This is where the war stands on Thursday, July 18, 2024:

Fighting

• Explosions rang out over Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as air defences downed a Russian drone over the city. The falling debris did not cause any damage, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
• At least one person was killed and eight others wounded in Ukrainian shelling and drone attacks on Russian-occupied Kherson in southern Ukraine, the area’s Moscow-backed governor said.
• In Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, authorities said a Ukrainian drone hit a passenger car and killed a young couple.
• Russia and Ukraine released a total of 190 captured soldiers in their third such swap over the past seven weeks. Each side freed 95 prisoners of war following talks mediated by the United Arab Emirates.
• Officials in Ukraine’s Kharkiv announced plans to build a series of schools underground to protect children amid near-daily Russian attacks on the northeastern city.
• The Kremlin denied that a major ground offensive in Ukraine’s Kharkiv had failed after Russian officials said they would seal off Russian border villages to protect civilians from Ukrainian shelling.

Military aid

• Germany plans to halve its military aid to Ukraine next year, the Reuters news agency reported, despite concerns that support from the United States for Kyiv could potentially diminish if Republican candidate Donald Trump returns to the White House. The agency, citing a draft of Germany’s 2025 budget, said German aid to Ukraine will be cut to 4 billion euros ($4.35bn) in 2025 from around 8 billion euros in 2024.

Politics and diplomacy

• The European Parliament condemned Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, stressing that he did not represent the European Union while on the trip.
• Russia is ready to work with any US leader willing to engage in “equitable, mutually respectful dialogue”, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, while welcoming the stance on Ukraine of US Republican vice presidential candidate, JD Vance.
• NATO appointed British official Patrick Turner as its senior representative in Ukraine. Turner had held senior posts inside the alliance.
• Estonia and Lithuania said on Wednesday they would no longer allow Belarus-registered cars to enter through checkpoints on their borders with Russia or Belarus, citing EU sanctions against the country.