Ukraine war briefing: New air assault on Kyiv
Ukrainian air defences were trying to repel a Russian air attack on Kyiv, the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said early on Sunday. Air raid and missile alerts were issued just before 2am on Sunday morning. Ukrainian news outlets reported the sound of explosions. It comes a week after the biggest Russian air raid of the war against the Ukrainian capital.
Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine killed at least two people including a nine-year-old girl on Saturday, officials said. Russian troops launched 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine overnight and into Saturday, the Ukrainian air force saod. Three of the missiles and 42 drones were destroyed and another 30 drones failed to reach their targets, causing no damage, it said. The girl was killed in a strike on the frontline village of Dolynka in the Zaporizhzhia region, and a 16-year-old was injured, said Zaporizhzhia's governor, Ivan Fedorov. A man was killed by Russian shelling in Ukraine's Kherson region, said Oleksandr Prokudin, its governor.
William Christou writes that Ukrainian officials issued evacuation orders on Saturday for 11 more villages in the northern Sumy region amid Russian territorial gains. The Russian ministry of defence said it had taken control of the village of Novopil in the eastern Donetsk region, as well as the village of Vodolahy in the northern Sumy region. By Sunday, 213 settlements were under evacuation orders in Sumy, which borders Russia's Kursk region. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said about 50,000 Russian troops have amassed in the area with the intention of launching an offensive to carve out a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine's top army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Saturday that Russian forces were focusing their main offensive efforts on Pokrovsk, Torets and Lyman in the Donetsk region, as well as the Sumy border area. Syrskyi said Ukrainian forces continued holding territory in Russia's Kursk region, counter to Russian claims. In Kursk, a local official said 14 people were injured including four children when Ukrainian drones struck apartment buildings.
Zelenskyy said Russia was 'undermining diplomacy' by withholding a promised memorandum setting out its position on ending the more than three-year war. Talks have been tentatively scheduled for Istanbul during the coming week but 'for some reason, the Russians are concealing this document. This is an absolutely bizarre position. There is no clarity about the format,' Zelenskyy said. Ukraine has provided its peace terms but in a delaying tactic the Kremlin has said it will only reciprocate at the negotiating table, leaving Kyiv unable to properly prepare for the meeting.
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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Ukraine's race to rebuild power plants under Russian bombardment
Valeria was about to take a bite of pizza when the Iskander landed nearby. The blast from the Russian missile shattered all the windows in the Mykolaiv CHP (combined heat and power) plant in southern Ukraine, igniting a gas fire and propelling shrapnel through the canteen. 'I had imagined what I might do when a missile or a Shahed [drone] comes, like if it really happens to me, and I had told myself I should be really calm at that moment,' says the 27-year-old. She and her twin sister Alyona led a hyperventilating colleague out of the plant's office to her car. The trio were still driving away when the second Iskander hit, devastating the plant's boiler-room. After that Oct 10 strike, the plant was targeted again, in January, February and May, each time with Shahed drones. On Thursday night, Russia renewed its campaign against Ukraine's national energy infrastructure, breaking a loosely followed ceasefire Vladimir Putin agreed with Donald Trump in a phone call on March 18. Power facilities were struck in the western city of Ternopil and targeted in other areas, days after Putin warned he would avenge Ukraine's elaborate 'Spiderweb' attack on Russia's bomber fleet. 'The scumbags haven't hit the energy sector en masse for five months,' wrote Myroshnykov, a Ukrainian military blogger. 'Ballistics on transformers – only the scumbags could do that.' On Friday night, Moscow struck the northeastern city of Kharkiv with what the mayor described as the 'most powerful attack' since the start of the war, involving more than 50 Iranian-made drones, one rocket and four guided bombs. At least three people were killed and 22 wounded in the devastating strikes. Harrowing scenes saw bloodied residents being carried out on stretchers from their homes by rescue workers wearing gas masks. Respite is direly needed. Ukraine faces shortfalls in both electricity and natural gas production after the wave of Russian attacks – and every hour without further explosions allows for the progress of repairs. Few appreciate the challenges like Dmytro Myroshnychenko, the chairman of Mykolaiv CHP plant. On a tour of the facility, he grimly points out the legacy of Russia's bombardment: the boiler-room is a tangle of charred iron and splintered rebar; shrapnel perforates an oil tank; flaps of corrugated roof panelling limp over the walls of the destroyed turbine control centre. In full health, the Mykolaiv CHP heats 160,000 homes and provides 26MW of electricity to the national grid. The latter was ended by a February drone strike. That the plant managed to deliver heat over winter is testament to the grit of its staff. After the first Iskander strike in October, Mr Myroschnychenko ran through the facility to check if anyone was injured. 'My first thought was, everyone is lying on the floor,' he says. Luckily, everyone survived. The next day, repairs began. Russia's attack hit two weeks before the start of Mykolaiv's heating season, when residents can turn on their radiators as temperatures sink below freezing. Staff were nervous coming to work but 'everyone understood the importance, as if we didn't rebuild the city would be left without heat'. Only interrupted by air raid alerts, workers frantically shifted pipelines from the two ruined boilers to a 1930s predecessor. When he pushed the button to turn on the heat again, Mr Myroschnychenko felt little relief. 'I knew more attacks would be coming,' he says, 'so we started preparing for them.' The £29.5million needed to build two new boilers is prohibitive; instead, the plant is focused on keeping its elderly system running. Four small metal air raid shelters have been placed on the plant floor, in addition to three underground bunkers. Gennady, a 47-year-old machinist, escaped the boiler room by touch in one strike, unable to see through the clouds of dust. Now, when sirens warn of an impending strike, he often has to climb up and down several ladders: unlike the destroyed computerised systems, the surviving parts have to be operated by hand. He jokes there is one advantage: 'It is difficult to break them so easily, as there are no electronics.' But they are harder to shut down in an emergency. One new metal air raid shelter stands a few feet from the boiler. As Gennady opens the door, a worker caught in a lunchtime nap guiltily slips out. The most serious challenge facing Ukraine ahead of the next heating season is a shortage of gas, with underground storage badly hit by the Russian strikes: Mykolaiv CHP lost large quantities when the Iskander destroyed a pipeline. 'We need to find $2.5 billion and purchase gas, putting aside the risk of further strikes. The task is quite clear, but extremely difficult,' Oleksandr Kharchenko, the director of Ukraine's energy research centre, told RBC-Ukraine, a local news outlet, this month. Last winter, Ukraine avoided a crisis. Record high temperatures and low industrial use spared residents from major power cuts. Experts are calling for small boilers, firewood and coal to be delivered to the worst-hit cities – Mykolaiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Kryvih Rih – before winter. Should there be long-lasting blackouts, further waves of refugees will head west. Others will freeze to death. In Mykolaiv CHP, the workers plough on with gallows humour. The plant knows war: it was destroyed by the Nazis when they were forced out of Mykolaiv by the Red Army in 1943. A portrait of Lenin has been left above the doorway in one workshop, with the name 'Morozov' scrawled underneath; a decades-old reference to a lookalike employee. The shipyard next door built Russia's only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetzov, before this invasion began. All the plant's staff are protected from conscription. But it needs another 40 people to get up to speed, admits Mr Myroshnychenko. At work, Valeria and her friends no longer eat pizza. The next time they sat down to one after the October strike, an air raid sounded immediately. 'It's become a joke,' she says – and another reason to loathe the Russians.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Kyiv rejects Russia's claims that Ukraine is delaying exchange of soldiers' bodies
KYIV, June 7 (Reuters) - Russia's claims that Ukraine is delaying exchange of soldiers' bodies are untrue, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday, urging Moscow to stop "playing dirty games" and return to constructive work. Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said on Saturday that Ukraine had unexpectedly postponed exchanging prisoners of war and accepting the bodies of killed soldiers for an indefinite period. Russia and Ukraine held the second round of peace talks in Istanbul on Monday where they agreed to exchange more prisoners - focusing on the youngest and most severely wounded - and to return the bodies of 12,000 dead soldiers. "Today's statements by the Russian side do not correspond to reality or to previous agreements on either the exchange of prisoners or the repatriation of bodies," Ukraine's state-run Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said on the Telegram messenger. It said that the agreement on the repatriation of the bodies had indeed been reached, but that no date had been agreed upon and that "the Russian side had resorted to unilateral actions" that had not been agreed within the framework of the process. Medinsky said Russia had also handed over to Ukraine the first list of 640 prisoners of war, categorised as "wounded, seriously ill and young people," in order to begin the exchange. Ukraine, in turn, stated that it had also handed over the names for exchange, while Russia's lists did not correspond to the agreed approach as to which prisoners would be prioritised in the exchange.
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
Incredible new footage of Ukraine's Op Spiderweb shows smuggled drone taking off from lorry & blitzing Putin's bombers
THIS is the moment a smuggled Ukrainian drone launched from the roof of a lorry — and blitzed a Russian Tu-22M3 bomber in a direct hit. The incredible footage, part of Ukraine's covert 'Operation Spiderweb,' tracks the FPV drone from launch to impact in stunning detail. It shows the drone lifting off from the top of what appears to be a transport vehicle — camouflaged as part of everyday infrastructure. The FPV is then seen skimming across enemy territory and diving into a high-value target at Russia's Belaya airfield. As the drone closes in, smoke is already seen rising from previous strikes - the aftermath of a calculated blitz that's left Russia's long-range air force in shambles. The strike is part of a larger, high-stakes campaign that's left a trail of wreckage across four of Russia's strategic air bases. It also delivered a staggering $7 billion blow to Vladimir Putin's long-range bomber fleet.
