Here are the key events on day 1,288 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 4 Sep 2025
Here is how things stand on Thursday, September 4:
Fighting
- Russian forces launched 408 attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, killing a 62-year-old man in the Polohy district, Regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
- A man was killed in a Russian attack on the Khmelnytskyi region in western Ukraine, the region’s governor, Serhii Tiurin, said.
- Russian attacks injured at least 35 people across Ukraine on Wednesday, including 14 people in the Donetsk area and 14 people in the Kherson region, local officials said, according to the Kyiv Independent news outlet.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that its forces shot down 170 Ukrainian drones, five guided aerial bombs and two rockets in a 24-hour period, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
- Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 430 Russian drones and 21 missiles, the Kyiv Independent reported.
- A Ukrainian drone attack killed a 52-year-old man in the village of Belitsa, in Russia’s Kursk region, the region’s governor, Alexander Khinshtein, said.
- A Russian drone attack in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region left nearly 30,000 homes without power, Governor Viacheslav Chaus said.
- Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed its troops have captured “about half” of the city of Kupiansk in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. Ukraine’s 10th Army Corps rejected that claim in a post on Telegram, saying: “All such attempts by the Russian occupiers to use localities as a decoration for propaganda videos are doomed to fail.”
Peace deal
- Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was open to meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Russian soil: “Donald [Trump] asked me for such a meeting, I said: ‘Yes, it’s possible, let Zelenskyy come to Moscow’,” Putin said in Beijing on Wednesday.
- Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha responded to Putin’s invitation, saying the Russian leader “continues to mess around” by “making knowingly unacceptable proposals”.
- Putin made his offer even though he knows there are “serious proposals” from seven countries to host a meeting between the two leaders, which Zelenskyy was ready for at “any point in time”, Sybiha said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said that “preparatory work” on post-war security guarantees for Ukraine was complete, and that European allies are “ready” to offer such guarantees “the day a peace deal is signed” with Russia.
Macron hosted Zelenskyy at the Elysee Palace in Paris on the eve of a meeting of leaders of the “coalition of the willing” group of nations that support Kyiv.
Regional security
- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would continue to “fully support” Russia and its army as a “fraternal duty” of its defence treaty with Moscow, the country’s state media KCNA reported on Thursday.
- President Donald Trump said the United States could increase its troop presence in Poland and pledged to secure the country’s defence during a White House meeting with its conservative nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki.
