Here is how things stand on Tuesday, August 26:

Fighting

• An 82-year-old woman was killed and three people were injured in a Russian attack on Kupiansk city, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
• Russian attacks killed one person and injured three others in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Governor Vadym Filashkin said.
• Russian drones and artillery fire injured a rescue worker and damaged a fire truck in the Nikopol region of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, according to Governor Serhiy Lysak.
• A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and injured two others in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported.
• TASS also reported that Russian forces shot down 151 Ukrainian drones and four aerial bombs, and destroyed two missile launchers, in one day.
• One person was killed and two others injured in Ukrainian attacks on the Russian-occupied Ukrainian Kherson region, the Russian-appointed governor, Vladimir Saldo, wrote in a post on Telegram.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces captured the settlement of Zaporizke in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.

Peace talks

• Germany will take part in providing security guarantees for Ukraine alongside European partners, but the talks are at an early stage and must be shaped by Kyiv, German Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil said on Monday, while visiting the Ukrainian capital.
• Asked why Russia President Vladimir Putin appears reluctant to sit down for peace talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, US President Donald Trump told reporters it is “because he doesn’t like him”.
• “The one I thought would be the easiest, frankly, was Russia and Ukraine. But it turns out there are some big personality conflicts,” Trump said.
• Putin spoke on the phone with Iranian leader Masoud Pezeshkian and discussed his meeting with Trump in Alaska, the Kremlin press service said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
• “Masoud Pezeshkian expressed support for the ongoing diplomatic efforts aimed at a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis,” the Kremlin said.

Ukraine aid

• Speaking at a news conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine aims to raise “no less than $1bn every month”, towards buying weapons from the United States to be used in the war.
• Polish President Karol Nawrocki vetoed a bill that would have extended financial support to Ukrainian refugees, potentially also jeopardising Ukraine’s use of Starlink, according to Polish Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski.
• “This is the end of the Starlink Internet, which Poland provides to Ukraine, which is waging war. This is also the end of support for storing Ukrainian administration data in a safe place,” Gawkowski, who is from a different political party than Nawrocki, wrote on X. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.