Russian drone, cruise missile and bomb attacks kill at least 6 in Ukraine
Two people died and 26 were wounded when Russian forces overnight attacked the Bukovina area in the Chernivtsi region of southwestern Ukraine with four drones and a missile, regional Gov. Ruslan Zaparaniuk said Saturday. He said that the two died from falling drone debris.
Another drone attack in Ukraine's western Lviv region wounded 12 people, regional Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi said. Poland's air force scrambled fighter jets in areas bordering Ukraine in response to the overnight attacks, which targeted again a region that is a crucial hub for receiving foreign military aid.
Three people alsos were wounded in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine when the city was hit by eight drones and two missiles, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
Russia fired 597 drones and decoys, along with 26 cruise missiles, into Ukraine overnight into Saturday, Ukraine's air force said. Of these, 319 drones and 25 cruise missiles were shot down and 258 decoy drones were lost, likely having been electronically jammed.
Two people were killed Saturday morning in a missile strike in the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to regional Gov. Serhii Lysak. Two other people were killed Saturday in the Sumy region by a Russian guided bomb, local officials said.
Russia has been stepping up its long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities. Earlier this week, Russia fired more than 700 attack and decoy drones, topping previous nightly barrages and targeting Lutsk near the border with Poland in western Ukraine.
Russia's intensifying long-range attacks have coincided with a concerted effort to break through parts of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where Ukrainian troops are under severe pressure.
Russia's Defense Ministry said it shot down 33 Ukrainian drones overnight into Saturday.
One person was wounded Saturday in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia's Belgorod region and another in the Kursk region, both of which border Ukraine, local officials said.
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Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Martin Cruz Smith, best-selling author of ‘Gorky Park,' dies at 82
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up By the time he wrote 'Gorky Park' (1981), Mr. Smith had spent years toiling in obscurity, churning out paperback westerns, thrillers, and suspense novels, most of them written under pseudonyms like Jake Logan and Simon Quinn. There were times, he said, when he could 'only be accurately described as a schlockmeister.' How else to account for novels like 'North to Dakota,' which 'started off,' he remembered, 'with the hero strangling a chimpanzee'? Advertisement In those days, Mr. Smith usually took six to eight weeks to finish a novel. But when he slowed down, as he did with 'Gorky Park,' he wrote with a far more elegant and refined voice, crafting books that were admired for their psychological acuity, literary sophistication, and rich depiction of faraway cultures (Russia's, in particular) that few Americans knew firsthand. Advertisement The culmination of about eight years of work, 'Gorky Park' was acclaimed as a masterpiece of the crime genre, impressing critics with its shrewd and incorruptible protagonist - a Russian Sam Spade - and its carefully drawn portrait of Soviet-era Moscow. The book 'reminds you just how satisfying a smoothly turned thriller can be,' wrote New York Times reviewer Peter Andrews. In The Washington Post, former Moscow correspondent Peter Osnos declared that 'Gorky Park' 'is to ordinary suspense stories what John le Carré is to spy novels. The action is gritty, the plot complicated, the overriding quality is intelligence.' In broad strokes, the novel followed the contours of a classic work of crime fiction. A hard-bitten police investigator, Renko, is enlisted to solve a triple murder, with three mutilated bodies found in Moscow's Gorky Park. The victims were shot at close range and had their finger tips and faces sliced off, concealing their identities. The case took Renko around the world (including to Staten Island), even as Moscow remained the book's gravitational center. For many critics, Mr. Smith's signature achievement was the way he conjured Russian society on the page, writing about apparatchiks and propagandists, the merits of vodka (there are two kinds, 'good and very good'), and the relationship between ordinary street detectives and their counterparts in the KGB. Improbably, Mr. Smith spent no more than two weeks in the country in 1973. (Mr. Smith was denied a visa when he attempted to return.) He spoke no Russian and had no interpreter, although he took voluminous notes and made sketches of the sort of people and places he planned to write about. Advertisement 'More perhaps than any other recent work of American fiction,' Osnos wrote, 'this one conveys a feeling for the Soviet Union, its capital, its moods and its people. … I spent weeks hanging around Soviet courtrooms and in Smith's portrayals, I smell the musty aroma; I can see the faces; I can hear the voices.' The novel won the Gold Dagger, a top honor from the Crime Writers' Association of Britain, and was adapted into a 1983 Hollywood movie starring William Hurt as Renko. 'I thought it was dreadful,' Mr. Smith said of the film. In the Soviet Union, authorities condemned the novel in spite of its heroic Russian protagonist. The book was banned, although it found an audience thanks to dissidents and intellectuals who managed to distribute copies underground. 'Even scientist and academician Andrei Sakharov was a big fan,' said Alex Levin, a Russian émigré who helped Mr. Smith with his research, in a 2005 interview with the Guardian. Mr. Smith, a former journalist, said that he was driven by a desire to find out 'what is happening in the Soviet Union.' His subsequent Renko novels used history as a backdrop, following the detective through the Soviet Union's collapse (in 'Red Square'), the Chechen War ('Stalin's Ghost'), and Russia's invasion of Ukraine ('Hotel Ukraine'). Other installments invoked the Chernobyl nuclear disaster ('Wolves Eat Dogs') and took inspiration from the 2006 assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian investigative journalist ('Tatiana'). To research the books, Mr. Smith made return trips to Russia, traveled to Ukraine and Cuba, and spent three weeks aboard a Soviet factory ship in the Bering Sea. He was kicked off, he said, after the ship's political officer located his name in a Soviet list of 'foreign agents provocateurs to avoid.' Advertisement Mr. Smith went on to spend what he described as an 'endless' week on an American trawler, 'looking at the fog.' Still, he was happy to be conducting research in-person, later saying: 'There are things you experience that are so basic that people just don't tell you. It's a little bit like people telling you about going to sea - nobody bothers to tell you that it is salty. They always overlook the details.' The second of three children, Martin William Smith was born in Reading, Pa., on Nov. 3, 1942. He adopted his pseudonym, incorporating his maternal grandmother's name, Cruz, after realizing there were a half-dozen other 'Martin Smiths' trying to get published. His father, who came from a Scottish Episcopal family, was a jazz saxophonist and photographer. His mother, a descendant of Pueblo and Yaqui Indians, was a former beauty queen and a nightclub singer, once billed as 'Princess Louisa, the All-American Songbird.' The family moved frequently before settling outside Philadelphia, where his father found a job at the Budd Co., a metal fabricator. Mr. Smith, who was known as Bill, was educated at the nearby Germantown Academy. He was a poor student, in his telling, barely making it in to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied sociology before failing a statistics paper and switching to creative writing. After graduating in 1964, he spent a few years in journalism, with jobs at the Associated Press, a local television station, and the Philadelphia Daily News. He also had a brief stint editing For Men Only, a New York-based magazine that taught him the importance of brevity. Advertisement 'We wasted no words getting someone through a door; we couldn't fool around with Henry Jamesian language,' he told the Guardian. By 1970, Mr. Smith had started writing novels, including a work of speculative fiction, 'The Indians Won,' that imagined the existence of a Native American state in the center of America. His other books included a series of thrillers about a Vatican hit man who, after dispatching his victims, dutifully goes to confession. After reading a Newsweek article about Soviet forensic scientists working to re-create the faces of murder victims, Mr. Smith began work on 'Gorky Park.' The book was pitched to his publisher as a team-up story, featuring mismatched Soviet and American detectives who work together on a case. But after his trip to Moscow, Mr. Smith decided to focus on the Russian and effectively dropped the American, to his publisher's dismay. He spent years working to buy back the rights to the book, which he later resold to Random House in a reported $1 million deal. In the interim, he was supported by the proceeds from his 1977 novel 'Nightwing,' a supernatural thriller involving vampire bats and Hopi Native American lore. Mr. Smith married one of his college classmates, Emily Arnold, in 1968. 'She was his first reader,' his children said in a statement, 'and his moral touchstone.' In addition to his wife, he leaves three children, Nell Branco, Luisa Smith, and Sam Smith; a brother; and five grandchildren. Mr. Smith was a two-time winner of the Hammett Prize for crime fiction, awarded for his Victorian-era thriller 'Rose' (1996), which he set in the mining country around Wigan, England, and 'Havana Bay' (1999), in which Renko tracks a killer in Cuba. In 2019, he received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Advertisement 'By looking at the underworld you see how mainstream society works,' he told the Guardian, discussing his love of crime fiction. 'You can travel through a social fracture and, for a limited amount of time, you can behave differently and ask whatever embarrassing questions you like.'
New York Post
3 hours ago
- New York Post
Family of Ukrainian teen, 14, injured in deadly Russian strike begs Trump to help them live ‘under a peaceful sky'
KYIV — A Ukrainian mother and her 14-year-old daughter were wounded in a brutal Russian drone strike the same day President Trump pledged more weapons to Kyiv — leaving the horrified mom now pleading with him to help end their suffering and bring peace to their war-torn homeland. Nataliia Makhno and her daughter Anastasiia were walking home from the grocery store in Sumy on Monday when the sudden roar of drones and explosions sent them scrambling for cover at a nearby house — a terrifying routine that has become all too familiar in recent months. 'Fear is a present all the time, but we do not have a choice,' Nataliia told The Post. Advertisement 5 Nataliia Makhno and her daughter Anastasiia were walking home from the grocery store when they were hurt in Monday's drone blast in Sumy. Obtained by the NY Post 'War has come to us, and we live and try to survive in this situation. We are ordinary people, and we had just come from the store. It was an ordinary day.' But their ordinary day spiraled into horror when the explosion hit, leaving Anastasiia's body riddled with shrapnel wounds and suffering from severe blast trauma. Advertisement She was rushed to Sumy Regional Children's Hospital, where the shrapnel was removed, and her condition has since improved. The youngster — an award-winning modern dancer — is receiving inpatient care and will now be forced to put her passion on hold until she recovers, her devastated mother said. Nataliia, who suffered blast trauma and an inner ear injury from the deafening boom, said drone attacks have become a 'constant' in recent months. 'Living here is scary, but sadly, we have become used to it,' the wounded mother said. 5 A burned-out building after a drone strike in Sumy, Ukraine. Obtained by the NY Post Advertisement 'People live and work. Children study online and at school. All while being in danger.' Nataliia previously lived with her family in Myrophilla — a village along the Russian border that was decimated when the country launched its full-scale invasion in 2022 — until her husband, a serviceman stationed in the Sumy region, relocated them to a larger city in the hopes of keeping them safe. 'Everyone left because there were heavy shelling, and Russians destroyed a lot of buildings,' the scared mom said, noting her daughter's school was also leveled. 'We have a marvelous school there, and they destroyed it, as well. So many people had to evacuate.' Advertisement 5 Nataliia Makhno and her 14-year-old daughter Anastasiia were injured in a Russian drone attack in Sumy, Ukraine. Obtained by the NY Post But the brutal strikes have only escalated since the family uprooted their lives — a grim reality Nataliia has also faced as a nurse treating injured victims of attacks similar to the one that left her 'very stressed and frightened' daughter hospitalized. 'We all hoped that there would be help and peace would come quickly, but for some reasons unknown to us, it does not come,' she said. 'Most of us are waiting for a miracle to happen, and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will stop shooting. We hope for it every second. We pray to God and ask that we have a peaceful sky, and we could just live as we lived before. This is war, a totally incomprehensible war.' 5 Anastasiia, an award-winning modern dancer, will have to put her passions on hold as she recovers. Obtained by the NY Post Russia launched its attack on the devastated country overnight Monday after Trump announced the US will send 'billions of dollars' worth of weapons to Ukraine and threatened to impose 'secondary tariffs' on Moscow's business partners if a peace agreement isn't reached in 50 days. Five were killed and at least 43 injured, including four children, in attacks across Ukraine, local media reported. Shattered Nataliia is now begging Trump to act swiftly and help end the nightmare they've endured throughout the 40-month-long war. Advertisement 5 New York Post front page: 'Breaking Vlad,' Trump will provide more arms to Ukraine, gives Putin a 50-day deadline. 'I would like to ask very much that he help us so that peace comes to our Ukraine and that we can live as before when we were not afraid and our children lived under a peaceful sky,' Nataliia said. 'He can help us to cope with such a terrible misfortune that has come to us so that we can be here, live, rejoice, marry, have children and wait for grandchildren. 'Our children should be able to live calmly, grow, live quietly, work and be happy.'
4 hours ago
Trump defends giving Putin '50 days' to make peace with Ukraine
After President Donald Trump threatened to impose "very severe" economic penalties against Vladimir Putin's Russia if he doesn't agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine within 50 days, the Trump administration has so far declined to provide many additional details about the consequences Russia will face or why he picked the deadline he chose. "Well, at the end of 50 days, if we don't have a deal, it's going to be too bad," Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. When asked why he decided to give the Russian leader nearly two months to comply with his demand, President Trump deflected. "I don't think 50 days is very long. It could be sooner than that," Trump said. "You should have asked that same question to Biden. Why did he get us into this war?" he continued. "You know why he got us in? Because he's a dummy, that's why." Despite pledging additional U.S. made weapons for Ukraine, Trump also said he didn't support Ukraine's President Zelenskyy ordering strikes on the Russian capital. "He shouldn't target Moscow," he said. "No, we're not looking to do that." What Trump is threatening On Monday, Trump said that Russia's failure to reach a negotiated settlement with Ukraine within 50 days would lead to his administration imposing a 100% tariff rate on Russian imports as well as what he called "secondary tariffs" on countries that have continued to do business with Moscow. "We're very, very unhappy with him," Trump said of Putin on Monday. "We're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days." U.S. imports from Russia, which totaled around $3 billion in 2024 according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, account for a small share of Moscow's revenue, meaning Trump's threat to hike tariffs on Russian goods likely wouldn't pack much punch. However, the president's promise to raise tariffs on imports from third-party countries could carry more weight. Some secondary sanctions aimed at weakening Russia's war economy are already in place. The Biden administration steadily ramped up its use of the penalties throughout the conflict, primarily targeting foreign financial institutions accused of supporting Moscow's military industrial complex and the so-called "shadow fleet" of tanker operators working to circumvent Western sanctions and price caps on Russian oil. But going after countries that import oil and other resources from Russia would be a significant escalation. Through much of the war, the Biden administration avoided taking direct aim at Russian energy exporters out of concern that doing so would cause global fuel prices to rise. Instead, the former administration worked with other members of the G7 to cap the price of Russian oil products, cutting into Moscow's profits while allowing the exports to remain on the market. Trump, on the other hand, has previously promised to go after Russia's customers. In March, Trump threatened to put "secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia" during an interview with NBC News -- adding "if you buy oil from Russia, you can't do business in the United States." What countries would feel the impact? The White House has yet to release specific details on Trump's secondary tariffs, but his ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, said on Monday the top importers of Russian oil would be in the administration's crosshairs. "It's about tariffs on countries like India and China that are buying their oil. And it really is going to I think dramatically impact the Russian economy," he said during an interview with CNN. But whether the secondary tariffs would stop at countries like China and India is an open question. Despite the web of sanctions in place against Russia, the country still has many meaningful trade relationships, including ones with European allies. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the EU has significantly dropped its share of Russian oil and gas imports and its plan to fully phase out those imports isn't expected to fully come to fruition until the end of 2027 at the earliest. Some Eastern European and Central Asian countries also have economies that rely on doing business with Russia, meaning they would almost certainly be unable to significantly scale back trade with Russia and would have the face the consequences of secondary tariffs. The next 50 days If the president sticks to his 50-day window, Russia can continue to carry out its summertime campaign against Ukraine until early September without facing additional consequences. In his interview with CNN, Whitaker was also asked about how Trump made the decision on the timeline but didn't give a clear answer. "The time to end the slaughter is now. The time to end the killing is now. And so 50 days is the appropriate amount of time because it needs to happen now," he responded. Currently, Russia is making modest gains against Ukraine and may soon seek to leverage those advances to launch additional offenses in the eastern reach of the country, according to a recent assessment from the Institute of the Study of War. Many officials and experts have long predicted that the Kremlin would push off serious talks on ending the war until the cooler months set in because it hopes to strengthen its position at the negotiating table by claiming as much territory as possible during the summer season. In an interview with the BBC on Monday, Trump indicated he still wanted to pursue diplomacy with Russia, but that his patience with Putin was wearing thin. "I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed with him," he said.
