This is where the war stands on Tuesday, July 23, 2024:

Fighting

• Russia downed 25 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Ministry of Defence in Moscow said on Tuesday. At least 21 UAVs were “intercepted and destroyed” in Crimea, two over the Bryansk region, and another two over the Belgorod region.
• Russia also said that it shot down 85 Ukrainian drones the previous day, including 47 in the region of Rostov. Authorities in the Russian Black Sea town of Tuapse in the Krasnodar region said that debris from one downed drone sparked a fire at an oil refinery and killed one person.
• Russia has announced that starting Tuesday, it will restrict entry to 14 areas in Belgorod, which have been subject to heavy attacks. The move is seen as part of the Kremlin’s strategy to set up a so-called border buffer zone.
• Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the restrictions will apply to the localities “where the pertaining operational situation is extremely difficult”, according to the Interfax news agency. Under the new order, checkpoints are to be set up outside the localities, public transport is barred, and anyone wishing to visit must advise local authorities in advance.
• A Japanese national died last month fighting for Russia against Ukraine, according to a government spokesman in Tokyo. Japanese national broadcaster NHK identified the man as a 29-year-old former soldier who left Japan in November and was killed in a blast in Donetsk. A handful of Japanese nationals are also known to have volunteered to fight for Ukraine against Russia.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is visiting China for talks on how Beijing might help end the war with Russia, whose ties with Beijing have grown stronger since the conflict began. Kuleba’s visit, which will run to Friday, is his first to China since the outbreak of the war in February 2022.

• Hungary and Slovakia have asked the European Commission to mediate a consultation procedure with Ukraine, after Kyiv placed Russia’s Lukoil Oil Company on its sanctions list, stopping crude supplies to the two EU countries. Hungary receives 2 million metric tonnes of oil from Russia’s largest private oil company annually. Slovakia imported Russian fossil fuels worth an estimated $351m in April 2024, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

• A Russian court sentenced US-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva to more than six years in prison for violating strict military censorship laws.  Her employer, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, slammed the ruling as a “mockery of justice”. Kurmasheva, 47, was arrested while visiting her sick mother in Kazan.

• The EU will hold its August 28-30 meeting of foreign and defence ministers in Brussels instead of Budapest in a “symbolic” slapdown to Hungary for its rogue diplomacy on Ukraine, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.
• Several thousand mourners attended the funeral in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv for former lawmaker Iryna Farion, who was fatally shot in the street by an unknown assailant. Farion was best known for her campaigns to promote the use of the Ukrainian language.

Economy

• Kyiv has announced that it has struck a preliminary deal with international creditors to restructure government debt worth more than $20bn, giving the war-torn country some financial breathing room. A deal to freeze repayments on a series of international bonds was set to end on August 1.

• Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz is planning to increase oil and gas production this year, despite the constant threat of Russian bombardments, CEO Oleksiy Chernyshov said. The company plans to produce 15 billion cubic metres of natural gas and 2 million tonnes of oil in 2024.

• The volume of semiconductors and other restricted goods shipped through China and Hong Kong to fuel Russia’s war effort fell by a fifth this year, previously undisclosed US Department of Commerce data shows. However, Hong Kong remains a global sanctions evasion hotspot, according to the Reuters news agency.

Source

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Al Jazeera and news agencies