Putin boasts of massive attack on Ukrainian troops
Vladimir Putin has boasted of a massive attack on a Ukrainian training base that the Kremlin claimed killed 70 of Kyiv's soldiers.
Ukraine confirmed that Russia on Tuesday struck the camp near Shostka in Sumy with an Iskander ballistic missile, but said six soldiers were killed and 10 injured.
Putin described the attack as 'good news' while visiting the Kursk region for the first time since it was retaken by his troops last month.
Ukraine said an investigation had been launched and that the commander of the unit targeted in the strike had been suspended.
Footage taken from a Russian drone before the attack shows dozens of Ukrainian troops – which Russian media identified as the 1st Special Forces Brigade – training on the tarmac, before appearing to run for cover. The video then shows a huge fireball explosion close to where the soldiers had been spotted.
Overnight, Ukraine struck a major electronics factory inside Russia's Oryol region. Footage shows a long-range drone targeted the site, sparking a huge blaze.
Russia, meanwhile, said it shot down a large-scale Ukrainian aerial onslaught across Russia overnight, destroying 159 drones, including 53 over the Oryol region and three over Moscow, sparking two city airports to temporarily suspend flights.
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The Sun
29 minutes ago
- The Sun
Keir Starmer is about as frightening as a stick of celery… but I'm more scared of him than Putin – here's why
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According to Starmer, we'd go from a country that can't even stop a rubber dinghy reaching the shores of Kent to a country that would shake fear into the entire Russian naval machine. It all sounds a bit preposterous, frankly, because first of all, where's the money coming from? He's already spent what little he had on train drivers, junior doctors and solar parks. So how can he suddenly afford 12 new submarines and a murder of fighter jets so complex they haven't even been invented yet. And who's he going to get to operate all this new kit, and run around in the muddy trenches, shooting at Ivan? Back in the Thirties, everyone in the country knew their duty. Not any more. Everyone's too busy shoplifting or choosing a gender or glueing themselves to the road. From tactical nuke to 7,600mph missile & 50k-troop assault…6 ways Putin could respond to Ukraine blitz after Trump call There's another issue too. 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The Independent
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The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Russia is at war with Britain and US no longer a reliable ally, UK adviser says
Russia is at war with Britain, the US is no longer a reliable ally and the UK has to respond by becoming more cohesive and more resilient, according to one of the three authors of the strategic defence review. Fiona Hill, from county Durham, became the White House's chief Russia adviser during Donald Trump's first term and contributed to the British government's strategy, and made the remarks in an interview with the Guardian. 'We're in pretty big trouble,' Hill says, describing the UK's geopolitical situation as caught between 'the rock' of Vladimir Putin's Russia and 'the hard place' of Donald Trump's increasingly unpredictable United States. The best known of the reviewers appointed by Labour, alongside Lord Robertson, a former Nato secretary general, and retired general Sir Richard Barrons, Hill, 59, said she was happy to take on the role because it was 'such a major pivot point in global affairs'. She remains a dual national even after living over 30 years in the US. 'Russia has hardened as an adversary in ways that we probably hadn't fully anticipated,' Hill says, arguing that Putin sees the Ukraine war as a starting point to Moscow becoming 'a dominant military power in all of Europe'. As part of that long-term effort, Russia is already 'menacing the UK in various different ways,' she says, citing 'the poisonings, assassinations, sabotage operations, all kinds of cyber attacks and influence operations. The sensors that we see that they're putting down around critical pipelines, efforts to butcher undersea cables.' The conclusion, Hill says, is that 'Russia is at war with us'. Though the foreign policy expert, a long time Russia watcher, says she first made a similar warning in 2015, in a revised version of a book she wrote about the Russian president with Clifford Gaddy, reflecting on the invasion and annexation of Crimea. 'We said Putin had declared war on the West,' she says. 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This way of thinking even appears in the defence review published earlier this week, which says 'the UK's long-standing assumptions about global power balances and structures are no longer certain' – a rare acknowledgement in a British government document of how far and how fast Trumpism is affecting foreign policy certainties. The review team reported to Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, and defence secretary John Healey. Most of Hill's interaction were with Healey however, and Hill said she only met the prime minister once – describing him as 'pretty charming … in a proper and correct way' and as 'having read all the papers'. Hill is not drawn on if she advised Starmer or Healey on how to deal with Donald Trump, saying instead 'the advice I would give is the same I would give in a public setting'. She says simply that the Trump White House 'is not an administration, it is a court' in which a transactional president is driven by his 'own desires and interests, and who listens often to the last person he talks to'. She adds that unlike his close circle, Trump has 'a special affinity for the UK' based partly on his own family ties (his mother came from the Hebridean island of Lewis, emigrating to New York aged 18) and an admiration for the royal family, particularly the late Queen. 'He talked endlessly about that,' she says. On the other hand, Hill is no fan of the populist right administration in the White House and worries it could come to Britain if 'the same culture wars' are allowed to develop with the encouragement of Republicans from the US. Already, she notes, Reform UK won a string of council elections last month, including in her native Durham, and leader Nigel Farage wants to emulate some of the aggressive efforts to restructure government led by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) before his falling out with Trump. 'When Nigel Farage says he wants to do a Doge against the local county council, he should come over here [to the US] and see what kind of impact that has,' she says. 'This is going to be the largest layoffs in US history happening all at once, much bigger than hits to steel works and coal mines.' Hill's argument is that in a time of profound uncertainty, Britain needs greater internal cohesion if it is to protect itself. 'We can't rely exclusively on anyone any more,' she says, arguing that Britain needs to have 'a different mindset' based as much on traditional defence as on social resilience. Some of that, Hill says, is about a greater recognition of the level of external threat and initiatives for greater integration, by teaching first aid in schools or encouraging more teenagers to join school cadet forces, a recommendation of the defence review. 'What you need to do is get people engaged in all kinds of different ways in support of their communities,' she says. Hill says she sees that deindustrialisation and a rise of inequality in Russia and the US has contributed to the rise in national populism in both countries. Politicians in Britain, or elsewhere, 'have to be much more creative and engage people where they are at' as part of a 'national effort'. If this seems far away from a conventional view of defence, that is because it is, though Hill also argues that traditional conceptions of war are changing as technology evolves and with it what makes a potent force. 'People keep saying the British army has the smallest number of troops since the Napoleonic era. Why is the Napoleonic era relevant? Or that we have fewer ships than the time of Charles II. The metrics are all off here,' Hill says. 'The Ukrainians are fighting with drones. Even though they have no navy, they sank a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet.' Her aim, therefore, is not just to be critical but to propose solutions. Hill recalls that a close family friend, on hearing that she had taken on the defence review, had told her: ''Don't tell us how shite we are, tell us what we can do, how we can fix things.' People understand that we have a problem and that the world has changed.'
