Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,268

Here is how things stand on Friday, August 15:

Ukrainian drones struck two Russian cities in attacks that injured at least 16 people, local authorities said.
Thirteen people were wounded, two seriously, when a drone struck an apartment building in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, and three civilians were wounded in the city of Belgorod near the border with Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military said its drones hit a Russian refinery in the Volgograd region overnight, causing huge fires.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said Russian forces captured the settlements of Shcherbynivka and Andriivka-Klevtsove in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Ukrainian troops have stabilised an area of eastern Ukraine where Russian forces had made a sudden push this week to pierce Ukrainian defences, the Donetsk region’s Governor Vadym Filashkin said.
Ukraine said small groups of Russian infantry had thrust some 10 kilometres (six miles) towards its main defensive line near the town of Dobropillia, raising fears of a wider breakthrough on the front line that would further threaten key Ukrainian cities.
The Russian advance, coming as United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are due to meet in Alaska on Friday, appears aimed at pressuring Kyiv to give up land in return for peace with Russia, observers said.

Trump said he believes Putin is ready to end his war in Ukraine, speaking on the eve of Friday’s summit between the two leaders in the city of Anchorage, but a peace deal would likely require at least a second meeting involving Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump and Putin will meet face-to-face on Friday before holding a joint news conference, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.
Trump will go into talks with Putin hoping to achieve a halt to the fighting in Ukraine, but a solution to the war will take longer, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
Putin said the US was making “sincere efforts” to halt the war in Ukraine and suggested Moscow and Washington could agree on a nuclear arms deal as part of a wider effort to strengthen peace.
Putin said “in order to create long-term conditions for peace between our countries, and in Europe, and in the world as a whole”, there could be agreements reached “in the area of control over strategic offensive weapons”.
The Kremlin warned it would be a big mistake to predict the outcome of the upcoming summit, the state-run Interfax news agency reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were no plans to sign any documents following the summit.
The talks in Alaska between Trump and Putin present a viable chance to make progress on ending the war in Ukraine, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said in a statement.

Zelenskyy said he had a detailed discussion on possible security guarantees for Ukraine during a “productive meeting” with the United Kingdom’s Starmer.
Zelenskyy said Kyiv had so far secured $1.5bn from its European allies to buy US weapons as part of a mechanism – the NATO Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List initiative – that he said “truly strengthens our defence”.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump expressed a willingness to European leaders on Wednesday that the US and other allies should be part of giving Ukraine security guarantees to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) did not monitor the uses of 5,175 Starlink terminals sent to Ukraine, with nearly half of the operational units ending up in areas fully or partly held by Moscow, according to a report by the agency’s internal watchdog.

The United Arab Emirates has successfully mediated a new exchange of captives between Russia and Ukraine. Some 84 captives were released from each side, bringing the total number exchanged through UAE mediation to 4,349.
Ukraine brought home 84 prisoners of war that included 51 civilians, Ukrainian officials said, at least one of whom had been held for more than a decade.

Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during an official visit to Pyongyang, the Russian parliament said. Volodin, a close ally of Putin, conveyed greetings from the Russian leader and thanked Kim for North Korea’s support of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko ordered a review of all licences to mine strategic minerals in the country, as part of a broader effort to help the war-ravaged economy and secure new investments under a minerals deal with the US.