Europe and Central Asia Overview: August 2025

Armenia-Azerbaijan: Hopes of a peace treaty grow after leaders’ meeting

On 10 July, the prime minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, and Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, met in Abu Dhabi for their first direct talks. All prior contact between the two leaders had been mediated by Russia and the European Union. The two sides’ readouts¹ did not go beyond a commitment to build confidence. The negotiations come months after Armenia and Azerbaijan announced they had finalized a draft agreement on normalizing relations in March. Notably, though, while that announcement coincided with a spike in allegations of gunfire along their borders, ACLED records no such ceasefire violations in either country in July. This may have been the result of keeping tensions in check to facilitate the agreement.

However, several key stumbling blocks to ongoing talks still remain. Azerbaijan demands that Armenia amend its constitution to remove references to Artsakh, while Armenia resists ceding control over a land link between Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave via its territory, also known as the Zangezur Corridor.² Shortly before and after the Abu Dhabi meeting, reports emerged about a United States proposal to grant control over the route to a private contractor,³ suggesting the potential for a compromise on that issue. Per the 2020 ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russia’s Federal Security was to control the route.⁴ However, Moscow’s influence in the region has since waned, and its relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan have soured,⁵ while Iran, which shares a border with Armenia in the area of the putative route, is weakened after the recent war with Israel and the US. 

Europe: Anti-migration demonstrations gain momentum 

Criminal incidents involving people believed to have migrant backgrounds galvanized anti-migration mobilization across the region in July. Notable demonstration outbreaks took place in Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. 

In Poland, the murder of a Polish woman in June by a Latin American suspect stirred a wave of anti-migration demonstrations. ACLED records at least 79 rallies in July, most led by the nationalist Confederation Liberty and Independence party and supported by football fans. Of these, 59 demonstrations occurred on 19 July as part of nationwide marches against migration. At times, they were met by counter-demonstrations denouncing far-right ideology and xenophobia. The demonstrations have built on already heightened anti-migrant discourse in the country. The recent presidential campaign featured securitized narratives on migration as attitudes toward foreigners increasingly harden, including against Ukrainian refugees.⁶ In addition, groups calling themselves “civic patrols” have emerged along the Polish border with Germany in response to the return of failed asylum seekers⁷ since the reintroduction of controls on the German side in September 2024.⁸ 

In Spain, an assault by a group of youths of North African origin on an elderly man in Torre Pacheco, Murcia, triggered week-long riots. Far-right social media users fanned the flames by sharing videos of past incidents, which were also amplified by local and regional far-right Vox party politicians.⁹ On 11 July, after a peaceful protest organized by the Torre Pacheco municipality, far-right groups assaulted people with migrant backgrounds and vandalized vehicles. Over the following two nights, mobs armed with bats clashed with youths of North African descent in the San Antonio neighborhood of Torre Pacheco, which has a majority migrant population. On 14 July, overnight, dozens of youths of North African descent demonstrated in the neighbourhood. Some of them built barricades and threw glass bottles at police, who responded with rubber bullets. Over the following three days, far-right groups demonstrated in Torre Pacheco, although the turnout was lower amid heightened police presence. Meanwhile, counter-demonstrations opposing xenophobic violence were held across Spain, in particular in Zaragoza, Madrid, Barcelona, and Badajoz. Additionally, at the height of tensions, a suspected arson attack destroyed a mosque in Piera, Catalonia. 

In the UK, sexual offence charges brought against an asylum seeker poured fuel on simmering tensions among local residents, migrants, and pro-migration activists in Epping, Essex. Throughout July, ACLED records five demonstrations outside a hotel in Epping that housed the alleged perpetrator, along with other asylum seekers. Two rallies turned violent when anti-migration demonstrators clashed with counter-demonstrators and police. Anti-migration gatherings and counter-demonstrations also occurred at 10 other hotels housing migrants across England and one in Wales. The demonstrations come a month after Northern Ireland witnessed a bout of anti-migration rioting in June.

Russia: Ukrainian drone attacks escalate, disrupting aerial and rail traffic

In July, Ukrainian forces ramped up drone, missile, and artillery attacks on Russian soil. In comparison to June, ACLED records a more than 20% increase in the overall number of attacks (from 1,167 to over 1,400), including a 75% increase in strikes occurring outside of Russia’s border regions. Alongside the increase in strikes, the nature of targets also shifted. In June, the Ukrainian military prioritized military airfields, while in July, they mostly aimed to disrupt Russia’s increased drone production.¹⁰ Targets included defense contractors involved in the drone supply chain, such as producers of communications and navigation systems, as well as explosives. 

Ukraine’s increased deployment of drones in both border areas and further afield had a significant impact on Russia’s civilian population. This contributed to the 62% increase in the number of violent incidents involving civilians and more than doubled the civilian death toll, which increased from 19 people killed in June to 39 in July. At the same time, the strikes caused significant disruption to civilian transport networks by obstructing aerial and rail traffic. Ukrainian drone strikes forced airports across the country to introduce lengthy flight restrictions several times a week on average.¹¹ This also occurred in response to incidents first seen in May, which were timed with the arrival of foreign leaders to the Victory Day parade in Moscow. Furthermore, on 28 July, Belarusian and Ukrainian hackers destroyed the servers of Aeroflot, a major Russian airline.¹² In addition, Ukrainian drones targeted Russian railways, hitting stations, tracks, and bridges on 12 occasions. 

Ukraine: The civilian toll rises sharply as the battles increase to record levels 

Russia’s grinding offensive in eastern Ukraine went into overdrive in July. ACLED records over 2,600 battles — the highest number since Russia launched its all-out war in early 2022. Russian forces closed in on the towns of Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region and on Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. In addition, they advanced further toward the Dnipropetrovsk region. In a likely effort to stretch understaffed Ukrainian forces thin, Russia created additional hotspots in the border areas of the Kharkiv region and reactivated the frontline in the Zaporizhia region. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces launched counter-attacks north of Sumy city.

Alongside the increase in battles, Russia’s remote attacks on Ukrainian civilians increased by over a quarter to an all-time high of nearly 458. This led to 250 civilian deaths — the highest toll since September 2022. While most fighting was concentrated in the Donetsk region, only about a third of all civilian targeting incidents occurred there, while regions adjacent to the frontlines and borders with Russia bore the brunt of indiscriminate attacks. Kyiv city was subjected to over 30 long-range drone and missile strikes, more than at any point since March 2022, as Russia scaled up both the number of attacks and the number of projectiles, especially drones, used to carry them out.¹³ 

Politically, July was marked by a weeklong pause in US shipments of weapons and equipment to Ukraine,¹⁴ a NATO-US arrangement to purchase US arms for Ukraine,¹⁵ and a wave of protests within Ukraine denouncing an attempt to strip the country’s anti-corruption investigators and prosecutors of their independence. Russia-Ukraine talks held in Istanbul on 23 July lasted for less than an hour and again produced no results besides a commitment to conduct prisoner exchanges.¹⁶   

For more information, see the ACLED Ukraine Conflict Monitor.