Russian troops surge toward Kostiantynivka; Moscow’s culture minister visits Pyongyang. What we know on day 1,222

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Ukraine’s top commander said on Saturday his forces faced a new onslaught against a key city on the eastern front of its war against Russia , while Moscow said it was making progress in another sector farther south-west. Russian troops are focused on capturing all of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine and the city of Kostiantynivka has been a major target. Ukrainian forces have for months defended the city against fierce assaults.

Top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, writing on Telegram, said the area around Kostiantynivka was gripped by heavy fighting. “The enemy is surging towards Kostiantynivka, but apart from sustaining numerous losses, has achieved nothing,” Syrskyi said. “The aggressor is trying to break through our defences and advance along three operating sectors.”

Russia’s defence ministry, in a report earlier in the day, said Moscow’s forces had seized the village of Chervona Zirka – further south-west, near the administrative border of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia’s slow advance through eastern Ukraine, with Moscow claiming a string of villages day after day, has resulted in destruction of major cities and infrastructure.

Meanwhile Russia’s culture minister, Olga Lyubimova, arrived in North Korea on Saturday with a 125-strong delegation of performers . Lyubimova, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said that thanks to agreements clinched between Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un, “cooperation in the cultural sphere between our countries has reached unprecedented heights”. She said a series of concerts and lectures would take place in the North Korean capital in the coming days.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow and Pyongyang have drawn closer together, with the two leaders signing a treaty, including a mutual defence pact. After months of silence, North Korea and Russia disclosed the deployment of North Korean troops and the role they played in Moscow’s offensive to evict Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region.

Moscow has insisted that progress towards a settlement of the war depends on Ukraine recognising Moscow’s control over four Ukrainian regions : Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Russian forces control about one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory, but they do not fully hold any of the four regions.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said it is “extremely important” for Kyiv to maintain friendly ties with neighbouring Poland , where the incoming nationalist leader Karol Nawrocki opposes Ukraine’s Nato bid. Nawrocki won Poland’s presidential election this month after a campaign in which he criticised Ukraine and accused Zelenskyy of “indecent” behaviour towards his allies. Poland is one of Ukraine’s closest allies and has served as a crucial logistics hub for western military aid to help Kyiv’s war effort against Russia’s now more than three-year-long invasion.

Zelenskyy hosted outgoing Polish president Andrzej Duda in Kyiv on Saturday, ahead of Nawrocki’s inauguration on 6 August. “Poland is now preparing for the inauguration of its new president, (Karol) Nawrocki,” Zelenskyy told reporters alongside Duda. “We will do everything in our power to ensure that relations between our countries only grow stronger.” Poland has taken in more than a million Ukrainians since Russia’s invasion of the country began in 2022. But anti-Ukrainian sentiment has grown in recent years.