Russian attacks kill five in Zaporizhzhia, injure several in Kharkiv, regional officials say
June 2 (Reuters) - Russian shelling and air attacks killed five people outside the southeastern Ukraine city of Zaporizhzhia, while a drone attack on the northeast region of Sumy injured at least six early on Monday, including two children, regional officials said.
Ivan Fedorov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said three women died in a series of Russian shelling incidents targeting the village of Ternuvate, east of Zaporizhzhia late on Sunday. A shop and several homes were badly damaged.
A man died in a nearby district in a Russian strike by a guided aerial bomb, Fedorov said. A total of nine people were injured in the Russian attacks and a private home was destroyed.
Two children were among those injured in a Russian drone attack on the Sumy region, Oleh Sinehubov, the governor of the region, said on Monday on Telegram.
"A 7-year-old boy is among the victims," Sinehubov said. He added that several buildings throughout the regions were damaged.
The attacks come as both Russia and Ukraine are about to meet for a round of peace talks, trying to find a way to end the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion on its smaller neighbour more than three years ago.
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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Scaring Putin is the only route to a just peace
Nobody in their right mind thought Putin would come to the latest round of peace talks in Istanbul with any seriousness. And so it has proven. His demands are straight out of Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko's negotiating playbook: demand the maximum, present ultimatums and do not give one inch. Putin's terms for a final settlement are no different from his diktats from the start, including international recognition of Moscow's occupation of the four regions he considers Russian territory, and a guarantee Ukraine never joins any international alliances. Even Putin's pathways to a temporary ceasefire require withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from all of the four regions, demobilisation of the armed forces, cessation of international military aid and electing a new government. In other words: total capitulation, with Ukraine surrendering its sovereignty, partitioned, isolated, disarmed and a Russian puppet government in Kyiv. That doesn't mean negotiations shouldn't continue in the hope of achieving less punitive terms. The Ukrainian government has already signalled it would be ready to accept the temporary occupation of territory Russia has already captured. But it is hard to see how Putin will climb down from his maximalist position without significant changes on the battlefield or to the economic situation. President Trump tried a softball approach with Putin, extending the prospect of major economic benefits through a return to normalisation in US-Russia relations. Putin hasn't bought that even though he has ham-fistedly attempted to mollify Trump and encourage him to abandon Ukraine with his disingenuous ploy of engaging in negotiations. Trump obviously sees right through that. He said he was 'p----d off' by Putin's proposal that Ukraine should be placed under external administration with elections overseen by the UN. The US now needs to try a different approach. Trump can say he did everything he could to end the bloodshed in the first months of his presidency but Putin's intransigence now demands different tactics. What would those tactics be? Continue to hold out an olive branch while doubling down on US military backing to Ukraine and pressuring European allies to do the same thing. It was Biden's faltering leadership that allowed most West European countries as well as the US to do the least they could get away with. That needs to change and we've already seen how Trumpian hectoring can compel Europeans to boost their own defence spending, both in his first term and even more in his second. Renewing US commitment to Nato would also help encourage European leaders. It would send a powerful message to Putin too, whose overriding strategic objective is dividing the West. We need to move on from providing Ukraine with just enough to defend themselves but never enough to prevail. The effort required to drive Russia back out of Ukraine is probably too much to expect, but the point would be to enable Kyiv to do even more damage to Russian forces to compel Putin to reconsider his current calculation that he can grind Ukraine down and outlast the West's support. Among the most harmful constraints Biden imposed on Ukraine was forbidding use of US-supplied weapons to attack Russian sovereign territory. That was the consequence of his fear of Russian escalation, both against Ukraine and Nato countries. It allowed Putin to continue to shield the Russian population from the conflict, keeping it limited to a 'special military operation'. Kyiv didn't play ball though, firing home-made drones into Russia and even mounting the first invasion of its territory since the Second World War. The latest breathtaking drone attack on Russia, which destroyed a large chunk of its strategic air force on the ground shows what can be done. Some say the US and European countries should distance themselves from that, dreading Moscow's retaliation. But irrespective of the diplomatic position they choose to take, they should do the opposite, by giving Ukraine what it needs to carry out further strikes to undermine Russian military capability, drive the war home to the population and humiliate Putin. Trump should start to do real economic damage to Russia. Much can be achieved by more effective military action to increase weapons and equipment loss rates, potentially forcing Putin to transition the economy to a full war footing. The half-hearted sanctions against Russia have not been good enough and European countries have paid more to Russia for hydrocarbons than they have given in aid to Ukraine. We need to turn the screws by tougher measures against the Russian energy sector, finally detaching Moscow from the international banking system and disrupting the ghost tanker fleet that has allowed oil revenues to surge. A bitter blow would also be landed by seizing the entirety of Russia's $330 billion of frozen assets in Western countries to pay for the war, or at least plan to do so subject to negotiations.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Ukraine-Russia war latest: Crimean bridge blown up in massive explosion, say Kyiv's special forces
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Alexander Butler3 June 2025 21:00 Inside Operation Spiderweb: Ukraine's drone triumph is a blow against Russia that will spook friend and foe alike Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb is blow to Russia that will spook friend and foe alike Operation Spiderweb is a triumph of intelligence and technological cunning that our enemies will be studying, says world affairs editor Sam Kiley Alexander Butler3 June 2025 20:00 Medvedev says Russia seeks victory, not compromise, in talks with Ukraine Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that the point of holding peace talks with Ukraine was to ensure a swift and complete Russian victory. "The Istanbul talks are not for striking a compromise peace on someone else's delusional terms but for ensuring our swift victory and the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi regime," the hawkish deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council said on Telegram. "That's what the Russian Memorandum published yesterday is about." 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BreakingNews.ie
an hour ago
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Zelensky condemns ‘brutal' rocket attack after four killed in Ukrainian city
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