Latest news with #RussianOffensive
Al Arabiya
3 days ago
- General
- Al Arabiya
Evacuation order for 11 villages on Ukraine border with Russia
Authorities in Ukraine's Sumy region bordering Russia on Saturday ordered the mandatory evacuation of 11 villages because of bombardments, as Kyiv feared a Russian offensive there. 'This decision takes into account the constant threat to civilian lives because of the bombardments of border communities,' Sumy's administration said. Russia in recent weeks has claimed to have taken several villages in the northeastern region.
New York Times
5 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Russia Appears to Launch New Offensive in Ukraine Amid Peace Talks
After incremental gains for months, Russian forces are advancing on Ukrainian battlefields at the fastest pace this year. They are bombarding Ukrainian cities with some of the biggest drone and missile strikes of the war. They have even opened another front in northern Ukraine. The Kremlin's summer offensive appears to be underway. Military analysts say it is clear that Russian forces this month began their latest concerted attempt to achieve a breakthrough, even as Moscow's representatives have engaged in the first direct peace talks with Ukraine since 2022. In particular, Russian forces are pushing into the remaining Ukrainian-controlled territory in the Donbas area in the east, in the fourth year of a conflict that has become a war of attrition. They used the winter lull to build up equipment reserves, improve battlefield communications and tweak the tactics and technical abilities of attack drones, said the military analysts. Despite some localized battlefield successes, the pace of Russia's advances remains slow, and few analysts expect it to achieve a decisive victory this summer that would reshape the war. Russia's intensified bombing campaign and mounting civilian casualties are already hurting geopolitically. President Trump has stopped praising President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and threatened new American sanctions against Russia. Ukraine is deepening its alliance with major European nations. And the Ukrainian public is more skeptical than ever of Russia's peace overtures. 'What Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,' Mr. Trump said in a social media post on Tuesday. 'He's playing with fire!' The Kremlin, in typical fashion, has not directly commented on the offensive or announced its commencement. Mr. Putin has said merely that the Russian forces are creating a 'buffer zone' with Ukraine to protect Russian civilians from enemy raids. He has also repeated his mantra that the war will end only when Russia eliminates the 'root causes' of the conflict, a shorthand for wide-ranging demands that Ukraine and its allies see as subjugation. While advancing on the ground despite heavy losses on both sides, Russia is also using combined drone and missile strikes to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, exhaust its citizens and deplete its industrial base. Russia's defense ministry has justified attacks on Ukrainian cities as a tit-for-tat response to the more limited Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian towns and cities, which are causing a smaller number of civilian deaths. It is unclear what role the Kremlin expects the unfolding offensive to play in the broader complex diplomatic maneuvers over ending the war. Nor is it clear whether Mr. Trump would follow through on his threats to exert more pressure on Mr. Putin to reach a cease-fire. Some Western analysts say that Mr. Putin may be using the dry weather season most conducive for offensive operations to maximize his negotiating power before giving more weight to peace talks later this year. It would be rational, they argue, for Russia, which has had the edge on the battlefield for most of the past two years, to use military pressure as leverage in any negotiations. 'Russia is used to the idea of fighting and talking at the same time,' said Samuel Charap, a Washington-based senior political scientist focused on Russia at the RAND Corporation, a security research organization. The offensive, he said, shows that Russia is unwilling to meet European and Ukrainian calls for a cease-fire before negotiating a peace deal that satisfies its demands. Mr. Charap does not expect a diplomatic breakthrough in the near future, given how far apart the two sides are. But he is said that the current uptick in violence did not rule out progress in talks. Warring sides often 'attempt to get as much as possible before the guns fall silent,' Mr. Charap added. But many other analysts, as well as the governments of Ukraine and the European Union, say the acceleration of attacks prove that Mr. Putin is not serious about the peace talks, which tentatively restarted in Istanbul this month under pressure from the White House. The Russian offensive is not about gaining negotiating leverage, they say — it is about winning the war. On Wednesday, Russia's foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, proposed a new round of talks in Istanbul on June 2. Ukraine's defense minister, Rustem Umerov, responded by saying that Kyiv was open to another meeting, but wanted to see concrete cease-fire proposals from the Kremlin first. Kyiv said it had already submitted its own proposals to allies. 'Diplomacy cannot succeed amid constant attacks,' President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Monday, hours after one of Russia's largest aerial strikes of the war. Some Russian analysts tied to the opposition contend that this year's offensive could backfire, the culmination of Mr. Putin's military hubris. They argue that any Russian gains might evaporate as the country's military machine deflates later this year under economic pressure and dwindling resources. But Russia's military and economy have already survived multiple setbacks and predictions of collapse. For now, Russian forces are on the attack. This month, they have more than doubled the area that they seized in April, capturing an average of 5.5 square miles each day, according to data from Deepstate, a Ukrainian war monitoring group with ties to the country's military. Russia this month is advancing at the fastest pace since November, the data shows. Most of the recent gains came in Donetsk, one of the two regions that make up the Donbas, the historically Russian-speaking area at the center of the Kremlin's territorial claims. This month, the Russian military broke through defenses between the besieged Ukrainian cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, pushing north toward the last regional logistical hubs under Ukrainian control. The attack appears to be the beginning of a planned Russian campaign to conquer the remainder of Donetsk this year, said Dmitri Kuznets, a military analyst at the independent Russian news outlet Meduza. Russian forces are also making smaller gains in the Sumy region, north of the major city of Kharkiv. They are building on the momentum after pushing back most Ukrainian forces that last year had occupied part of Russia's Kursk region, across the border from Sumy. 'A decision has been taken to create the necessary security buffer zone along the borders,' Mr. Putin told his ministers in a televised meeting last week. 'Our Armed Forces are working on this task right now.' Most military analysts believe that Russia lacks the resources to occupy all Ukrainian land bordering Russia. But the Sumy incursion, they say, has succeeded in tying down thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, limiting Ukraine's ability to reinforce its fraying defenses in the Donbas. Russia also appears to have expanded the production and improved the effectiveness of its drones. Last week, Russian forces launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities over three nights, the biggest barrage of the war. A small but significant fraction of these weapons are penetrating air defenses and causing damage to both industrial and civilian buildings. Military analysts have attributed this trend to a combination of Kyiv's dwindling anti-air ammunition, innovations in Russian tactics and the sheer scale of the attacks. In particular, Mr. Kuznets said, Russia has been able to upgrade the motors on some of the domestically made models of the Iranian Shahed drone. The new motor allows those drones, known in Russia as Geran, to carry bigger payloads and fly at higher altitudes, making it harder to shoot them down or jam their signals. On the night of May 24 to 25, for example, Russia launched 367 drones and missiles at Kyiv, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. The air force said that 56 got through its defenses, including all nine Iskander ballistic missiles launched that night. Twelve civilians died in that attack, according to Ukrainian officials. The United Nations reported a rise in civilian war casualties in Ukraine even before this month's record barrages — more than 200 civilians killed in April, the highest figure since September of last year. Mr. Kuznets said the aim of Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities was to divert the enemy's resources from the front line, and to retaliate for Ukrainian strikes on Russian cities. The broader aim of the offensive, he said, is to convince the Ukrainian public and Kyiv's Western allies that Russia is prepared to fight for as long as it takes to win. Whether this view represents Mr. Putin's real intentions or merely bluff is another matter. The offensive, in other words, may be merely another card in the poker that Mr. Putin has been playing with Ukraine, the United States and Europe, Mr. Kuznets said, a strategy that has become increasingly unpredictable since Mr. Trump's return to office. 'He wants to show, here and now, that he is willing to slowly push forward,' Mr. Kuznets said, referring to Mr. Putin. 'And he questions adversaries: Are you willing to do the same?'
RNZ News
7 days ago
- General
- RNZ News
Russia seizes villages in northern Ukraine, drone attacks ease
By Tom Balmforth and Yuliia Dysa , Reuters A burnt-out room is in a house destroyed by a Russian drone attack in the Odesa district, Odesa region, Ukraine, on May 26 , 2025. Photo: Nina Liashonok / NurPhoto via AFP Russian forces have captured four villages in Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region, the local governor said, the latest battlefield setback for Kyiv as it seeks to hold territory and avoid handing Moscow the advantage in any peace talks. The Russian advances follow some of the biggest drone and missile attacks on Ukraine since the full-scale war began in early 2022, although the level dropped markedly overnight in Europe from Monday to Tuesday. Ukraine has also fired dozens of long-range drones into Russia in recent days, forcing some Moscow airports to close temporarily. Ukrainian forces used Sumy region as a launch pad to seize a chunk of Russia's neighbouring Kursk region last year before being largely driven out by April. The area has been pounded for months by Russian guided bomb attacks and other strikes. "The enemy is continuing attempts to advance with the aim of setting up a so-called 'buffer zone'," Sumy Governor Oleh Hryhorov wrote on Facebook. He said the villages of Novenke, Basivka, Veselivka and Zhuravka had been occupied, adding that residents had long been evacuated. Russia's Defence Ministry said on Monday it had taken the nearby village of Bilovody, implying a further advance in the more than three-year war. Though Russia's offensive activity is concentrated in the eastern Donetsk region, Moscow's inroads into northeastern Ukraine show how it is stretching Kyiv's forces on multiple fronts. President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly warned that Russia is preparing new offensives against Sumy as well as the northeastern Kharkiv and southeastern Zaporizhzhia regions. "There is much evidence that they are preparing new offensive operations. Russia is counting on further war," he said on Monday, without elaborating. Zelensky has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of dragging his feet over peace talks, after representatives from the warring parties met in person earlier in May for the first time in three years. Russia launched an unprecedented drone barrage against Ukraine at the end of last week, firing more than 900 drones as well as missiles over three nights, prompting US President Donald Trump to label Putin as "crazy". Trump also said he was considering new sanctions against Russia to pressure Moscow to negotiate, but there has been no indication of action yet and he has shifted US policy towards Russia's position since returning to office. Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that the scale of Russia's overnight attacks dropped sharply from the preceding barrage. Zelenskiy has repeatedly called for the West to step up sanctions pressure on Russia to force it to accept the need for peace. During a trip to the Kursk region in March, Putin repeated his call for his military to consider establishing a "buffer zone" along Russia's border. Ukrainian officials have said for weeks that Russian troops are trying to make inroads into Sumy region, the main city of which lies less than 30km from the border. Russian forces, attacking in small groups on motorcycles and supported by drones, have been widening the area where they have been carrying out assaults, a spokesperson for Ukraine's border guard service said. Hryhorov, the regional governor, said Ukraine's troops were "keeping the situation under control, inflicting precise fire damage on the enemy". - Reuters
Irish Times
26-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Kyiv braced for Russian summer offensive
Ukrainian officials are expecting a bloody Russian summer offensive that could reshape the war's trajectory. While Ukraine's leaders continue their push for a 30-day ceasefire, many people are under no illusion about Russia's years-long war winding down any time soon, Ukrainian officials and soldiers have told the Financial Times. They argue that Russia shows no sign of scaling back its military assaults or making real concessions. A recent meeting in Turkey, they said, left Kyiv's negotiators convinced that peace remains a distant prospect. There, Russia's lead negotiator warned they could again invade and capture Ukraine's northern Sumy and Kharkiv regions, according to a Ukrainian official. Days later, on a visit to Russia's Kursk region where Ukrainian forces have been pushed out, president Vladimir Putin joked approvingly when a local official said neighbouring Sumy 'should be ours'. READ MORE On Thursday, Putin announced that his forces were 'creating a security buffer zone' along the Ukrainian border, a term that has been used before to signal cross-border incursions. Washington's oscillating support for Kyiv has only emboldened the Russian leader. After speaking at length with Putin on Monday, the US president informed Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the two sides should settle the terms of a peace deal among themselves. US president Donald Trump said on Sunday that he is losing patience with Putin, but the comments are unlikely to have assuaged concerns in Ukraine. European governments, too, have been slow to act on pledges to bolster security, including a proposed 'reassurance force' that has yet to materialise and some in Kyiv worry may never come to fruition. Yehor Firsov, an MP and drone unit commander in Ukraine's 109th Brigade, said it's time his country faces the 'harsh reality' that Russia's confidence may outlast western unity. 'Putin is convinced he can break Ukraine,' he said. 'He simply believes our complete capitulation is only a matter of time . . . the US might stop its aid any day now. He sees Europe as weak and indecisive.' Along Ukraine's more than 1,000-kilometre front line, the rhythm of war has settled into a brutal, deadly pattern. Moscow is regrouping ahead of what soldiers and analysts said is the lead-up to a new, big push in the months ahead. Ukrainian troops on the eastern front said that Russian infantry are darting around on motorcycles, buggies and electric scooters. Said Ismahilov, a soldier who was once Ukraine's senior Muslim cleric, compared them to a 'swarm of locusts . . . not one great wave, but an endless stream. 'They don't care about losses. They just keep coming . . . not to take kilometres, but metres – wrecked trenches, a few blasted trees, the shell of a house.' Fighting has intensified in recent weeks around Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka, pressuring the strongholds of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk and approaching the borders of neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region. Aiding the infantry is Russia's heavy and high-tech weaponry blasting its way through, with glide bombs, missiles and drones – including new models connected via fibre-optic cables that make them immune to electronic jamming. Defenders have been forced to pull back from towns including Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, where the cost of holding ground proved too high. However, the Ukrainians 'remain a formidable force on the defence', said Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based military analyst. 'We can expect gradual Russian advances but no imminent collapses, no collapse of the front line.' The Ukrainians are now much less dependent on the US for artillery supplies, with the Europeans having stepped up. Russia has only 'slight superiority in artillery fire,' he added. A wounded Ukrainian soldier at a stabilisation point near the fron tline city of Pokrovsk, Donetsk region. Photograph: Sergey Shestak/EPA A deputy commander of an assault unit near Pokrovsk, near the city of Donetsk, said they were still holding the line, 'but we're exhausted'. He has fought since 2014, through injuries, and missing family milestones. Trump's campaign pledge to end the war in '24h' initially gave him a glimmer of hope. But re cent developments have forced him and his troops to ignore the news because it sends them into a rage. 'It's just noise. Propaganda. Lies,' he said. The war has narrowed his world to 'the next mission . . . the next fight' – so much so that at times he doesn't feel human. 'I'm a zombie.' That sense of exhaustion and frustration is spreading through the ranks. Among both seasoned officers and newly mobilised troops, morale is fraying – worn down by a growing feeling that there is no clear plan to end the war, and that lives are being sacrificed for nothing. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, a battalion commander in the elite 47th Mechanised Brigade, went public last week with his concerns. His unit operates US-made Abrams and German Leopard tanks – symbols of Kyiv's western backing – but he wrote on social media that even the best equipment cannot compensate for flawed planning that sent his men into harm's way. 'In recent months, it has started to feel like we are being erased – like our lives are being treated as disposable. 'The problems are systemic, not personal,' he added, urging a sober reassessment of operational capacity and a strategy that matches the battlefield reality. Ukraine's general staff responded to his complaint by saying it was looking into the matter. The war has exposed long-standing weaknesses in Ukraine's command structure. Fixing them is difficult 'when you're engaged in the highest-intensity war since the second World War,' said Konrad Muzyka, director of the defence consultancy Rochan. Some reforms are under way, but doubts linger about whether they will go far, or fast, enough to meet the moment. Manpower remains one of the most pressing issues. At a Kremlin meeting on economic development this month, Putin claimed that up to 60,000 Russians 'volunteer' to join the army each month – double the roughly 30,000 Ukrainians he said were being conscripted. Some analysts believe both figures to be slightly inflated. However, Ukraine has refused to lower its conscription age below 25, resisting pressure from the US and other allies. Its mobilisation drive remains riddled with corruption and forced conscription, including recruitment officers nabbing unregistered men off the street and stuffing them into vans. A recruitment drive to attract 18 to 24-year-olds has largely failed, with only several hundred applicants, according to people briefed on the programme. A rare bright spot for Ukraine remains its domestic drone production, able to inflict serious damage and stall some of the Russian advance. A drone operator and technician with Ukraine's 113th territorial defence brigade, with the Ukrainian-made Volya-E land drone. Photograph: Daniel McLaughlin Ukraine's military is also borrowing from video game culture to incentivise its drone units. An initiative launched in April rewards troops with digital points when they submit verified footage of Russian targets destroyed by their drones. The points can be used to buy drone parts and equipment on a dedicated platform, the 'Brave 1 Market'. Still, Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine's former top general and current ambassador to the UK, warned a London audience on Thursday not to expect 'some kind of miracle . . . that will bring peace to Ukraine'. 'With an enormous shortage of human resources and the catastrophic economic situation we're facing – we can only talk about a high-tech war of survival,' he said. The priority for Ukraine was to fight in a way that 'uses minimal human resources and minimal economic means to achieve maximum effect', he said. Russian missile strikes hitting civilian areas in Ukrainian cities well beyond the front line remain a serious concern. Muzyka's team has tracked major attacks across this spring – some involving more than 200 missiles each. Russia is now producing more rockets than it launches, while Ukraine's Patriot interceptors are running low. Drone attacks are also intensifying. Russia launched over 2,000 Iranian Shahed drones in the first 20 days of May alone. While Kyiv has improved its capacity to distinguish between decoys and those with live warheads, the sheer number is becoming unmanageable. 'More will get through and hit their targets,' Muzyka said. Russian drones have also been upgraded and now fly higher and faster, making them harder to shoot down with machine guns. Patriot systems and F-16s – both in short supply – are often the only viable counters. Ukraine lost one of its F-16s in mid-May during an air mission, with the pilot ejecting after downing three targets. Many soldiers and, increasingly, officials say the country must brace for a long, asymmetric struggle. 'How long will it last?' Firsov asked. 'Until we break the Russians' belief that we can be defeated.' – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
RNZ News
26-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Trump lashes out at 'crazy' Putin, warns of Russia's 'downfall'
Donald Trump has told reporters that he is 'not happy' with Putin over the latest Russian offensive. Photo: AFP / Alexander Nemenov and Jeff Kowalsky US President Donald Trump has called Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin "crazy" for his attacks on Ukrainian cities, and warned that any attempt at a total takeover of Ukraine would "lead to the downfall of Russia". The comments were a rare rebuke to Putin, and came after a record number of Russian drones killed at least 13 people across Ukraine , despite a prisoner exchange and a US push for a truce. "I've always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!" Trump said in a post on Truth Social. "I've always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that's proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!" he added. Trump also criticised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a more frequent target of his ire, accusing him of "doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does." "Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don't like it, and it better stop," he said of Zelensky. Earlier on Sunday, Trump told reporters that he was "not happy" with Putin over the latest Russian offensive. "I've known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he's sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don't like it at all," said Trump on the tarmac at Morristown airport before boarding Air Force One bound for Washington. Trump's remarks come as European allies and even some in his own Republican Party call for increased pressure on Russia to agree to a ceasefire. The US president has avoided issuing ultimatums to Russia, instead threatening to walk away from negotiations if both sides cannot agree to a ceasefire. But in response to a question on the tarmac in Morristown, Trump said Sunday he was "absolutely" considering increasing US sanctions on Russia in response to the latest violence. "He's killing a lot of people. I don't know what's wrong with him. What the hell happened to him, right? He's killing a lot of people. I'm not happy about that," said the US leader. That statement was at odds with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's testimony at Congress earlier this week, when he said Trump believed that "right now, if you start threatening sanctions, the Russians will stop talking." Trump and Putin held a two-hour phone call on Monday after which the US leader said Moscow and Kyiv would "immediately start negotiations towards a ceasefire." Putin has made no commitment to pause his three-year invasion of Ukraine, announcing only a vague proposal to work on a "memorandum" outlining Moscow's demands for peace. - AFP
