Here are the key events on day 1,265 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is how things stand on Tuesday, August 12:
Fighting
- Two ambulance workers were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on Horlivka, in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, Russian-installed administrator Ivan Prikhodko said in a post on Telegram. The driver of the ambulance was also in a serious condition, Prikhodko said.
- Russian forces launched dozens of attacks on Ukraine’s Kherson region, killing four people and injuring seven, regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said in a post on Telegram. Two apartment buildings and 30 houses were damaged, he added.
- Russian forces killed two civilians and injured 11 in the Donetsk region on Sunday, Governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram.
- A Russian attack killed a man and injured two women in the village of Kupiansk-Vuzlovy, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said in a post on Telegram.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian forces “used more than a thousand aerial bombs and nearly 1,400 attack drones against Ukraine” in the past week. The latest figures show that Russia is continuing its intense bombardment of the country after carrying out a record 6,297 drone attacks on Ukraine in July.
- Russian forces occupied the village of Zatyshok, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group DeepState reported.
Ceasefire talks
- Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Ryabkov said that Moscow hopes the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday will give “impulse to the normalisation of bilateral relations” between the two countries, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reports.
- Speaking to journalists on Monday about the upcoming meeting, Trump again said that “there’ll be some swapping, there’ll be some changes in land” discussed, but that he will also tell Putin: “You’ve got to end this war.”
- Asked if Zelenskyy would be invited to the talks, Trump said: “He wasn’t part of it… I would say he could go, but he’s gone to a lot of meetings. He’s been there for three and a half years, and nothing happened.”
- NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told US broadcaster ABC on Sunday that “when it comes to this whole issue of territory, when it comes to acknowledging, for example, maybe in a future deal that Russia is controlling de facto, factually, some of the territory of Ukraine, it has to be effectual recognition, and not a political de jure recognition.”
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that French, United Kingdom and other European leaders, as well as EU and NATO chiefs, will discuss “further options to exert pressure on Russia”, and the “preparation of possible peace negotiations and related issues of territorial claims and security”, at virtual talks on Wednesday.
Sanctions
- The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said that the bloc is working on “more sanctions against Russia, more military support for Ukraine and more support for Ukraine’s budgetary needs and accession process to join the EU”, after European foreign ministers held emergency talks on Monday before the Trump-Putin meeting on Friday.
- The European Commission said it received 1.6 billion euros ($1.86bn) “in so-called windfall profits” from interest on “immobilised assets of the Russian Central Bank” in the first half of 2025, and that 95 percent of the funds will be used to support Ukraine through the Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism (ULCM).
Politics and diplomacy
- Trump will hold talks with European leaders and Zelenskyy on Wednesday, the European Commission press office told the Kyiv Independent media outlet.
- Zelenskyy said he held calls with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.