United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned a Russian drone and missile attack against Ukraine this week that has been described as the largest such assault in the three-year war. In a statement on Saturday, Guterres's spokesperson said the Russian strikes "disrupted the power supply to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, once again underlining the ongoing risks to nuclear safety". "The secretary-general is alarmed by this dangerous escalation and the growing number of civilian casualties," the statement read. Ukrainian officials said Moscow fired more than 500 drones and 11 missiles at the capital Kyiv overnight into Friday in an attack that killed one person, injured at least 23 others and damaged buildings across the city. The sounds of air raid sirens, kamikaze drones and booming detonations reverberated until dawn.

Russia has intensified its use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian soldiers in a serious violation of international law, the Dutch and German intelligence agencies have said. On Friday, they said there was extensive evidence that Moscow's forces were using banned products, including the choking agent chloropicrin. Russia denies using the prohibited weapons, as does Ukraine. On Wednesday, Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, claimed that the Federal Security Service found a cache of Ukrainian weapons in the east of the country containing chloropicrin. "It is normalised and widespread. Chloropicrin is dropped by drones to drive soldiers out of trenches, and then kill them," Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans said in a post on X. Brekelmans, who is now calling for tougher sanctions against Russia, described the use of chemical weapons as "horrible and unacceptable".

Here are the key events on day 1,226 of Russia's war on Ukraine.Smoke is seen following what local authorities called a Ukrainian drone attack, in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Sergiyev Posad, outside Moscow, Russia July 4, 2025 [Head of the Sergiyev Posad municipal district Oksana Yerokhanova via Telegram/Handout via Reuters]Published On 4 Jul 20254 Jul 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that a phone call earlier in the day with Vladimir Putin resulted in no progress at all on efforts to end the war in Ukraine, while a Kremlin aide said the Russian president reiterated that Moscow would keep pushing to solve the conflict's "root causes." The two leaders did not discuss a recent pause in some U.S. weapons shipments to Kyiv during the nearly hourlong conversation, according to a readout provided by Putin aide Yuri Ushakov. U.S. attempts to end Russia's war in Ukraine through diplomacy have largely stalled, and Trump has faced growing calls -- including from some Republicans -- to increase pressure on Putin to negotiate in earnest. Within hours of the call's conclusion, an apparent Russian drone attack sparked a fire in an apartment building in a northern suburb of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said, indicating little change in the trajectory of the conflict.

A Ukrainian drone attack on an industrial plant in Izhevsk, in central Russia, killed three people and injured 35 others, regional Governor Alexander Brechalov said in a post on Telegram. The drone struck the Kupol Electromechanical Plant, which produces air defence systems and drones for the Russian military, an unnamed official with Ukraine's Security Service, the SBU, told the Associated Press news agency. A Russian attack on a vehicle evacuating civilians from Pokrovsk, in Ukraine's Donetsk region, killed one person and injured a policeman, police said. The Ministry of Defence in Moscow said that 60 Ukrainian drones were downed overnight over several regions, including 17 over Russian-occupied Crimea, 16 over Russia's Rostov region and four over Russia's Saratov region. Ukraine's Air Force said on Tuesday that Russia launched 52 Shahed and decoy drones at the country overnight.

A pro-Russia disinformation campaign is leveraging consumer artificial intelligence tools to fuel a "content explosion" focused on exacerbating existing tensions around global elections, Ukraine, and immigration, among other controversial issues, according to new research published last week. The campaign, known by many names including Operation Overload and Matryoshka (other researchers have also tied it to Storm-1679), has been operating since 2023 and has been aligned with the Russian government by multiple groups, including Microsoft and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. While the campaign targets audiences around the world, including in the US, its main target has been Ukraine. Hundreds of AI-manipulated videos from the campaign have tried to fuel pro-Russian narratives. The report outlines how, between September 2024 and May 2025, the amount of content being produced by those running the campaign has increased dramatically and is receiving millions of views around the world.

A Ukrainian drone attack at an industrial plant in central Russia has killed three people and injured 35 others, a Russian regional governor has said. Alexander Brechalov, head of the Udmurt Republic, said in a post on Telegram on Tuesday that the attack took place at a factory in Izhevsk city. Ten of the wounded were in a serious condition, he noted. There was no immediate official comment from Kyiv. But a Ukrainian security official confirmed the attack, telling the news agency Reuters that the Kupol plant had been hit, with a fire breaking out as a result.

The whistleblower confirmed to DER SPIEGEL that all Clothoff employees work in countries that used to belong to the Soviet Union. That is consistent with the fact that all of the company's internal communications that DER SPIEGEL has in its possession are completely in Russian, and the company's email service is also based in Russia. The four central players declined to respond to attempts by DER SPIEGEL to contact them for the story published in December 2024. A person named Elias did get in touch, however, claiming to be a spokesperson for the app. He said the four people mentioned above were unknown to him.

This is second Ukrainian drone attack on the Kupol factory since November - although that strike had not resulted in any casualties. For its part, Moscow continues to carry out attacks in Ukraine. At the weekend Russia launched a record 537 drones and missiles on various locations across the country, including Kyiv and the western city of Lviv. On Monday Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky granted the Hero of Ukraine award posthumously to an F-16 pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Ustymenko, who was killed while trying to repel the aerial attack. On the battlefield, while Russia's advance on the Sumy region seems to have stalled, Moscow appears to be targeting the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.

Russia launched its biggest aerial attack on Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion overnight on Sunday, firing a total of 537 aerial weapons, including 477 drones and decoys and 60 missiles, according to the Ukrainian air force. Ukrainian forces intercepted 475 of the weapons, but the military said F-16 pilot Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Ustimenko was killed "while repelling" the "massive enemy air attack". At least four others were also killed in the air raids, in Kherson, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Kostiantynivka regions, the Associated Press news agency reported, citing local officials. The aerial attacks were also far-reaching, targeting regions as far away as Lviv, in the far west, where a drone attack caused a large fire at an industrial facility in the city of Drohobych, and cut electricity to parts of the area. Poland said it scrambled aircraft, together with other NATO countries, to ensure the safety of Polish airspace during the attack.