Latest news with #UkrainianForces
Asharq Al-Awsat
10 hours ago
- General
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Sumy City Under Threat as Russian Forces Advance, Ukraine Says
Russian forces have widened the frontline in Ukraine's northern region of Sumy, officials and analysts said, and Moscow said it captured another village on Tuesday, bringing the region's capital closer to within the range of frontline drones. The advance towards the city of Sumy - the administrative center of the Sumy region - comes as Kyiv showed its ability to continue fighting by conducting a series of strikes in recent days, hitting Russian strategic bombers and the Crimean Bridge. Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Türkiye for peace talks on Monday where Moscow said it would only agree to end the war if Kyiv cedes big new chunks of territory and accepts limits on the size of its army. On Tuesday, Russia's defense ministry said its forces took control of Andriivka, after capturing several other villages in recent days. Kyiv said Russian artillery attack on the city of Sumy killed four people and injured 28. The head of the military administration of the Sumy region, which lies north of Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv, held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the region's defense strategy. "The situation in the border area of Sumy region remains complex, dynamic, but controllable," the head of the military administration, Oleh Hryhorov, said on Facebook. "The Russian army is constantly shelling border villages, hitting residential buildings, farms, and civilian infrastructure facilities." The dual advance with fierce frontline fighting and missile and drone strikes in Sumy hinders Ukraine's defense abilities along in the southeast Donbas region, of which Moscow is seeking full control, military analysts say. On Monday, Ivan Shevtsov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian brigades fighting in Sumy, told Ukrainian national broadcaster that Russian forces had captured about 15 km (9 miles) along the frontline, going 6-7 km deep. If Russian advances take the town of Yunakivka, Shevtsov said, the city of Sumy will be under a direct threat. The Ukrainian Deep State blog of analysts who track the front line using open sources said Russian forces are moving to within 20-25 km of Sumy, putting the city within a range of shorter-range attack drones. Reuters could not independently verify the Russian claim of capturing Andriivka and Ukraine's General Staff made no references to the village in its evening battlefield report. DeepState said early on Wednesday that Andriivka was now in Russian hands. Over the weekend, Sumy's authorities ordered mandatory evacuation of 11 additional villages due to escalating Russian attacks. Shevtsov said Russia wants to completely capture the Sumy region, not just make a small incursion. "Just ... like other regions in eastern Ukraine," he added.
New York Times
21 hours ago
- General
- New York Times
Is There a Pattern in Ukraine's and Russia's Big Attacks and Talks?
It is said that the night is darkest just before dawn, and if that holds for warfare, then the brutal slugfest that preceded the second round of direct talks between Ukraine and Russia was about as dark as it gets. And about as audacious a success for Ukraine as it's had in this war. There's always an element of wishful thinking in trying to find a glimmer of hope in something as terrible and intractable as the Ukraine war. But let's try. The first round of talks in Istanbul in mid-May was preceded by a furious round of posturing and confusion, much of it apparently intended by each side to persuade President Trump that it was the other that was blocking his push for peace. The talks produced only a prisoner exchange and frustration in the White House but also plans to meet again. Then before Monday's second round, Russia unleashed one of the biggest drone and missile attacks on Kyiv to date and opened a front in northeastern Ukraine. But it was the Ukrainian feat that garnered all the attention. In an extraordinary operation code-named Spider's Web, Ukraine launched 117 drones from deep inside Russia and knocked out a whole bunch of strategic bombers, the kind Russia has used to fire cruise missiles at Ukraine. The ingenuity and audacity of the operation were jaw-dropping. Over 18 months, dozens of the small quadcopters armed with explosives had been smuggled into Russia and then transported to far-flung bases by Russian drivers who thought they were carrying prefabricated cottages. The boxes were remotely opened, and the drones flew to the nearby air bases. Ukraine claimed 41 warplanes were hit and at least 13 destroyed; Moscow said only that some planes were damaged. The question is whether the exchange of blows and the demonstration of Ukraine's resourcefulness can help end the conflict. Military wisdom holds that combatants come to the negotiating table when they've concluded there's nothing more to gain on the battlefield, but Russia's Vladimir Putin, the aggressor, shows no sign of seeing things that way. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- General
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Ukraine attacks Putin's prized Kerch bridge to Crimea in daring underwater strike with TNT blasts leaving it ‘in a state of disrepair' days after drones blitzed nuke bomber fleet
Ukraine's SBU security service said on Tuesday it had hit the road and rail bridge linking Russia and the Crimean peninsula below the water level with explosives. The SBU said in a statement on the Telegram app that it had used 1100 kilograms of explosives which were detonated early in the morning, damaging underwater pillars of the bridge, a key supply route for Russian forces in Ukraine. Head of the SBU, Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk, said: 'We previously hit the Crimean Bridge twice in 2022 and 2023. 'So today we continued this tradition underwater. No illegal Russian facilities have a place on the territory of our state. 'Therefore, the Crimean Bridge is a completely legitimate target, especially considering that the enemy used it as a logistical artery to supply its troops. Crimea is Ukraine, and any manifestations of occupation will receive our tough response,' Vasyl Malyuk noted. Russian forced temporarily closed the bridge this morning, according to Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, but traffic on the bridge resumed after three hours. No casulaties have been reported. It comes after Ukrainian drones struck multiple military airbases in Russia on Sunday. The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions.
ABC News
2 days ago
- General
- ABC News
Moment Mount Etna volcano erupts
Photo shows Ukraine Drone Strike: Screengrab shows a small drone hovering above a truck's trailer with a plume of smoke in the background. Has Video Duration: 1 minute 41 seconds . 1 m 41 s
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Ukraine bombs Russian bases: Here are some of Kyiv's most audacious attacks
Ukrainian drones struck multiple military airbases deep inside Russia on Sunday in a major operation a day before peace talks scheduled to start in Istanbul. The Russian Defence Ministry said Ukraine had launched drone strikes targeting Russian military airfields across five regions, causing several aircraft to catch fire. The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions. Air defences repelled the assaults in all but two regions – Murmansk and Irkutsk, the ministry said. 'In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire,' the Defence Ministry said. FPV drones are unmanned aerial vehicles with cameras on the front that relay live footage to operators, who in turn use those visuals to direct the drones. The fires were extinguished, and no casualties were reported. Some individuals involved in the attacks had been detained, the Russian Defence Ministry said. On Sunday night, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the 'absolutely brilliant' Ukrainian drone attack on the Telegram messaging app. But the Sunday attacks were only the latest in a series of audacious hits on Russian military facilities, territory and symbols of power over the past three years of war — often acknowledged by Kyiv, and in some cases widely believed to have been carried out by Ukrainian special forces. Zelenskyy said 117 drones had been used to attack the Russian bases on Sunday. 'Russia has had very tangible losses, and justifiably so,' he said. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said that it had hit Russian military planes worth a combined $7bn in a wave of drone strikes on Russian air bases thousands of kilometres behind the front line. Targets included the Belaya airbase in Irkutsk, about 4,300km (2,670 miles) from the Ukrainian border, and the Olenya airbase in south Murmansk, some 1,800km (1,120 miles) from Ukraine. Earlier on Sunday, multiple local media reports in Ukraine claimed that the operation was carried out by the SBU using drones smuggled deep into Russia and hidden inside trucks. At least 41 Russian heavy bombers at four airbases were hit, the reports said. The strikes reportedly hit Tu-95 and Tu-22 strategic bombers, which Russia uses to fire long-range missiles at Ukrainian cities. Russia is yet to confirm the extent of the damage, but the attack could mark Ukraine's most damaging drone strike of the war to date. Al Jazeera's John Hendren, reporting from Kyiv, said it's 'an audacious strike, one that Ukraine has been waiting a long time and patiently to deliver, and it's come after Russian air strikes into Ukraine have dramatically accelerated over the past couple of weeks'. Both Russia and Ukraine have sharply ramped up their drone attacks against the other side in recent days. Russia launched more than 900 kamikaze drones and 92 missiles last week, killing at least 16 civilians. Those attacks followed days of Ukrainian strikes on Russian military infrastructure in Russia's Tula, Alabuga and Tatarstan regions, in which Kyiv used at least 800 drones. Meanwhile, Ukraine confirmed that it will send a delegation to Istanbul led by its Defence Minister Rustem Umerov for talks on Monday with Russian officials. A previous round of talks, on May 16, led to a deal under which Ukraine and Russia exchanged 1,000 prisoners of war each, before any goodwill from that agreement evaporated amid the aerial warfare that subsequently intensified. Zelenskyy, who has previously voiced scepticism about Russia's seriousness about peace talks, said that the Ukrainian delegation would enter the meeting in Istanbul with specific priorities, including 'a complete and unconditional ceasefire' and the return of prisoners and abducted children. Russia has said it has formulated its own peace terms and ruled out a Turkish proposal for the meeting to be held at the leaders' level. Monday's meeting in Turkiye has been spurred by US President Donald Trump's push for a quick deal to end the three-year war. But no breakthrough appears to be in sight. In a rare display of criticism, Trump recently vented his frustration at Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'Something has happened to him,' Trump wrote on his social media platform on May 25, referring to Putin. 'He has gone absolutely CRAZY!' Trump told reporters, 'We're in the middle of talking and he's shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities.' The US president is yet to react to Sunday's Ukrainian attacks on Russian airbases. The strikes are the latest in a series of stunning, headline-grabbing attacks that Russia has periodically suffered since it launched the full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In May 2018, four years after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, Putin drove a truck across a newly built bridge connecting the Russian mainland to the peninsula, enraging Ukrainians. Ukraine would take its revenge, first in 2022 and then again in 2023. In October 2022, a truck explosion that Russia blamed on Ukraine blew up a part of the bridge. Russia repaired the damage, and Putin tried to revive the symbolism of 2018, again driving across it, this time in a Mercedes. But Ukraine would strike again. In July 2023, the bridge that serves as a crucial supply route for Russian forces in Ukraine was blown up. Russia's National Antiterrorism Committee said the strike was carried out by two Ukrainian sea drones. Officials said two people were killed and a child was wounded. In September 2023, Ukraine launched a series of attacks on occupied Crimea, using drones and missiles to target key facilities of Russia's Black Sea Fleet near Sevastopol. Satellite images showed that the first attack destroyed half of the Black Sea Fleet's communications command centre in Verkhnosadove. Ukraine followed up on that attack with a strike against the Saky airfield in Crimea, which was hosting 12 Russian combat aircraft, including Su-24 and Su-30 fighter-bombers, according to the Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne. Then came the most devastating of the attacks, on September 22. Ukraine hit the Black Sea Fleet command headquarters and claimed to have killed 34 officers, including fleet commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov. A further 105 soldiers were reportedly wounded. In the dead of night in early May 2023, the ultimate symbol of Russian power for centuries — the Kremlin — came under attack, as flashes of light from small explosions over the red building's citadel were seen in images and grainy video around the world. Moscow said that two Ukrainian drones had been used in the attack on Putin's residence, but had been disabled by electronic defences. 'We regard these actions as a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the president's life, carried out on the eve of Victory Day, the May 9 Parade, at which the presence of foreign guests is also planned,' the Kremlin said in a statement. Zelenskyy denied that his country had attacked the Russian capital or its president. 'We don't attack Putin, or Moscow, we fight on our territory,' Zelenskyy told a news conference in Helsinki, Finland. But independent analysts, including from Western nations that are Ukrainian allies, believe Ukrainian special forces were behind the drone attacks on the Kremlin. And a year later, Ukraine would blur the line between its territory and Russian land in the escalating war between the neighbours. Ukrainian forces launched a surprise attack on the Kursk region on August 6, 2024, taking Moscow by surprise. Russia began evacuating the neighbouring Belgorod region as the country's forces were forced to confront Ukraine's offensive in Western Russia. At the height of the incursion, Ukrainian forces claimed nearly 1,400 square kilometres (540 square miles) of Kursk — roughly twice the size of Singapore. By the start of 2025, Russia had most of the territory it lost in Kursk before Ukraine launched a second wave of attacks in January. However, Kyiv suffered a major setback earlier this year after Trump temporarily cut off all military and intelligence assistance. By early March, Russia had recaptured most of the territory.
