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Russia attacked Ukraine's main inland port across the Danube River from Romania, sending global food prices higher as it ramped up its attacks to prevent Ukraine from exporting grain. Meanwhile, Ukrainian sea drones struck a Russian tanker near the strategic bridge linking Russia to the annexed peninsula of Crimea.
Meanwhile, officials from about 40 countries, including the U.S., China and India, held talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to work on a plan that Kyiv and its allies hope will lead to an agreement on key principles for a peaceful end to the war.
Read our latest updates here. For all our coverage, visit our Ukraine war page.
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Note: Nikkei Asia decided in March 2022 to suspend its reporting from Russia until further information becomes available regarding the scope of the revised criminal code. Entries include material from wire services and other sources.
Here are the latest developments:
Monday, Aug. 7
11:41 p.m. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi tells Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov by phone that Beijing will uphold an independent and impartial position on Ukraine as it strives to find a political settlement to the issue.
Wang's comments to Lavrov are announced in a Foreign Ministry statement that says China will be an "objective and rational voice" at any international multilateral forums and "actively promote peace talks." The statement follows international talks in Saudi Arabia over the weekend. Beijing has refused to condemn Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine it launched in February 2022.
6:28 p.m. China's Foreign Ministry says international talks in Saudi Arabia over the weekend on finding a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine crisis had helped to "consolidate international consensus." More than 40 countries -- including China, India, the United States and European countries, but not Russia -- took part in the Jeddah talks, which ended on Sunday.
China sent its special envoy for Eurasian affairs and former ambassador to Russia, Li Hui, who in May toured six European capitals to find common ground for an eventual political settlement of the conflict, now in its 18th month.
4:57 a.m. A senior Ukrainian official said on Sunday that talks in Saudi Arabia to make headway toward a peaceful settlement of the war with Russia had been productive. But Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by state media on Sunday as saying the meeting was "a reflection of the West's attempt to continue futile, doomed efforts" to mobilize the Global South behind Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's position.
Sunday, Aug. 6
6:00 p.m. Workers installed Ukraine's national trident on an iconic monument depicting the motherland in Kyiv on Sunday, replacing old Soviet symbols in one of the most visible examples of breaking away from the past and Moscow's influence. The monument, a 62-meter-tall steel statue of a female warrior, was built in 1981 on top of a hill on the right bank of the Dnieper River. Gazing sternly east, the figure holds a 16-meter sword in her right hand and an 8-meter-long shield in her left. Originally, the shield bore the Soviet Union's coat of arms -- a crossed hammer and sickle surrounded by ears of wheat.
5:00 p.m. Russia launched a multi-wave overnight attack on Ukraine with 70 air-assault weapons including cruise and hypersonic missiles as well as Iranian-made drones, Kyiv's Air Force said on Sunday, and at least 10 missiles appear to got through air defenses. Local media said a worker at a grain silo had been wounded in the overnight attack, which appeared to be focused on an area of western Ukraine, far from the front line. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said people had been killed and wounded in an earlier hit to a blood transfusion center in the town of Kupiansk, a railway hub fewer than 10 miles from the front in the eastern Kharkiv region.
12:10 a.m. Russia will punish Ukraine for using a sea drone to attack a civilian tanker near the Kerch Strait in what it dubbed a "terrorist act" that threatened the lives of the crew and risked "a large-scale environmental disaster," the Foreign Ministry says.
"The Kyiv regime, meeting no condemnation from Western countries and international organizations, is actively applying new terrorist methods, this time in the waters of the Black Sea," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says in a statement. "There can be no justification for such barbaric actions, they will not go unanswered and their authors and perpetrators will inevitably be punished."
Saturday, Aug. 5
9:45 p.m. Peace talks begin with officials from about 40 countries, including the U.S., China and India, meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to work on a plan that Kyiv and its allies hope will lead to agreement on key principles for a peaceful end to the war.
The two-day meeting is part of a Ukrainian push to build support beyond its core Western backers by reaching out to Global South countries that have been reluctant to take sides.
It was unclear if the meeting would produce a joint statement. Ukraine's envoy to the meeting says the conversation there "will be difficult." Russia did not send a representative to the talks.
5:39 p.m. A sea drone attack damaged a Russian tanker near the strategic bridge linking Russia to the annexed peninsula of Crimea, Russian authorities say. Russian media said the SIG vessel, approaching the Kerch Strait linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, was hit by Ukrainian drones. Ukraine's Interfax agency, citing an unnamed Ukrainian security service source, also said Ukraine's navy was behind the attack with drones in its territorial waters. No one was hurt, but the Crimean bridge and ferry transport were suspended for several hours, according to Russian-installed officials in Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
3:54 a.m. Ukrainian sea drones attacked a Russian naval base at Novorossiysk before being shot down, according to the Russian Defence Ministry.
The attack, which was caught on a video confirmed by Reuters and posted on the Telegram messaging app, did not cause injuries or damage to the port infrastructure, the regional governor says.
Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda reports that the attack was a joint operation by the Ukrainian Security Service and its navy, and that it left a Russian landing ship unable to perform combat operations.
The Novorossiysk port is one of the largest on the Black Sea. The attack reportedly led to temporary disruptions to oil and other shipments out of the port.
3:32 a.m. U.S. presidential hopeful Chris Christie meets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, following a visit to Bucha and Irpin.
Christie, who was the governor of New Jersey, tells Zelenskyy that he advocates for "broader aid" to Ukraine. Christie is challenging former U.S. President Donald Trump for the Republican nomination in the 2024 race.
2:08 a.m. A Russian court sentences prominent opposition figure Alexei Navalny to 19 more years in prison, a move he and his supporters say is meant to keep him out of politics for longer.
The Putin critic was accused of inciting and financing extremist activity, among other crimes. He is already serving sentences totaling 11 and a half years including for fraud.
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department condemns the latest decision as an "unjust conclusion to an unjust trial."
"His abuse shows Russia's complete disregard for even the most basic of human rights," British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly says, calling for Navalny's immediate release.
Friday, Aug. 4
1:50 a.m. The U.S. would "continue to do whatever is necessary" to ensure Russia can freely export food if the deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain were revived, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says.
"We want to see that food on world markets," Blinken tells reporters at the United Nations. "We want everyone to benefit from the lower prices."
Russia last month quit the July 2022 deal brokered by the U.N. and Turkey aimed at easing a global food crisis after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine are both leading grain exporters.
While Russian exports of food and fertilizer are not subject to Western sanctions, Moscow has said restrictions on payments, logistics and insurance have hindered shipments. But Blinken says the U.S. has worked to address these issues, including by writing comfort letters to banks "to assure them that it was fine to process these transactions and that they wouldn't run afoul of our sanctions."
Thursday, Aug. 3
11:54 p.m. Ukraine's prosecutor general is investigating Russian attacks on its agriculture infrastructure since July as potential war crimes, Reuters reports.
9:53 p.m. The prime ministers of Baltic nations Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania agree to disconnect their countries from Russia's power grid nearly a year sooner than previously planned and connect with the continental European energy network by February 2025.
"The shifted geopolitical situation, resulting from the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, has also significantly deteriorated the energy security situation in the region and increased the risks of unplanned de-synchronization of the Baltic states' electricity systems" from the Russian grid, the prime ministers say in a joint declaration.
The three former Soviet republics do not currently buy electricity from Russia but remain physically connected to its grid, The Associated Press reports.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland agreed with the European Union's executive commission in 2019 to coordinate on connecting the Baltic nations to the EU's grid by the end of 2025.
7:58 a.m. Russia's attack on Ukraine's main inland port across the Danube River from Romania on Wednesday is sending global food prices higher as it ramped up its use of force to prevent Ukraine from exporting grain. The drone attacks destroyed buildings in the port of Izmail and halted ships as they prepared to arrive there to load with Ukrainian grain in defiance of a de facto blockade Russia reimposed in mid-July. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the Russian attacks damaged almost 40,000 tons of grain that had been destined for African countries, China and Israel. "Moscow is waging a battle for a global catastrophe," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. "In their madness, they need world food markets to collapse, they need a price crisis, they need disruptions in supplies."
5:31 a.m. Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory are being forced to assume Russian citizenship or face harsh retaliation, including possible deportation or detention, Yale University researchers say. Their report says that as part of a plan by Moscow to assert authority over Ukrainians, residents of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions are being targeted by a systematic effort to strip them of Ukrainian identity. A series of decrees signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin compel Ukrainians to get Russian passports, in violation of international humanitarian law, the report says.
Wednesday, Aug. 2
8:45 p.m. Russia attacks Ukraine's main inland port across the Danube River from Romania, destroying buildings and halting shipping activity.
The Izmail port is the main alternative route out of Ukraine for grain exports following Russia's de-facto blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports in mid-July.
Chicago wheat futures rose nearly 5% at one point on concerns over the potential hit to global supplies before paring gains.
1:13 a.m. Ukraine expects economic growth of 5% in 2024, driven by investment in reconstruction and stronger consumer demand, a senior Economy Ministry official says at a roundtable in comments reported by Reuters.
The ministry expects gross domestic product to grow around 2.8% this year, says Natalia Horshkova, head of the ministry's department for strategic planning and macroeconomic forecasting. The ministry expects the war to end in 2024, she says.
Tuesday, Aug. 1
9:07 p.m. Russia's Defense Ministry says it had thwarted attacks by Ukrainian sea drones on its navy and civilian ships in the Black Sea, Reuters reports. Kyiv denies having attacked civilian ships, without directly addressing the claim that it attacked Russia's navy.
7:29 p.m. A high-rise building in Moscow's business district that houses three Russian government ministries was struck by a drone for the second time in three days in what Russia called an attempted Ukrainian "terrorist attack," Reuters reports.
12:08 a.m. A Russian missile strike on the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih killed at least six people, including a 10-year-old girl and her mother, and wounded dozens of others, Reuters reports, citing Ukrainian officials.
Monday, July 31
11:18 p.m. Ukraine and Croatia have agreed on the possibility of using Croatian ports on the Danube and the Adriatic Sea for the export of Ukrainian grain, Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba says after talks with his Croatian counterpart, reports Reuters.
10:23 p.m. The Ukrainian foreign ministry said that Russian airstrikes destroyed an estimated 180,000 tonnes of grain crops in the space of nine days this month, reports Reuters.
3:50 p.m. Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin says in a voice message published on Monday that his Wagner group was not currently recruiting fighters, but was likely to do so in the future. What upcoming role Wagner and Prigozhin will play has been unclear since the chief led a short mutiny against the Russian defense establishment in late June. Prigozhin attended a meeting with Putin five days after the mutiny and was photographed last week in St. Petersburg, where President Vladimir Putin was hosting African leaders.
7:00 a.m. Ukraine brought the war far from the front lines into the heart of Russia again on Sunday in drone attacks that Russian authorities say damaged two office buildings a few kilometers from the Kremlin and a pig breeding complex on the countries' border. The attacks, which Ukraine did not acknowledge in keeping with its security policy, reflected a pattern of more frequent and deeper cross-border strikes the Kyiv government has launched since starting a counteroffensive against Russian forces in June. Sunday's was the fourth such strike on the capital region this month and the third this week, showing Moscow's vulnerability as Russia's war in Ukraine drags into its 18th month.
4:30 a.m. African leaders have left two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin with little to show for their requests to resume a deal that kept grain flowing from Ukraine and to find a path to end the war there. Putin in a news conference late Saturday following the Russia-Africa summit said Russia's termination of the grain deal earlier this month caused a rise in grain prices that benefits Russian companies. He added that Moscow would share some of those revenues with the "poorest nations." That commitment, with no details, follows Putin's promise to start shipping 25,000 to 50,000 tons of grain for free to each of six African nations in the next three to four months -- an amount dwarfed by the 725,000 tons shipped by the U.N. World Food Program to several hungry countries, African and otherwise, under the grain deal.
12:39 a.m. Ukraine begins negotiations with the U.S. this week on a bilateral agreement for security guarantees that will be valid until Ukraine joins NATO, the head of the Ukrainian presidential office announces.
The talks will follow up on Group of Seven members' recent pledge to "each work with Ukraine on specific, bilateral, long-term security commitments and arrangements."
Sunday, July 30
5:30 p.m. The Russian Navy will receive 30 new warships this year, President Vladimir Putin says in St. Petersburg in a speech for a naval parade on the Neva River to mark his country's annual Navy Day.
1:00 p.m. Ukraine tried to attack "Moscow facilities" via drone in the morning local time, Russia's Defense Ministry says.
"One Ukrainian drone was destroyed by air defense means over the territory of the Moscow Region's Odintsovo district," the Russian government's Tass news agency quotes the ministry as saying. "Two other drones were suppressed by electronic warfare and, having lost control, crashed on the territory of the Moscow City complex of non-residential buildings."
There is no immediate claim of responsibility from Ukraine, whose military intelligence service declines to comment on the Moscow City strikes, the Financial Times reports.
Tass quotes an emergency services source as saying a security guard was injured in a Moscow City building. Independent Russia-focused media outlet Meduza posts photos of blown-out skyscraper windows.
"Passers-by found documents on the street, which were presumably blown out of the buildings where the offices of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Economic Development, and the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media are located," Meduza says.
12:15 a.m. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki says a group of a hundred Russian Wagner mercenaries has moved closer to the Belarusian city of Grodno near the Polish border, raising fears that the troops will try to cross the border.
"The situation is getting increasingly dangerous ... Most likely they [the Wagner personnel] will be disguised as the Belarusian border guard and help illegal migrants get to the Polish territory [and] destabilize Poland," Morawiecki says. "They will most likely try to enter Poland pretending to be illegal migrants and this poses additional threats," he says.
Saturday, July 29
11:30 p.m. Ukrainian soldiers have used North Korean rockets that they said were seized by a "friendly" country before being delivered to Ukraine, the Financial Times reports.
The North Korean arms, were shown to the FT by troops operating Soviet-era Grad multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) near the devastated city of Bakhmut.
The Ukrainian soldiers say the rockets had been "seized" from a ship by a "friendly" country before being delivered to Ukraine.
3:50 p.m. Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who remains active despite leading a failed mutiny against the Russian army's top brass last month, has hailed Niger's military coup as good news and offered his fighters' services to bring order. A voice message on Telegram app channels associated with Wagner that they said was Prigozhin did not claim involvement in the coup, but described it as a moment of long overdue liberation from Western colonizers and made what looked like a pitch for his fighters to help keep order.
1:00 p.m. The Japanese Defense Ministry says that five Chinese and five Russian warships sailed through the Soya Strait between Hokkaido and Sakhalin to the Sea of Okhotsk, possibly in connection with a joint patrol in the Pacific Ocean. Nine of the naval vessels were involved in a joint exercise in the Sea of Japan between July 18 and 23, the ministry said. The Chinese and Russian vessels -- destroyers, frigates and supply ships -- were located about 200 kilometers southwest of Rebun Island in Hokkaido around 3 p.m. Friday and had moved eastward through the strait by Saturday, according to the ministry.
3:05 a.m. African leaders press Russian President Vladimir Putin to move ahead with their peace plan to end the Ukraine conflict and to renew a deal on the safe wartime export of Ukrainian grain that Moscow tore up last week, reports Reuters.
"This war must end. And it can only end on the basis of justice and reason," African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat told Putin and African leaders at the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg.
"The disruptions of energy and grain supplies must end immediately. The grain deal must be extended for the benefit of all the peoples of the world, Africans in particular."
12:32 a.m. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal says that Qatar will provide Ukraine with $100 million in humanitarian aid to support health, education and demining, reports Reuters.
For earlier updates, click here.
