Russia and Ukraine step up the war on eve of peace talks
KYIV: On the eve of peace talks, Ukraine and Russia sharply ramped up the war with one of the biggest drone battles of their conflict, a Russian highway bridge blown up over a passenger train and an ambitious attack on nuclear-capable bombers deep in Siberia.
After days of uncertainty over whether or not Ukraine would even attend, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Defence Minister Rustem Umerov would sit down with Russian officials at the second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Monday.
The first round of the talks more than a week ago yielded the biggest prisoner exchange of the war - but no sense of any consensus on how to halt the fighting.
Amid talk of peace, though, there was much war.
At least seven people were killed and 69 injured when a highway bridge in Russia's Bryansk region, neighbouring Ukraine, was blown up over a passenger train heading to Moscow with 388 people on board. No one has yet claimed responsibility.
Ukraine attacked Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers at a military base deep in Siberia on Sunday, a Ukrainian intelligence official said, the first such attack so far from the front lines more than 4,300 km (2,670 miles) away.
The official said the operation involved hiding explosive-laden drones inside the roofs of wooden sheds and loading them onto trucks that were driven to the perimeter of the air bases.
A total of 41 Russian warplanes were hit, the official said.
RUSSIA ACKNOWLEDGES AIR BASE ATTACKS
Ukraine did not tell the Trump administration about the attack in advance, Axios reporter Barak Ravid said on X, citing an unnamed Ukrainian official.
Russia's Defence Ministry acknowledged on the Telegram messaging app that Ukraine had launched drone strikes against Russian military airfields across five regions on Sunday.
It said the attacks repelled the assaults in all but two regions — Murmansk in the far north and Irkutsk in Siberia - where "the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire".
The fires were extinguished without casualties. Some individuals involved in the attacks had been detained, the ministry said.
Russia launched 472 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine's air force said, the highest nightly total of the war so far. Russia had also launched seven missiles, the air force said.
Russia said it had advanced deeper into the Sumy region of Ukraine, and open source pro-Ukrainian maps showed Russia took 450 square km of Ukrainian land in May, its fastest monthly advance in at least six months.
US President Donald Trump has demanded Russia and Ukraine make peace and he has threatened to walk away if they do not - potentially pushing responsibility for supporting Ukraine onto the shoulders of European powers - which have far less cash and much smaller stocks of weapons than the United States.
According to Trump envoy Keith Kellogg, the two sides will in Turkey present their respective documents outlining their ideas for peace terms, though it is clear that after three years of intense war, Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart.
Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. The United States says over 1.2 million people have been killed and injured in the war since 2022.
Trump has called Putin "crazy" and berated Zelenskyy in public in the Oval Office, but the US president has also said that he thinks peace is achievable and that if Putin delays then he could impose tough sanctions on Russia.
In June last year, Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.
Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul will present to the Russian side a proposed roadmap for reaching a lasting peace settlement, according to a copy of the document seen by Reuters.
According to the document, there will be no restrictions on Ukraine's military strength after a peace deal is struck, no international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow's forces, and reparations for Ukraine.
The document also stated that the current location of the front line will be the starting point for negotiations about territory.
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CNA
15 hours ago
- CNA
Commentary: Ukraine drone attack was ingenious – and a nightmare scenario come true
SINGAPORE: Ukraine has held out against a stronger adversary for more than three years, thanks to its ability to wage asymmetric warfare. Even so, the drone attack deep inside Russia on Sunday (Jun 1) was particularly audacious. Multiple drone swarms launched from container trucks hit four airbases thousands of kilometres from the frontlines and destroyed several Russian long-range bombers. For some, it was a "genius" move; for others, it confirms a nightmare scenario. Ukraine's Operation Spider's Web is a classic example of how technology has rewritten the playbook of war, and how long-range strikes into enemy territory can be conducted cheaply and quietly with disproportionate results. Beyond Russia, the attack would have sent reverberations among defence planners around the world. For some time now, even though some analysts have warned that something like this was not beyond the realm of possibility given the technology already available, it would have undoubtedly been a shock to see it put into practice so successfully and on such a scale. Everyone and their valuable military assets can be vulnerable to such threats. WHAT WENT DOWN IN OPERATION SPIDER'S WEB Hundreds of drones, each carrying an explosive munition, struck bases deep inside Russia – with the farthest one, Belaya, located in Siberia, just north of Russia's border with Mongolia and more than 4,000km from the Ukraine. These bases were likely chosen due to their housing of long-range, high-value Russian air assets such as bombers and surveillance aircraft. The former have been lobbing cruise missiles at Ukraine with impunity since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Ukraine's intelligence service revealed the drones were smuggled into Russia on specially designed racks housed inside modified standard shipping containers. They were driven to spots near the air bases by unwitting Russian truck drivers. The Ukrainians added that the drones were mostly flown autonomously, with video feeds and some operator input sent via the Russian mobile phone network. One of their videos appears to suggest this was the case, with the drone hovering above the wing of a Russian Tu-95MS bomber and gingerly adjusting its position before plunging down near where the plane's wing met its fuselage. This is one of its most vulnerable spots – the location of its fuel tanks. Another video released by Ukraine that has been geolocated by open-source intelligence (OSINT) investigators to Olenya air base in northern Russia showed three more Tu-95MS bombers and a transport aircraft burning fiercely. UNCONVENTIONAL MEANS, DEVASTATING RESULTS The attack is the latest demonstration of Ukraine's ingenuity and ability to harness technology and use unconventional methods to exploit a stronger adversary's vulnerabilities. The Ukrainians claimed to have hit 41 Russian aircraft, though a United States assessment put the number closer to 20, of which about 10 were destroyed. Given that Russia's long-range bomber fleet has been estimated to be about 80 aircraft, the loss of almost 13 per cent of the force represents a significant blow to this area of Russian military capabilities. This was not the first time Ukraine has used drones to strike Russian bases far from the frontlines. Previous occasions have utilised larger, longer-ranged drones launched from Ukraine. But these attacks have lower rates of successes against defended targets as the drones are bigger and more easily detected and targeted by air defences. Still, these have had some success, particularly with attacks on Russian ammunition storages that have triggered spectacular explosions and fires and deprived their enemy of bombs and other explosives. They have also forced the Russians to base their aircraft further from Ukraine, which imposes a cost: increased transit times to and from operating areas, increased strain on aircraft and crews, which reduced the number of missions that can be flown. HEADACHE TO DEFEND AGAINST So what are the options for militaries seeking to protect valuable assets if conventional air defences would struggle to detect and destroy such drones? There are a range of anti-drone systems (or Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems, C-UAS) available, ranging from guns and missiles to electronic jammers that disrupt the signals between the drone and its operator. Other solutions are also being developed, such as the use of laser (directed energy) weapons to destroy the drone. Each has its downsides, however. Missiles are an expensive way to down drones that can be cheaper by orders of magnitude, while they, like guns, are limited by the amount of ammunition each system can be carried. Directed energy weapons have high power requirements which means they tend to have a large physical footprint. Japan has built and tested a 10-kilowatt directed energy C-UAS system that is mounted on a large eight-wheeled truck. Thus, a sufficiently large drone swarm has the potential to overwhelm missile-, gun- and energy-based C-UAS systems with their sheer numbers. Another issue is scaling, particularly in large countries like Russia, where literally thousands of systems need to be acquired to adequately protect every likely target. If the swarm uses the local mobile phone network to operate, as the Ukrainians are claiming, then jammers would be of limited utility as they operate on other frequencies. Both sides in the war have also been increasing the use of fibre-optic drones in the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, where operators control their drones via a fibre-optic cable attached to the drone that can stretch for tens of kilometres, meaning they cannot be jammed by electronic means. The other possible solution against the threat is what is termed passive defences. These include the building of hardened shelters that provide all-round protection for high-value assets that are at the very least capable of protection against smaller munitions explosive devices. It will take a lot of effort and will not come cheap, but the flipside is, what is the cost of leaving high value military assets like aircraft vulnerable to a threat that is no longer just hypothetical? It is a question that all countries will be quickly trying to answer now.
CNA
a day ago
- CNA
Moscow to decide 'how and when' to respond to Ukraine attack on airbases: Kremlin
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CNA
a day ago
- CNA
North Korea's Kim vows 'unconditional support' for Russia's war in Ukraine
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