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Russia hits ‘shipbuilding sites' in Kyiv

Russia hits ‘shipbuilding sites' in Kyiv

Yahoo10-06-2025
Russia hit military sites in Kyiv overnight including 'aviation, missile, armoured vehicle and ship-building facilities', its defence ministry claimed.
Kremlin officials said attacks on the Ukrainian capital struck command centres, troop deployment sites, weapon and equipment storage hubs, military airfield infrastructure, ammunition warehouses and fuel depots.
'All designated targets have been hit,' the defence ministry added. Kremlin-affiliated state media reported that attacks had also struck the Artem plant in Kyiv, a missile production facility.
Challenging Russia's claim, Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv's military administration, wrote on Telegram: 'Once again, Russian strikes are not hitting military targets, but the lives of ordinary people.'
Kyiv is home to only one major shipyard, the Kuznia na Rybalskomu facility, which produces vessels for the Ukrainian navy. Ukraine has not yet confirmed if it was hit during the Russian attacks.
An air alert for civilians remained active in the capital for five hours overnight as seven of the city's 10 districts fielded aggressive attacks which left residential buildings and a business centre smouldering.
Ukrainian officials said that one person was killed and four more injured in Kyiv, as Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that 'concrete action' was needed to prevent future attacks.
In the southern port city of Odesa, attacks on residential buildings and a maternity hospital left two people dead and nine wounded, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the regional military administration.
Thanks for following our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. It has now ended for the day.
Here's a reminder of what happened today:
Volodymyr Zelensky called on the United States and Europe to respond to a fresh bout of Russian attacks
The Telegraph's Senior Foreign Correspondent Memphis Barker described the intense sounds and smells of Russia's overnight bombardment on Kyiv
Ukraine's military intelligence chief claimed that Russia has agreed to help North Korea begin production of Shahed-style 'kamikaze' drones
Ukraine said it had exchanged captured soldiers with Russia, the second stage of an agreement struck at peace talks last week
We will be back with more updates and analysis soon.
The European Commission has proposed an 18th package of sanctions against Russia targeting its energy exports, financial institutions and military industry, with the aim of forcing Moscow to stop dragging its feet in negotiations.
The measures include proposals to lower the G7 price cap on Russian oil from $60 to $45 per barrel and tighten measures against the country's 'shadow fleet.'
Speaking at a joint press conference with Kaja Kallas on Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, called the sanctions 'robust' and 'hard-biting', adding 'our message is clear: This war must end.'
In May, European leaders threatened Moscow with 'massive' sanctions if it refused to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine.
The US plans to cut funding for a programme building new weapons for Ukraine, Pete Hegseth has said.
Mr Hegseth, the US defence secretary, suggested the move was an attempt to achieve a 'negotiated peaceful settlement' in the war, but did not specify how far the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (Usai) would be cut.
Under the programme, the Pentagon issues contracts to US defence firms to build equipment for Kyiv.
'We believe a negotiated peaceful settlement is in the best interests of both parties and our nation's interest, especially with all the competing interests around the globe,' Mr Hegseth told a congressional committee on Tuesday.
'I don't think the word victory has been well defined or the path to it. And as a result the path to peace that stops the killing and the carnage is something that president Trump is very invested in.'
Ukraine said it had exchanged captured soldiers with Russia, the second stage of an agreement struck at peace talks last week for each side to free more than 1,000 prisoners.
'We continue the return of our people, as agreed in Istanbul,' Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X, confirming the exchange without immediately disclosing the exact number of returnees.
'Today marks the first stage of the return of our injured and severely wounded warriors from Russian captivity. All of them require immediate medical attention. This is an important humanitarian act,' the Ukrainian president added.
Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of the Russian opposition party Yabloko, was arrested and charged with allegedly 'discrediting' Russia's armed forces on Tuesday after he made several remarks condemning the war in Ukraine, Reuters reports.
In January, Mr Shlosberg described the war as a game of 'bloody chess' and said 'we must first stop killing people.'
Members of the Yabloko party said that Mr Shlosberg's arrest was linked to these remarks, and that he faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
Mr Shlosberg was labelled a 'foreign agent' by Russia's Justice Ministry in 2023 and faces separate criminal charges for refusing to comply with this label.
Kyiv's St. Sophia Cathedral was damaged overnight in one of the largest Russian air attacks on the capital since the full-scale war began.
Officials said that a blast wave destroyed a cornice on the main apse of the cathedral, one of Kyiv's most iconic buildings which dates back to the early 11th century and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Mykola Tochytskyi, Ukraine's Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications, wrote on Facebook: 'Last night, the enemy struck at the very heart of our identity again.'
'St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, a shrine that has survived centuries and symbolises the birth of our statehood, has been damaged,' Mr Tochytskyi continued.
Russia launched one of its biggest air attacks on Kyiv overnight, officials said, using more than 300 drones and seven missiles in strikes that also hit other parts of the country.
One person was killed and several more injured in the five hour-long attack on the capital that hit seven of the city's 10 districts, according to Vitali Klitschko, Kyiv's mayor.
A Telegraph journalist was holed up in an air raid shelter and heard the buzzing of drones, followed by gunfire and loud explosions throughout the night.
In the southern port city of Odesa, a maternity hospital and residential buildings were also hit, killing two people and injuring nine, local authorities said.
Condemning the attacks, Andriy Yermak, Volodymyr Zelensky's chief of staff, said: 'You can't break Ukrainians with terror.'
It came a day after Moscow launched its biggest overnight drone bombardment of the three-year war, considered part of a retaliatory response to Ukraine's extraordinary June 1 drone attack on Russia's remote bomber bases.
'It is vital that the response to this and other similar Russian attacks is not silence from the world, but concrete action,' Mr Zelensky said this morning, adding that two of the missiles were North Korean-made.
In the aftermath of Ukraine's audacious 'Operation Spider's Web', which claimed as many as 41 of Russia's military jets in drone attacks on four airbases across the country last Sunday, Vladimir Putin vowed revenge, writes Lisa Haseldine.
Relaying his conversation with the Russian president in the attack's aftermath, Donald Trump said – without the slightest hint of alarm or condemnation – 'president Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields'.
Now, it appears that response has arrived. Overnight, Moscow launched its 'biggest overnight bombardment' of the war so far, according to Ukraine's air force, directing 479 drones and 20 missiles predominantly at the western and central parts of the country.
The attack reached as far west as Rivne, unnerving Poland – Ukraine's neighbour – to such a degree that it felt compelled to scramble its air force to patrol for stray missiles.
One woman was killed in Russia's huge combined overnight attack on the Ukrainian capital, announced Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv's military administration.'Once again, Russian strikes are not hitting military targets, but the lives of ordinary people. This once more shows the true essence of what we are dealing with,' Mr Tkachenko wrote on Telegram.This contradicts Russia's account of the attacks, which its defence ministry had claimed targeted military facilities.
The Kremlin has said that it is still in talks with Kyiv over an exchange of soldiers killed in the war.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said that refrigerated trailers containing the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers had been waiting at the border for 'several days', in a statement to Russian media on Tuesday. Mr Peskov claimed that Ukraine has not yet provided bodies for the exchange.
Moscow previously said that 1,000 bodies were to be handed over from its side. The exchange was agreed in Istanbul on June 2.
It comes after both sides exchanged seriously wounded soldiers and those under the age of 25 on Monday.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, said that Russia is 'too weak' to attack Nato countries, adding 'they're not even capable of defeating Ukraine.'
Mr Orban, who is regarded as Vladimir Putin's closest EU ally, also told French TV channel LCI, that the leaders of the Russian Federation 'only understand the language of force, so Europe must also take steps to make itself strong.' Earlier this month, Mr Orban said he would do everything possible to prevent Ukraine from joining the European Union, claiming that Ukraine will 'drain every euro, forint, and zloty that we have invested in supporting European families, farmers, and industry.'
Russian forces carried out strikes on military targets in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with high-precision weapons and drones overnight, its defence ministry said.
The air strikes on Kyiv, among the largest in over three years of war, were part of intensified bombardments that Moscow says are retaliation for attacks by Ukrainian forces on Russia.
Ukraine says the hours-long strikes hit civilian targets across the capital and at least four people were treated in hospital.
Russia has agreed to help North Korea begin production of Shahed-style 'kamikaze' drones, according to Ukraine's military intelligence chief.
Long-range kamikaze drones manufactured in North Korea could be used to help Russia strike Ukraine and potentially be used to strike South Korean targets, said Kyrylo Budanov in an interview with The War Zone.North Korea has supplied soldiers, artillery, drones and ballistic missiles to Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
I could smell burning from my room and social media footage taken from rooftops showed clouds of smoke across the city.
By 4.15am local time the attacks appeared to die down, after more than two hours of fairly constant assault.
Whether there was further damage will become clearer in the coming hours. But already, by 9am, the city was back into its stride: the roads busy with people heading to work.
Ukrainian overnight drone strikes forced a temporary suspension of flights in all airports serving Moscow and the country's second-largest city St Petersburg.
Russia destroyed a total of 102 Ukrainian drones overnight, its defence ministry - which reports only how many were downed, not the number Ukraine launched - said, reporting no damage.
Russia's civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia temporarily halted flights at all four major airports serving Moscow and St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport, as well as at airports in nine other cities to ensure safety.
Flights in Moscow and some other cities were restored by Tuesday morning, but restrictions were still in place in St. Petersburg at 5.30am BST.
From my hotel room in Kyiv, you could hear the sounds of a massive drone strike for much of the night.
First, the sour whine of a Shahed. Then the rattle of gunfire by Ukrainian air defences. Finally, all too often, a pounding explosion.
For days the capital had braced for Putin's threatened 'revenge' for Operation Spider's Web.
It appeared to arrive at around 2am, as the first of a steady flow of missiles swarmed over the city.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, had warned residents to take air raid warnings more seriously.
There was little need to repeat the message, amid the staccato bursts of gunfire and percussive detonations.
The hotel's air raid shelter filled up: those who had taken their chances the night before, when almost 500 drones were fired at Ukraine, lay on bean-bags or brought down pillows from their rooms.
Even for Kyiv residents accustomed to Putin's nightly deliveries, it was a loud, sleepless night.
Volodymyr Zelensky today called on the United States and Europe to respond to a fresh bout of Russian attacks of more than 300 drones and seven missiles.
'It is vital that the response to this and other similar Russian attacks is not silence from the world, but concrete action. Action from America, which has the power to force Russia into peace. Action from Europe, which has no alternative but to be strong,' the Ukrainian leader wrote in a post on social media, adding that two of the missiles were North Korean-made.
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Will a second meeting involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky occur? The president was equally as vague in a Fox News interview taped after the summit, though he did suggest that the next steps in the process would be up to Zelensky. What was clear today was that Trump, who had once promised to bring the war to a close within 24 hours, left the summit empty-handed. 'Summits usually have deliverables. This meeting had none,' Michael McFaul, an ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, told me. 'I hope that they made some progress towards next steps in the peace process. But there is no evidence of that yet.' At their last summit, in Helsinki in 2018, Trump and Putin captivated the world when they took questions, revealing details of their private discussions as the American president sided with Moscow, rather than his own U.S. intelligence agencies, over Russia's 2016 election interference. This time, they quickly ducked offstage as reporters shouted in vain. When the two men did speak, they mostly delivered pleasantries. Putin even repeated Trump's talking point that Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 would never have happened had Trump been in office then. And Trump, once more, said that the two men 'had to put up with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.' That the summit happened at all was perceived by many as a victory for Putin, who, after years as an international pariah, was granted a photo with a U.S. president on American soil—on land that once belonged to Russia, no less. And he was greeted in an over-the-top, stage-managed welcome that involved a literal red carpet for a man accused of war crimes. Putin disembarked his plane this morning moments after Trump stepped off Air Force One, and the two men strode toward each other past parked F-22 fighter jets before meeting with a warm handshake and smiles. After posing for photographs, and quickly peering up at a military flyover that roared above them, the two men stepped into the presidential limousine, the heavily fortified vehicle known as 'the Beast.' The White House had announced earlier in the day that the two men would not have a previously planned one-on-one meeting, but would instead have a pair of sitdowns flanked by advisers. But here, in the backseat of the Beast, Putin had his time alone with Trump. As the limousine drove off the tarmac to the summit site, Putin could be seen in a rear window laughing. Putin and Trump were scheduled to have a formal meeting at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, followed by lunch. But after the first meeting ran long, extending to more than three hours, reporters were abruptly rushed to the room where the press conference would be staged. The second meeting had been canceled. Had there been a breakthrough or a blowup? Putin sported the better body language: He almost glowed as he spoke to the press, offering a history lesson about Alaska, while praising the 'neighborly' relations between the men. And, oddly, he got to speak first, even though Trump was the summit's host. Trump, in contrast, seemed subdued, only perking up when Putin ended their media appearance by suggesting that their next summit be in Moscow. 'I think Trump did not lose, but Putin clearly won. Putin got everything he could have wished for, but he's not home free yet,' John Bolton, who was a national security adviser in Trump's first term, told me. 'Zelensky and the Europeans must be dismayed. And I thought Trump looked very tired at the press event. Putin looked energetic.' Putin seemed eager to broaden the conversation beyond Ukraine. He brought Russian business leaders to Alaska, hoping to play to Trump's hopes of better economic relations between the two countries, and perhaps strike a rare-earth-minerals deal. He also suggested earlier this week that he would revisit a nuclear-arms agreement, perhaps allowing Trump to leave the summit with some sort of win that did not involve Ukraine. But nothing was announced on those fronts either. The fear in Kyiv and across Europe was that Trump is so desperate for the fighting to stop, he might have agreed to Putin's terms regardless of what Ukraine wants. That did not happen, which was cheered across the continent, and Trump said he would soon consult with Zelensky and NATO. But Putin has shown no sign of compromising his positions. He wants Russia to keep the territory it conquered, and Ukraine to forgo the security guarantees that could prevent Moscow from attacking again. Those terms are nonstarters for Ukraine. The Europeans and Ukrainians had good reason to be nervous about today's summit. Trump has spent most of his decade on the global stage being extraordinarily deferential to Putin, which continued when he returned to the White House this year. He initially sided with Russia—even blaming Ukraine for causing its own invasion—before slowly souring on Putin's refusal to end the war. This summit came together in about a week's time' final details were still being arranged even as some of Putin's delegation arrived in Alaska yesterday. Trump's personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, had made several visits to Moscow in recent months. He had been in the Middle East when he received word through a back channel that Putin might finally be willing to come to the table given Trump's more hostile rhetoric toward Putin and threat of sanctions. After a series of meetings with key Trump senior aides and multiple flights across the Atlantic, Witkoff met again with Putin and accepted the offer of a summit. (He also accepted a twisted gift: Putin presented Witkoff an Order of Lenin award to pass along to a senior CIA official whose son had been killed in Ukraine fighting alongside Russia.) Summits, particularly those as high-stakes as ones between American and Russian presidents, usually take weeks if not months to plan. Everything is carefully choreographed: the agenda, the participants, the ceremony. Normally, the outcome is more or less predetermined: In the days before the actual summit, aides hash out some sort of agreement so the two leaders simply need to show up and shake hands to make the deal official. That was clearly not the case today—or in other Trump-Putin meetings. Trump had met with Putin seven previous times, all but one coming on the sidelines of larger summits and all friendly. The first was at the G20 in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, when the two men sat next to each other for an hours-long leaders dinner. Their last meeting, at the G20 in Osaka, Japan, in the fall of 2019, ended with Trump mockingly warning Putin to never interfere again in American elections, with a sarcastic smile and exaggerated finger wag. But Helsinki is the headliner. It came against the backdrop of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow. I was one of the two American journalists called upon to ask a question, and I posed to Trump whether he believed Putin or his own U.S. intelligence agencies about Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Putin glared at me. Trump sided with Moscow. The eruption on both sides of the Atlantic was fierce and immediate, and even some loyal Republicans said they thought Trump's answer was a betrayal of American values. Some of Trump's top aides—including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chief of Staff John Kelly—were photographed with pained expressions on their faces. Fiona Hill, Trump's Russia adviser, told me later she nearly faked a heart attack in a desperate attempt to get the summit to stop. Anchorage wasn't Helsinki. For that, Europe can be grateful. Trump didn't give away Ukrainian land to Russia or demand that Zelensky take a bad deal, at least immediately. But Putin did get much of what he wanted, including a high-profile summit and, most of all, more time to continue his war. When he boarded his plane to leave Alaska, he was spotted smiling again.

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