken's statement that Ukraine regained half of its territories seized by Russian occupation forces, clarifying his words. Matthew Miller, Spokesperson for the US Department of State, noted that, including the territory of Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukraine has liberated about 45% of the seized territories. He said that since 2014, Ukraine has regained 61% of its territory, excluding Crimea. "Ukraine has already been incredibly successful in regaining territory that Russia had temporarily occupied," he said. On Sunday, Antony Blinken said that Ukraine had already liberated about 50% of the territory originally seized by Russia. He added that the US believes that Ukraine's counter-offensive will last at least several more months.