
Russia advances to east-central Ukrainian region amid row over dead soldiers
Milana, 4, and her mother Olesya, 42, sit in an armoured vehicle as a police evacuate them, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the frontline town of Kostyantynivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine June 7, 2025. REUTERS/Anatolii Stepanov
By Guy Faulconbridge, Anton Kolodyazhnyy and Aleksandar Vasovic
Russia said on Sunday its forces had advanced to the edge of the east-central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk amid a public row between Moscow and Kyiv over peace negotiations and the return of thousands of bodies of soldiers who fell in the war.
Despite talk of peace, the war is stepping up with Russian forces grabbing more territory in Ukraine and Kyiv unfurling high-profile drone and sabotage attacks on Russia's nuclear-capable bomber fleet and, according to Moscow, on railways.
Russia, which controls a little under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, has taken more than 190 square km (73 square miles) of the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine in less than a month, according to pro-Ukrainian open source maps.
Now, according to the Russian defense ministry, units of the 90th Tank Division of the Central Grouping of Russian forces have reached the western frontier of Ukraine's Donetsk region and are attacking the adjacent Dnipropetrovsk region.
"The enemy does not abandon its intentions to enter the Dnipropetrovsk region," Ukraine's Southern Defense Forces said on Telegram. "Our soldiers are courageously and professionally holding their section of the front, disrupting the occupier's plans. This work does not stop for a minute."
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said the Dnipropetrovsk offensive showed that if Ukraine did not want to accept the reality of Russia's territorial gains in peace talks then Moscow's forces would advance further.
The pro-Ukrainian Deep State map showed Russian forces very close to the Dnipropetrovsk region, which had a population of more than 3 million before the war, and advancing on the city of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region from several directions.
A Ukrainian military spokesman, Dmytro Zaporozhets, said that Russian forces were trying to "build a bridgehead for an attack" on Kostyantynivka, an important logistical hub for the Ukrainian army.
Russia on Saturday accused Ukraine of delaying the swap of prisoners of war and return of the bodies of 12,000 dead soldiers. Ukraine denied those claims.
On Sunday, Russia said it was moving bodies towards the border and television showed refrigerated trucks containing the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers on the road in the Bryansk region. Ukraine, officials said, was playing politics with the dead.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pledged to press on with prisoner exchanges.
"The Russian side is therefore, like always, even in these matters, is trying to play some kind of dirty political and information game," he said in his nightly video address.
"We believe that the exchanges will continue and will do everything for this. If the Russians do not stand by agreements even in humanitarian matters, it casts great doubt on all international efforts - including those by the United States in terms of talks and diplomacy."
Zelenskiy said he had reviewed commanders' reports about areas hit by heavy fighting, including near Pokrovsk, targeted by Moscow for months. He said the situation was "far from easy, but everything depends on the resilience of our units."
U.S. President Donald Trump, who says he wants an end to the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two, on Thursday likened it to a fight between young children and indicated that he might have to simply let the conflict play out.
ACCUSATIONS OVER WILLINGNESS FOR PEACE
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that he did not think Ukraine's leaders wanted peace, after accusing them of ordering a bombing in Bryansk, western Russia, that killed seven people and injured 115 a day before talks in Turkey.
Ukraine, which has not commented on the attack on a Bryansk bridge, has similarly accused Moscow of not seriously seeking peace, citing Russian resistance to an immediate ceasefire.
Russia is demanding international recognition of Crimea, a peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and four other regions of Ukraine that Moscow has claimed as its own territory. Ukraine would have to withdraw its forces from all of them.
Russia controlled 113,273 square km, or 18.8%, of Ukrainian territory as of June 7, according to the Deep State map. That is an area bigger than the U.S. state of Virginia.
The areas under Russian control include Crimea, more than 99% of the Luhansk region, over 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, all in the east or southeast, and fragments of the Kharkiv and Sumy regions in the northeast.
Putin told Trump on Wednesday that he would have to respond to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia's bomber fleet and the bombings of the railways.
Zelenskiy warned Ukrainians in his video message to be particularly attentive to air raid warnings in the coming days.
The United States believes that Putin's threatened retaliation against Ukraine over its attacks has not happened yet in earnest and is likely to be a significant, multi-pronged strike, U.S. officials told Reuters.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Japan Today
28 minutes ago
- Japan Today
Russia hits Ukraine's Kharkiv with deadly nighttime barrage of drones
Women react next to their apartment building damaged by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine June 11, 2025. REUTERS/Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy A concentrated, nine-minute-long Russian drone attack on Ukraine's second largest city of Kharkiv in the middle of the night killed six people and injured 64, including nine children, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday. The overnight attack followed Russia's two biggest air assaults of the war on Ukraine this week, part of intensified bombardments that Moscow says are retaliatory measures for Kyiv's recent attacks in Russia. Elsewhere, two southern Ukrainian regions, Mykolaiv and Kherson, were left without electricity on Wednesday after Russian forces attacked an energy facility, the governors said. Kharkiv, in Ukraine's northeast, withstood Russia's full-scale advance in the early days of the war but has since been a regular target of drone, missile and guided aerial bomb assaults. Prosecutors in Kharkiv region said on the Telegram messaging app that the death toll had risen to six as rescue teams pulled bodies from under the rubble. They said three people were still believed to be trapped. The intense strikes by 17 drones on Kharkiv sparked fires in 15 units of a five-story apartment building and caused other damage in the city close to the Russian border, the city's mayor Ihor Terekhov said. "There are direct hits on multi-story buildings, private homes, playgrounds, enterprises and public transport," Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging app. "Every new day now brings new despicable blows from Russia, and almost every blow is telling. Russia deserves increased pressure; with literally every blow it strikes against ordinary life, it proves that the pressure is not enough," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram. A Reuters witness saw emergency rescuers helping to carry people out of damaged buildings and administering care, while firefighters battled blazes in the dark. Nine of the injured, including a 2-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, have been hospitalised, Oleh Sinehubov, the governor of the broader Kharkiv region, said on Telegram. In total, the Ukrainian military said Russia had launched 85 drones overnight, 40 of which were shot down. In the southern Kherson region, workers were trying to restore electricity supplies after Russian forces attacked what its governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said was "an important energy facility". "It is currently impossible to predict the duration of the work. Residents of the region, I ask you to show understanding and prepare for a prolonged power outage," he said on the Telegram messenger. The governor of the neighbouring Mykolaiv region, Vitaliy Kim, said his region was also experiencing emergency shutdowns but that power would soon be restored. Kherson region directly borders a war zone and is under daily drone, missile and artillery attack. The Mykolaiv region faces mainly missile and drone attacks. There was no immediate comment from Russia on the latest overnight attacks. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched on its smaller neighbor in February 2022. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian. © Thomson Reuters 2025.


Japan Today
29 minutes ago
- Japan Today
U.S. preparing to partially evacuate Iraq embassy over regional security risks, sources say
By Daphne Psaledakis, Idrees Ali, Ahmed Rasheed and Timour Azhari The United States is preparing a partial evacuation of its Iraqi embassy and will allow military dependents to leave locations around the Middle East due to heightened security risks in the region, U.S. and Iraqi sources said on Wednesday. The four U.S. and two Iraqi sources did not specify which security risks had prompted the decision and reports of the potential evacuation pushed up oil prices by more than 4%. "The State Department regularly reviews American personnel abroad and this decision was made as a result of a recent review," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told Reuters when asked about reports of the partial evacuations, without giving further details. A White House official said U.S. President Donald Trump was aware of the move. The partial evacuations come at a moment of heightened tensions in a region already aflame after 18 months of war in Gaza that has raised fears of a wider conflagration pitting the U.S. and Israel against Iran and its allies. Trump has repeatedly threatened to strike Iran if stuttering talks over its nuclear program fail and on Wednesday he said he was growing less confident that Tehran would agree to stop enriching uranium, a key American demand. Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh also said on Wednesday that if Iran was subjected to strikes it would retaliate by hitting U.S. bases in the region. The United States has a military presence across the major oil-producing region, with bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has authorized the voluntary departure of military dependents from locations across the Middle East, a U.S. official said. Another U.S. official said that was mostly relevant to family members located in Bahrain -- where the bulk of them are based. "The State Department is set to have an ordered departure for (the) U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The intent is to do it through commercial means, but the U.S. military is standing by if help is requested," a third U.S. official said. Iraq's state news agency cited a government source as saying Baghdad had not recorded any security indication that called for an evacuation. The U.S. embassy in Kuwait said in a statement it "has not changed its staffing posture and remains fully operational." Another U.S. official said that there was no change in operations at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East and that no evacuation order had been issued for employees or families linked to the U.S. embassy in Qatar, which was operating as usual. TENSIONS Oil futures climbed $3 on reports of the Baghdad evacuation with Brent crude futures at $69.18 a barrel. Earlier on Wednesday Britain's maritime agency warned that increased tensions in the Middle East may lead to an escalation in military activity that could impact shipping in critical waterways. It advised vessels to use caution while traveling through the Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Straits of Hormuz, which all border Iran. Iraq, a rare regional partner of both the United States and its arch regional foe Iran, hosts 2,500 U.S. troops although Tehran-backed armed factions are linked to its security forces. Tensions inside Iraq have heightened since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, with Iran-aligned armed groups in the country repeatedly attacking U.S. troops, though attacks have subsided since last year. Israel and Iran also twice exchanged fire last year - the first ever such direct attacks between the region's most entrenched enemies - with missiles and war drones hurtling across Iraqi airspace. Top U.S. regional ally Israel has also struck Iran-linked targets across the region, including Iraqi armed groups operating both inside Iraq and in neighboring Syria. The next round of nuclear talks between Iran and the United States are due in the coming days with Iran expected to hand over a counter proposal after rejecting an offer by Washington. Iran's U.N. mission on Wednesday posted on X: "Threats of 'overwhelming force' won't change facts: Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon and U.S. militarism only fuels instability." The statement appeared to be a response to an earlier comment by U.S. Central Command chief U.S. Army General Michael Kurilla that he had provided the president with "a wide range of options" to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. © Thomson Reuters 2025.


Japan Today
29 minutes ago
- Japan Today
Trump administration reviewing Biden-era submarine pact with Australia, UK
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 6, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura/File Photo By Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has launched a formal review of a defense pact worth hundreds of billions of dollars that former President Joe Biden made with Australia and the United Kingdom, allowing Australia to acquire conventionally armed nuclear submarines, a U.S. defense official told Reuters. The formal Pentagon-led review is likely to alarm Australia, which sees the submarines as critical to its own defense as tensions grow over China's expansive military buildup. It could also throw a wrench in Britain's defense planning. AUKUS is at the center of a planned expansion of its submarine fleet. "We are reviewing AUKUS as part of ensuring that this initiative of the previous administration is aligned with the President's America First agenda," the official said of the review, which was first reported by Financial Times. "Any changes to the administration's approach for AUKUS will be communicated through official channels, when appropriate." AUKUS, formed in 2021 to address shared worries about China's growing power, is designed to allow Australia to acquire nuclear-powered attack submarines and other advanced weapons such as hypersonic missiles. Vocal skeptics of the AUKUS deal among Trump's senior policy officials include Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's top policy advisor. In a 2024 talk with Britain's Policy Exchange think-tank, Colby cautioned that U.S. military submarines were a scarce, critical commodity, and that U.S. industry could not produce enough of them to meet American demand. They would also be central to U.S. military strategy in any confrontation with China centered in the First Island Chain, an area that runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China's coastal seas. "CROWN JEWEL" "My concern is why are we giving away this crown jewel asset when we most need it," Colby said. The Australian and UK embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The U.S. National Security Council also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. AUKUS is Australia's biggest-ever defense project, with Canberra committing to spend A$368 billion ($240 billion) over three decades on the program, which includes billions of dollars of investment in the U.S. production base. News of the U.S. review comes hours after the British government announced plans to invest billions of pounds to upgrade its submarine industrial base, including at BAE Systems in Barrow and Rolls-Royce Submarines in Derby, to allow the increase in submarine production rate announced in Britain's Strategic Defence Review. Britain said this month it would build up to 12 next-generation attack submarines of the model intended to be jointly developed by the UK, U.S. and Australia under AUKUS. Only six countries operate nuclear submarines: the U.S., the UK, Russia, China, France and India. AUKUS would add Australia to that club starting in 2032 with the U.S. sale of Virginia-class submarines. Before that, the U.S. and Britain would start forward rotations of their submarines in 2027 out of an Australian naval base in Western Australia. Later, Britain and Australia would design and build a new class of submarines, with U.S. assistance, with the first delivery to the UK in the late 2030s and to Australia in the early 2040s. Although Australia has declined to say ahead of time whether it would send the submarines to join U.S. forces in any conflict between the U.S. and China, Colby noted Australia's historic alliance with Washington, including sending troops to Vietnam. "I think we can make a decent bet that Australia would be there with us in the event of a conflict," Colby said last year. Speaking in Congress on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said "we're having honest conversations with our allies." On Australia, Hegseth said: "We want to make sure those capabilities are part of how they use them with their submarines, but also how they integrate with us as allies." Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who signed a previous agreement to acquire French submarines that was shelved in favor of AUKUS, told CNBC last week it was "more likely than not that Australia will not end up with any submarines at all, but instead, simply provide a large base in Western Australia for the American Navy and maintenance facilities there." © Thomson Reuters 2025.