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.
Source: Aljazeera
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