A Russian missile and drone attack across Ukraine kills 3 in the capital Kyiv
Russia bombarded six regions of Ukraine in one of its largest aerial attacks of the three-year war, Ukrainian officials said Friday. The nighttime assault lasted for hours and killed three emergency responders in the capital Kyiv, according to authorities.
Article content
The barrage included 407 drones and 44 ballistic and cruise missiles, Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said. Ukrainian forces said they shot down about 30 of the cruise missiles and up to 200 of the drones.
Article content
Article content
Article content
Article content
The latest Russian attack came hours after U.S. President Donald Trump said it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia 'fight for a while' before pulling them apart and pursuing peace. Trump's comments were a remarkable detour from his often-stated appeals to stop the war and signaled he may be giving up on recent peace efforts.
Article content
Ukrainian cities have come under regular bombardment since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. The attacks have killed more than 12,000 civilians, according to the United Nations.
Article content
Zelenskyy, as well as the Ukrainian Interior Ministry and the general prosecutor's office, said three emergency workers were killed in Kyiv while responding to the Russian strikes. 'They were working under fire to help people,' the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Article content
Article content
The war has continued unabated even as a U.S.-led diplomatic push for a settlement has brought two rounds of direct peace talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine. The negotiations delivered no significant breakthroughs, however, and the sides remain far apart on their terms for an end to the fighting.
Article content
Article content
Ukraine has offered an unconditional 30-day ceasefire and a meeting between Zelenskyy and Russian leader Vladimir Putin to break the deadlock. But the Kremlin has effectively rejected a truce and hasn't budged from its demands.
Article content
'The Kremlin continues efforts to falsely portray Russia as willing to engage in good-faith negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, despite Russia's repeated refusal to offer any concessions,' the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said late Thursday.
Article content
Putin said in a phone call with Trump earlier this week that he would respond to Ukraine's daring long-range attack on Russian air bases on Sunday.
Article content
Russia's Defense Ministry claimed it had aimed at Ukrainian military targets with 'long-range precision weapons' and successfully struck arms depots, drone factories and repair facilities, among other targets.
Article content
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the attacks demonstrated key differences between Russia and Ukraine.
Article content
'The difference … is that Ukraine hits legitimate military targets_such as aircraft equipped to bomb our children. Russia targets residential areas, civilians, and critical infrastructure,' Sybiha wrote on X. 'Putting Ukraine and Russia on equal footing is unacceptable.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Canada Standard
an hour ago
- Canada Standard
Wildfires Pull Climate Onto the Agenda as G7 Leaders Meet in Alberta
With the G7 leaders' summit due to descend on Kananaskis, Alberta June 15-17, questions are swirling about what Canada can accomplish with this year's G7 presidency and how agreement is possible with Donald Trump in the room-while swirling smoke from a devastating Prairie wildfire season helps bring climate change back onto the leaders' agenda. Now in its 50th year, the G7 brings together the leaders of seven of the world's biggest economies plus the European Union in what is described as a "forum for co-operation, stability, and shared prosperity." The leaders' summit each year is meant to end with a consensus statement of all the countries. But community voices on everything from climate change to international finance and justice have rarely been satisfied with the outcome. Much of the news analysis leading up to this year's event has cast the G7 as a diminished institution, reduced to handshakes, photo ops, and carefully-worded generalities that are the most the countries can agree to. Coming into this year's summit, the G7's "legitimacy is hanging by a thread. Its promises have fallen flat, its unity is strained, and its moral voice is fading fast," retired civil servant Bhagwant Sandhu writes for The Hill Times. "Originally conceived as a multilateral pact among Western democracies to steward global economic control, the G7 was never intended to serve the desires of its most powerful-and now unpredictable and illiberal-member: the United States," he adds. "The group's initial goals have been obscured by authoritarianism, unilateral action, and creeping militarization." That leaves Prime Minister Mark Carney with a choice, Sandhu says. "Canada can, of course, preside over the usual choreography of communiques and handshakes-or try something more ambitious: restore the G7 to its founding mission." Carney's office kicked off that discussion June 7 with a list of the three "core missions" the PM will pursue in his role as G7 president, all "anchored in building stronger economies"-the same priority, CBC points out, that he has brought to the domestic scene in Canada. The list includes: "Protecting our communities and the world" by "strengthening peace and security, countering foreign interference and transnational crime, and improving joint responses to wildfires"; Building energy security and speeding up the "digital transition" by fortifying critical mineral supply chains and using technologies like artificial intelligence to spur economic growth; Investing in stronger infrastructure, creating higher-paying jobs, and fostering "dynamic", competitive markets for business. But much of the attention so far has been on the chaos Trump will bring to the table, just as he did in 2018 when Canada last hosted the G7 in Charlevoix, Quebec. Then, as now, U.S. tariffs were at the centre of the discussion, and Trump issued two angry tweets pulling the U.S. out of the leaders' final communique, just hours after countries had signed off on the text. "A show of unity on big geopolitical problems that holds longer than a few hours after President Donald Trump's participation will be seen as success after the American president in 2018 blew up a fragile consensus even before he left the last Canada-hosted G7 in Charlevoix, Que., later angrily insulting then-prime minister and G7 host Justin Trudeau," writes Toronto Star Ottawa bureau chief Tonda McCharles. This time around, "a key performance indicator for the summit will [be] getting something down that all leaders can agree upon that will also include the U.S.-and that will be a challenge," Deanna Horton, a diplomat who served twice in the Canadian embassy in Washington, told The Hill Times. On June 11, McCharles reported that organizers of this year's summit are not looking for a final communique that represents a consensus of all G7 members. "Instead, G7 host Carney is expected to issue a G7 chair's statement and the closed-door high-stakes sessions that could nevertheless produce some heated discussions will be summarized in documents likely to be so whitewashed of the juicy bits, that they could almost be written in advance." The Star has details on how the Summit agenda is likely to play out. Carney has also stirred controversy with the list of "middle power" countries he's invited to the summit. In addition to the leaders of Ukraine, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, and South Korea, the list includes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has been linked to acts of murder and extortion on Canadian soil, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been connected to human rights crackdowns, mistreatment of migrants, and the 2018 murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Meanwhile, Carney's plan for the summit makes scant direct reference to past G7 commitments in areas like power sector decarbonization, methane controls, forest and land degradation, and elimination of fossil fuel subsidies-a promise the countries made in 2016 and were supposed to deliver on by this year. "Its climate commitments remain stalled, and the vaunted $600-billion infrastructure pledge to the Global South-first announced in 2021 as the 'Build Back Better World' initiative-has been more frequently rebranded and re-announced than realized," Sandhu writes for The Hill Times. Moreover, "the G7 has yet to fulfill its decades-old promise to allocate 0.7% of each member's gross national income to humanitarian aid. At the start of the 2023 Hiroshima summit, it was still short by a staggering US$4.49-trillion. More troubling still, members like the United Kingdom have diverted aid funds from humanitarian crises to finance NATO expansions, raising serious questions about the group's priorities." In a release this week, Oxfam warned the G7 is in the midst of its biggest-ever foreign aid cut. The member countries, which account for three-quarters of the world's official development assistance, are on track to cut their aid budgets 28% in 2026 compared to 2024 levels, the organization said. "Rather than breaking from the Trump administration's cruel dismantling of USAID and other U.S. foreign assistance, G7 countries like the UK, Germany, and France are instead following the same path, slashing aid with brutal measures that will cost millions of lives," said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar. "The G7's retreat from the world is unprecedented and couldn't come at a worse time, with hunger, poverty, and climate harm intensifying. The G7 cannot claim to build bridges on one hand while tearing them down with the other." Meanwhile, in a G7 agenda stripped bare of any language that could rile up a volatile U.S. president, author Arno Kopecky says the massive wildfires covering swaths of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia are playing into Canadian officials' plan for keeping climate change in the conversation. When officials first began planning the meeting last year, "Canada's Liberal government wanted the G7 to discuss climate change (the host nation sets the summit agenda), but what if Donald Trump was there as President?" Kopecky writes for the Globe and Mail. "This was no abstract worry either: the day before Jasper caught fire, Joe Biden had dropped out of the presidential race, and the Democrats' prospects looked dismal." Officials "knew that if they start with the standard stuff on climate change, Donald Trump and his people would get out their red pens and just say 'no way,'" John Kirton, founding director of the G7 Research Group, told Kopecky. "So then, what is your strategy? And wildfires was the answer." The difference, Kopecky writes, is that while Trump refuses to listen to climate science, he's seen a rash of wildfires since he returned to the White House in January, and his country is now receiving smoke from the blazes in Canada. "So Donald Trump's got a reason to be seen to be doing something about it," Kirton said. It also "speaks volumes" that the energy security section of the G7 agenda talks about artificial intelligence, but makes no reference to oil and gas, Kopecky writes. Source: The Energy Mix
National Observer
2 hours ago
- National Observer
Protests at G7 summit in Alberta expected to be largely peaceful, targeting Trump policies
Protests during the upcoming G7 leaders summit in Kananaskis, Alta., may be starkly different than demonstrations happening this week against immigration crackdowns in the United States. A University of Toronto research group that has been monitoring the meetings of world leaders since 1998 says its analysis shows Canadian protests are more peaceful and smaller. But similar to the recent demonstrations in Los Angeles, they're likely to be against the policies of US President Donald Trump. "The Los Angeles protests will add another (issue) the protesters going there already care about, but it won't do anything much more than that," said John Kirton, director of the G7 Research Group. "I don't think it'll bring more protesters, too. Nor will the L.A. protests delay Trump from coming here." Prime Minister Mark Carney is hosting Trump and world leaders from France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy and the European Union for the three-day summit starting Sunday in the Rocky Mountains southwest of Calgary. Leaders of several non-member countries, including India, Ukraine and Mexico, are also set to attend. The summit comes as protests in the United States continue against Trump's immigration raids, particularly his government's detainment of migrants. Hundreds of marines have joined about 4,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles. The protests have seen clashes with police, burned cars, rubber bullets shot at journalists and arrests. In Alberta, Kirton said protests during the G7 are not expected to be the same. "(The G7's) distinctive mission from the very beginning was to promote within its own members the values of open democracy," he said. "In democracies, people are supposed to protest. It's an integral part." It's unlikely Canada's government would respond to any clashes like Trump, by calling in the military, Kirton added. The remote Kananaskis location will be closed off to the public. Visuals and audio of protesters at three demonstration zones designated by the RCMP — two in downtown Calgary and one in Banff — are to be shown to the leaders and other delegates at the summit on TV screens. Another zone at the Calgary airport won't be broadcast. Kirton said the distance between officials and protesters ensures the summit unfolds peacefully. "Trump has been subjected to two assassination attempts, and one almost killed him. So you can see why (RCMP) have to be hypervigilant," Kirton said. The Calgary Raging Grannies group plans to be at the protest zone at Calgary City Hall on Sunday afternoon. Mary Oxendale-Spensley, 74, said the grandmothers will be far from raging and clashing with police when they call out Trump's tariffs and his pitch to annex Canada. "We do intend to sing," said the retired teacher. One of their songs in the lineup: "U.S.A., you have got a problem." The song calls the US president an "orange blob" because of his tan, says he's "way out of line," and declares "our sovereign nation will never be yours," said Oxendale-Spensley. Ensuring Trump hears their message is vital, she said, even if it's on a screen. "I'm a Canadian. I was Canadian when I was born. I intend to be a Canadian when I die." It's hard to say how many grannies will be at the protest, she added. "My big complaint about the grannies always is that we're grannies. People get sick, people break their ankle, that kind of thing." Protests at the last G7 summit in Kananaskis in 2002 were peaceful, Kirton said, as demonstrators were also given designated zones. "I do remember most vividly it was very hot," Kirton said, and there were not many protesters. "There were so few of them and it was so peaceful that we didn't even bother to estimate a number." Aside from protests against Trump, some are expected to address other issues — like calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war and Russia's war in Ukraine, Kirton said. Kirton said he also anticipates a presence from Canadians who want Alberta to separate from Canada, as well as those opposed to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Tensions have been high between Canada and India since 2023, when former prime minister Justin Trudeau told the House of Commons that agents of the Indian government were linked to the killing of a Canadian activist for Sikh separatism outside a gurdwara in Surrey, BC. The World Sikh Organization of Canada said inviting Modi to the G7 is unacceptable. The International League of Peoples' Struggles, an international alliance of grassroots organizations, is expecting about 200 people for a protest also at Calgary City Hall. Yasmeen Khan, vice-chair of the group's North America chapter, said protesters want to raise awareness about various issues, including Indigenous struggles, housing and climate change. "We'll have banners. We'll be chanting," she said. " We will also have some cultural performances from some Indigenous artists and migrant youth." Mounties said first responders are prepared for protests. "While the number of participants may vary, we have strong situational awareness of anticipated demonstrations and are well positioned to respond accordingly," said RCMP spokesman Fraser Logan.
Toronto Star
3 hours ago
- Toronto Star
The Latest: California challenges Trump's use of military in Los Angeles
Opponents of President Donald Trump 's administration are set to rally in hundreds of cities on Saturday during the military parade in Washington for the Army's 250th anniversary — which coincides with Trump's birthday — as protests grow in response to his immigration policies. The 'No Kings' protests have been called, organizers say, to protect America's democracy as Trump vows to increase his deployment of military forces inside the United States. A federal court hearing is scheduled for Thursday challenging Trump's use of the National Guard and Marines to support immigration raids in Los Angeles. California leaders warn that the military intervention is the onset of a much broader effort by Trump to overturn norms at the heart of America's political system.
