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Russian troops claimed to have invaded the outskirts of Kupiansk, a city in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region, with the help of more than 26 000 people who had been there before the start of the war. They also claimed to have breached Chasiv Yar, a high ground in the eastern Donetsk region.

Both conquests are the result of months-long efforts and have cost the Russians dearly in blood and weapons.

The village of Sichneve, which Russians refer to as Yanvarskoye, was taken over by Russian forces at the same time as Ukrainian forces attacked Dnipropetrovsk, whose borders they foresaw their first incursion over the weekend of June 8 and 8. In Dnipropetrovsk, it was the third claimed conquest. Earlier, Russia captured Dachnoye and Malynivka.

31 people were killed in Kyiv on July 31 as a result of Russia’s decision to launch jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicles.

Russian energy and transport networks were severely damaged by Ukraine.

The “fortress belt” and Chasiv Yar

On July 31, the Ministry of Defense of Russia reported that its parachutes had overran Chasiv Yar.

Moscow’s forces began to besiege the city in March 2024, about a month after the fall of Avdiivka, 30km (20 miles) to the south freed up offensive troops.

After months of fighting with Wagner Group mercenaries, Russia gave this line of attack a priority after conquering Bakhmut in May 2023.

A salient running 27 kilometers (17 miles) west of Bakhmut has been taken over by Russian forces since Bakhmut fell. Chasiv Yar presented a challenge and a prize – a challenge because it sat astride a canal that formed a natural defensive barrier, and a prize because it is a vantage point from which Russia can survey the remaining free areas of Donetsk.

Vitaly Kiselyov, a military expert, described Chasiv Yar as a “clear point” for adapting observation and conducting combat operations for the Russian television network Soloviev Live.

We will be outflanking from the south and the north, gradually slicing off the enemy forces, especially given that we currently have a favorable height in comparison to all other settlements, according to Kiselyov.

Another Russian military expert said the capture of Chasiv Yar enabled Russian forces to advance towards the so-called “fortress belt” of heavily defended Ukrainian cities in Donetsk.

The “Chasiv Yar” is a hilltop, and the flat terrain it surrounds is “very vast.” Andrey Marochko told the Russian newswire TASS that the agglomeration that is closest, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka, is well fortified.

Chasiv Yar sits at the northern end of an attempted Russian encirclement of Konstiantynivka, and on Saturday, the Russian Defence Ministry claimed its forces had captured Aleksandro-Kalinovo, on the southern end of the crab’s claw enclosing Konstiantynivka.

Some analysts disagreed that Chasiv Yar’s demise was as significant as its critics had predicted.

According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), “Tactical Russian advances westward in Chasiv Yar do not constitute an operationally significant development in this area.”

“Russian forces have held most of northern and central Chasiv Yar since late January 2025 and began advancing in southwestern Chasiv Yar in mid-June 2025”, the ISW said.

Since “Russian forces have been within tube artillery range of Ukraine’s main logistics route through the fortress belt since late January 2025, have held positions along the T-054 Bakhmut-Kostyantynivka highway for several months, and have yet to significantly threaten Ukrainian positions in Kostiantynivka,” it added that Ukrainian communication lines were not further threatened.

The situation was different in Pokrovsk, some 35km (22 miles) southwest of Chasiv Yar, which Russia has also besieged.

The pro-Russian, self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic’s head, Denis Pushilin, claimed that Ukrainian communication with Pokrovsk had been hampered.

According to Pushilin, “the enemy has been largely denied the ability to deliver ammunition and conduct troop rotation.”

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii said on Telegram, “The most difficult situation now is in the Pokrovsk, Dobropillia, and Novopavlivka directions”, naming two more settlements that lie behind Pokrovsk in unoccupied Donetsk.

He claimed that the enemy is conducting active combat operations on several fronts at once while also capturing our key agglomerations and looking for vulnerable spots in our defense.

He claimed that Ukraine was “using anti-sabotage reserves, whose task is to search for and destroy enemy sabotage groups” and that Russian forces were “forming sabotage groups in the Ukrainian rear in an attempt at “total infiltration” in an effort to “total infiltrate” the country.

Kupiansk and the ‘ buffer zone ‘

Russia claimed on Tuesday that it had entered Kupiansk in Kharkiv at the northern end of the front.

Russian military expert Andrey Marochko reported to TASS that Russian troops were engaged in Kupiansk street battles. He said troops were deploying small, mobile groups targeting Ukrainian positions with precise strikes.

Beyond the four regions that Russia formally annexed in September 2022, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson, Russia’s forays into Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv lie.

Ukraine views those claims as justifications for further occupation, despite Russia’s claim that it is creating a buffer zone to protect those regions.

Russian low-level officials have suggested that the buffer zone should be at least 30km (20 miles) deep, but the Russian leadership has placed no such limit.

Moscow continued its long-range bombing of Ukraine.

An overnight drone attack on July 31 killed 31 people in Kyiv. Ihor Klymenko, the country’s interior minister, claimed that Russia operated jet-powered Shahed drones, which are much more maneuverable and difficult to intercept.

Russian forces reportedly launched 309 Shahed-type and decoy drones from Kursk city along with eight Iskander-K cruise missile launches, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it “an absolutely vile, brutal strike”.

Word war:

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, asserted that Ukraine was not ready for peace talks even as he continued with these offensives.

During a news conference with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday, Putin said, “In principle, we can wait if the Ukrainian leadership believes that now is not the time”, adding that “all disappointments arise from excessive expectations”.

He made mention of the unsuccessfulness of three direct negotiations.

United States President Donald Trump repeated last week that he was “disappointed” in Putin, and has in recent weeks allowed US weapons to flow to Ukraine.

The US Pentagon announced on Friday that it would sell Ukrainian missiles with the name Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air (AMRAAM).

After Medvedev objected to Trump’s August 9 deadline for Russia to conclude a ceasefire agreement, Trump and Medvedev got into a social media row.

On Saturday, Trump wrote on his TruthSocial service that he had “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that”.

Trump also announced a 25% tariff on Indian oil for purchases of Russian oil on the same day. He told CNBC on Tuesday that if they were to buy Russian oil and fuel the war machine, I would not be happy. “I’m going to raise that very much over the next 24 hours,” he said.

Ukraine’s strikes

In addition, Ukraine has increased its crackdown on Russian energy and transportation infrastructure.

Russia reported that on July 31 it shot down 32 long-range UAVs from Ukraine in western border regions. As a result of the Ukrainian attack, it said rail services in the Volgograd region were delayed.

According to open-source intelligence researcher Frontelligence Insight, Ukraine has been attacking the Russian railroads that connect defense factories.

A radio factory in Penza, Russia, which produced mobile command centers and automated combat control systems, was attacked, according to Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation.

On Saturday, Ukraine unleashed a wide-ranging set of strikes.

Kovalenko claimed that Electropribor, a manufacturer of encryptors, secure modems, and switches for military and intelligence agencies, was also attacked a second time.

At the military airfield in Krasnodar, Ukraine also attacked a storage and launch site for sabred drones.

But its biggest hits were against oil refineries.

More than 6% of all Russian refining is done by Ukraine at the Ryazan Oil Refinery, one of Russia’s four largest, igniting a fire. The Novokuybyshevsk Oil Refinery, which was also filmed in Samara city, was also a hit. Ukraine also struck the Annanafteproduct oil depot in the Voronezh region, setting it alight, and on Sunday, a Ukrainian long-range strike hit an oil depot in Sochi on the Black Sea.

The main Russian gas pipeline, which transports gas from Turkmenistan to Russia, was reportedly damaged by explosions, causing an indefinite shut-down. According to the media outlets, it supplied military-related businesses, including the Magnum-K ammunition plant, MiG aircraft manufacturer, and Demikhov Machine-Building Plant.

In September 2025, I am supposed to start a new life, not in war-torn Gaza, but in a lecture hall in the United Kingdom. After nearly a year of endless efforts, applications, exams, and navigating bombings, displacement and blackout zones just to apply, I was accepted. Not once, but five times, by the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Exeter, and Ulster. I even secured funding.

But instead of boarding a plane, I remain trapped in Gaza, a place where war has flattened homes, stolen futures and caged dreams. The bombs have not stopped. Neither has our will. Unlike students in other war-torn areas, we, Gaza Palestinian students, are not being offered any path out. Many countries, such as France, Ireland and Italy, have successfully evacuated their students through government-coordinated efforts and humanitarian corridors, like via the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). These governments made it clear that their students matter. The UK has not. Despite its global standing and historic reputation for championing justice and education, it remains silent.

This is not just my story. It is a collective cry from dozens of us, admitted to top British universities, with scholarships or personal savings, who survived bombs and sieges only to be abandoned at the final border: there is no visa centre in Gaza to submit fingerprints, and no route out without evacuation.

After the war broke out in late 2023, I was forced to pause my online university studies, as both the classes and the fees became impossible to maintain under the siege. But I did not give up on education. Instead, I began applying to UK universities through UCAS, a process that demanded a carefully written personal statement, recommendation letters, detailed documentation and weeks of waiting. I submitted everything using borrowed internet in relatives’ homes or from paid co-working spaces that I reached on foot, under the midday sun or pouring rain, with no transportation. There were days when I sat on a plastic chair in the street, emailing colleges and researching entry requirements while missiles flew overhead.

When universities asked for English qualification submissions, I had no centre in Gaza to support me, not for training, not even to register. Most UK universities would not accept Duolingo, the only test I could afford and access online. So I stretched every resource and applied for each institution’s approved test, juggling freelance mobile programming by day to support myself and studying English by night, often under a mobile flashlight.

Some tests required constant camera and microphone monitoring, difficult in a war zone where displacement, noise and unstable internet made focus nearly impossible. One infraction and the test would be void. My laptop battery often died before the test ended. But I endured and succeeded.

My family shares this hunger for education. My brother is a mechanical engineer who won the competitive Qaddumi scholarship last year to begin a master’s programme at the University of Liverpool in January 2025, but it has been deferred. My sister was accepted into a Turkish government-funded medical programme at Samsun University, which was also postponed because of the war. Three of us, all with dreams and drive, are stuck in Gaza. We did everything right. So why are we left behind?

After much struggle, I finally passed the tests and converted my conditional offers into unconditional ones. I even secured funding, enough for at least the first year’s tuition fees and living expenses. I was also promised support from private foundations, conditional only on submitting my visa application.

But when I tried to apply for a visa, I hit a dead end: biometric fingerprints. The UK has no visa centre in Gaza. To complete the process, I would need to cross a border that is shut unless I am listed for evacuation. There are more than 100 Gazan students accepted to UK universities, 48 with full scholarships, who face the same deadlock. Many, like me, are running out of time. Inside the UK, institutions like the Gaza Scholarship Initiative (GSI) have stepped in to amplify our voice to the government because they believe in us.

Some have carried their offers from 2024, after universities generously deferred their admission. Most universities, however, will not offer such flexibility again. For all of us, 2025 is our last chance.

Other countries acted.

Ireland coordinated directly with Israel to evacuate its students via the Karem Abu Salem (known to Israelis as Kerem Shalom) crossing. France and Italy did the same. Students were transported to nearby countries to finish visa processing and begin their studies. They understood the stakes, not just academic, but human. These governments coordinated with humanitarian agencies to get their students out, then facilitated visas and asylum claims.

The UK has done nothing similar, despite numerous appeals from students, universities, advocacy groups like GSI, and members of parliament. We have written letters to MPs, university heads and the British Council. Even university leaders who support our admission cannot help unless the UK government steps in.

This silence hurts most because it is not due to incapability. The UK can act but it simply chooses not to. If the government coordinated with Israeli authorities and humanitarian groups like the ICRC, students could be evacuated through Kerem Shalom into Egypt or Jordan, where they could finalise visas and travel.

This is not speculative. It is exactly what other democratic nations have done. The difference? They cared enough to try.

What does this say about whose futures matter?

The UK has invested for decades in international education, offering prestigious scholarships like Chevening and the Commonwealth. It champions learning and opportunity and leads countless international partnerships. But when it comes to Gaza students, who embody that very ethos, we are being forgotten. What message does that send? Does our survival, our future, matter less? Are we invisible to the very system that welcomed us in writing?

I still believe in British education. I am inspired by its professors, challenged by its rigour, and drawn to its diversity and values. I fought for my place there. I hope, not just for me but for my peers, that the UK government remembers its legacy and chooses to act.

Because if not now, when?