Ukraine says Russia launched 479 drones in war's biggest overnight bombardment
Russia launched 479 drones at Ukraine in the war's biggest overnight drone bombardment, the Ukrainian air force said on Monday.
Apart from drones, 20 missiles of various types were fired at different parts of Ukraine, according to the air force, which said the barrage targeted mainly central and western areas of Ukraine.
Ukraine's air defences destroyed 277 drones and 19 missiles in mid-flight, an air force statement said, claiming that only 10 drones or missiles hit their target.
It was not possible to independently verify the claim.
Russia's aerial attacks usually start late in the evening and end in the morning, because drones are harder to spot in the dark.
Russia has relentlessly battered civilian areas of Ukraine with Shahed drones during the more than three-year war. The attacks have killed more that 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations.
Russia says it targets only military targets.
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Los Angeles Times
3 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Russia launches another large-scale drone and missile attack on Ukraine, killing 3 and wounding 13
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia attacked two Ukrainian cities with waves of drones and missiles early Tuesday, killing three people and wounding at least 13 in what President Volodymyr Zelensky called 'one of the biggest' strikes in the 3-year-old war. The attack struck Kyiv and the southern port city of Odesa. In an online statement, Zelensky said that Moscow's forces fired over 315 drones, most of them Shaheds, and seven missiles overnight. 'Russian missile and Shahed strikes are louder than the efforts of the United States and others around the world to force Russia into peace,' Zelensky wrote, urging 'concrete action' from the U.S. and Europe in response to the attack. A maternity hospital and residential buildings in the southern port of Odesa were damaged in the attack, regional head Oleh Kiper said. Two people were killed and nine injured, according to the regional prosecutor's office. Another person was killed in Kyiv's Obolonskyi district, regional head Tymur Tkachenko wrote on Telegram. 'Russian strikes are once again hitting not military targets but the lives of ordinary people. This once again shows the true nature of what we are dealing with,' he said. Explosions and the buzzing of drones were heard around the city for hours. The fresh attacks came a day after Moscow launched almost 500 drones at Ukraine in the biggest overnight drone bombardment of the war. Ukrainian and Western officials have been anticipating Moscow's response to Kyiv's audacious June 1 drone attack on distant Russian air bases. Russia has been launching a record number of drones and missiles in recent days, despite both sides trading memoranda at direct peace talks in Istanbul on June 2 that set out conditions for a potential ceasefire. However, the inclusion of clauses that both sides see as nonstarters make any quick deal unlikely, and a ceasefire, long sought by Kyiv, remains elusive. The only tangible outcome of the talks has been the exchange of prisoners of war, with a swap that began Monday for soldiers aged between 18 and 25. Russia's Defense Ministry said Tuesday it had received a second group of exchanged soldiers as part of the deal. Amina Ivanchenko was reunited Monday with her husband, a POW for 18 months, in the release of an initial group of Ukrainian soldiers. She said was grateful to Ukrainian officials for supporting her. 'My struggle was much easier thanks to them. Our country will definitely return everyone. Glory to Ukraine! Thank you!' Anastasia Nahorna waited in the Chernyhiv region to see if her husband, who has been missing for eight months, was among those being released in the latest swap. 'This pain is more unbearable every day,' she said. 'I really want to hear some news, because since the moment of his disappearance, unfortunately, there has been no information. Is he alive? or maybe in captivity? Has someone seen him?' she asked. Anna Rodionova, the wife of another Ukrainian POW, also was waiting. 'I just want him to come back soon and for this to all be over,' she said. 'We are tired of waiting, we come every exchange and he is not there.' A similar exchange was announced for the bodies of fallen soldiers held by both sides, although no schedule has been released. Asked to comment on the exchange of dead, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was unclear when it could take place and how many bodies Ukraine would hand over. He again accused Kyiv of dragging its feet on the exchange. 'There is one unarguable fact, we have had trucks with bodies standing ready for it on the border for several days,' he told reporters. Plumes of smoke rose in Kyiv as air defense forces worked to shoot down drones and missiles Tuesday. Viktoriia Melnyk, 30, vented her anger at the Russians after her building in the Obolonskyi district was struck by a drone. 'I want them to leave our territory, to leave us alone, to leave our families alone,' she said. 'Small children are dying. This is not normal. It's not normal that (the world) is turning away. This is not normal for the 21st century.' Mariia Pachapynska, the 26-year-old manager at a T-shirt company in the Obolonskiy district that produces T-shirts, decried that her facility was struck. 'There were military facilities here,' she said, noting that 'everything and half of me, half of my soul, burned down.' Seven out of 10 districts were damaged in the attack, according to Maryna Kotsupii of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, adding that 16-story and 25-story residential buildings were hit. Residents took shelter and slept in metro stations during the long attack, including Nina Nosivets, 32, and her 8-month-old son, Levko. 'I just try not to think about all this, silently curled up like a mouse, wait until it all passes, the attacks. Distract the child somehow because it's probably the hardest thing for him to bear,' she said. Krystyna Semak, 37, said she was scared by the explosions and ran to the metro at 2 a.m., carrying a rug. Fires broke out in at least four Kyiv districts after debris from downed drones fell onto residential buildings and warehouses, according to the Kyiv City Military Administration. 'I was lying in bed, as always hoping that these Shaheds would fly past me, and I heard that Shahed (that hit the house),' said Vasyl Pesenko, 25, standing in his damaged kitchen. 'I thought that it would fly away, but it flew closer and closer and everything blew away.' The attack sparked 19 fires across Ukraine, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote on Telegram. 'Russia must answer for every crime it commits. Until there is justice, there will be no security. For Ukraine. And for the world,' he said. The Russian Defense Ministry said an attack early Tuesday targeted arms plants in Kyiv, as well as military headquarters, troop locations, air bases and arms depots across Ukraine. 'The goals of the strikes have been achieved, all the designated targets have been hit,' it said in a statement. The death toll rose Tuesday from previous Russian strikes. In Kharkiv, rescuers found a body in the rubble of a building that was hit Saturday, Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram. The discovery brought the number of dead there to five, with five others potentially under the debris, Terekhov said. In the northern city of Sumy, a 17-year-old boy died of his injuries Tuesday after a June 3 attack, acting Mayor Artem Kobzar wrote on Telegram, bringing the number killed to six. The Russian Defense Ministry reported downing 102 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow illegally annexed from Kyiv in 2014. The drones were downed both over regions on the border and deeper inside Russia, including central Moscow and Leningrad regions, according to the Defense Ministry. Flights were temporarily restricted at multiple Russian airports, including all four in Moscow and the Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg, the country's second-largest city. Stepanenko and Kullab write for the Associated Press. AP Journalist Illia Novikov contributed to this report.
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Map Shows Russia's Plan to Seize Half of Ukraine
Russia said it forces are pushing into a new Ukrainian regions that it has not occupied before. It comes days after a Kyiv official warned Moscow wants to seize half of Ukraine by the end of next year, as a map by Newsweek illustrates these claims. Russia's defense ministry and Kremlin officials said Monday their troops had penetrated the border between the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts, which follow unconfirmed reports that Russian forces had also entered the Sumy region. Last week, Ukrainian Presidential Office Deputy Head Colonel Pavlo Palisa had presented a map he said showed Russia's aims to capture the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by September 1 and the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions by the end of 2026. Newsweek has contacted the Ukrainian and Russian defense ministries for comment. In September 2022, Vladimir Putin claimed Russia had annexed the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia which Moscow does not fully control. The map Palisa showed reporters shows what Kyiv has framed as what could happen in the next 18 months if Putin is not stopped. That map combined with Moscow's current messaging about its latest operation point to the Kremlin's wider territorial ambitions in Ukraine which go further than the demands for negotiations which President Donald Trump is trying to broker. The Russian MoD said its 90th Tank Division had reached the western border of Donetsk Oblast and were developing an offensive in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast which if confirmed, marks a move into a new region Moscow had not declared as annexed. Former president Dmitry Medvedev referred to the operation as part of the "new realities on the ground" a phrase used by Kremlin officials describing the frontline implying what Ukraine must concede as part of negotiations to end the war. Russian military bloggers said Moscow's troops had reached the Donetsk-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border, northwest of Horikhove, but the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said as of Monday it had not observed geolocated evidence of these claims. Videos circulating online on Monday claimed to show Russian troops crossing into the Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Meanwhile, Russian forces also continued offensive operations in Sumy Oblast, another region which was not among those Moscow claims to occupy. Russian milbloggers said that Russian forces had made advances north of Sumy City but these claims have also not been confirmed, the ISW said. Further Russian operations point to Putin's expansionist plans which Palisa last week outlined to reporters. Palisa from Ukraine's presidential office said last week Russia intends to capture all of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by September 1 and create a buffer zone along the northern border between Ukraine and Russia by the end of 2025. Palisa added that Russia wants to occupy the east (left) bank of the Dnieper River and capture the regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv by the end of next year in a move which would deprive Ukraine of access to the Black Sea. The ISW published a version of the map Palisa presented, which showed plans to seize roughly 85,000 additional square miles of territory and hold 129,000 square miles by the end of 2026—over half the total area of Ukraine. Ukrainian Presidential Office Deputy Head Colonel Pavlo Palisa said that Russia wants "to occupy the whole part of Ukraine on the left bank of the Dnieper River," as well as seize "the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions to cut Ukraine's access to the Black Sea." Elina Beketova, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told Newsweek: "At this point, Ukrainians know that if they don't take action —if they hesitate or do nothing—Russia will simply advance. The fear isn't just about escalation; it's about survival." Analysts have predicted that Moscow will look to intensify its offensives to build pressure during peace negotiations, but will be unable to sustain this pressure indefinitely and could struggle to keep up the pace into 2026. Jack Watling, an analyst with the RUSI think tank, wrote in May that Russia might test Ukrainian defenses in Sumy and Zaporizhzhia but Moscow's main effort this summer will again be against the Donetsk towns of Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk. Related Articles Russia Setting Up to 'Test' NATO in Baltics: German IntelligenceRussia Won't End Ukraine War Until NATO 'Pulls Out' of Baltics: MoscowUkraine's F-16 Took Down Russian Fighter Jet in 'Historic First': ReportPutin's War Machine Dealt a Double Blow by Kyiv 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Russian aerial attack on Ukraine leaves at least 3 dead
Officials in Ukraine confirmed Tuesday that Russia attacked in four different places overnight with drones and missiles, leaving several dead and injured. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted to X Tuesday that the cities of Kyiv and Odessa were struck by missiles and drones, as were places in the Dnipro and Chernihiv regions. Zelenskyy said that 315 drones were used, as were seven missiles, two of which he claimed were North Korean-made ballistic weapons. Homes and areas of infrastructure were damaged, and in Odessa a hospital was allegedly targeted. Thirteen people were injured, and there were fatalities, Zelensky said. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram Tuesday that the two people were killed and four injured in Odessa 'as a result of a night attack on the city.' He further stated that a hospital was targeted there in a series of posts that described several drone strikes. Tuesday evening Klitschko described the drones as they attacked, which left residential buildings damaged and burnt by fires ignited during the strikes. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine also reported Wednesday that a woman was found dead under the rubble from a damaged domicile. The Ukrainian Air Force posted to Telegram Tuesday that Russia used 322 types of weaponry during their air assault, including 315 Shahed drones, five Iskander cruise missiles and two KN-23 ballistic missiles. Despite all the reports of destruction, the air force said in the same post that much of the attack was repelled with the use of anti-aircraft missiles, aviation, its electronic warfare units, drones and mobile fire groups from the Defense Forces of Ukraine. The Air Force data, which was confirmed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, noted that 284 item launched by Russia were eliminated, with 220 shot down and 64 that failed to reach their targets. Ukrainian Culture Minister Mykola Tochytskyi posted to Facebook Tuesday that a vital landmark in Kyiv, the Sofia Cathedral, was damaged by an 'explosive wave' that he claims, 'caused the destruction of the cornice on the main apse of the monument of national importance.' 'This temple of the [eleventh] century is the soul of all Ukraine,' Tochytskyi added. He also said the Odessa Film Studio, 'the place where Ukrainian cinema was made,' was struck, leaving several portions of the studio damaged. Tochytskyi further said that the attack 'completely destroyed decorations to the movie Dovzhenko a national project about the most famous Ukrainian director.' 'Russia is not only at war with our cities, it is waging a war against our culture, memory, future,' Tochytskyi concluded. Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
