Russia launched its fifth drone attack on Kyiv in two weeks but air defence systems destroyed all of them before they reached the capital, Ukraine’s military said on Sunday. There were no casualties and no significant damage reported, the head of the capital’s military administration said on Telegram. Serhiy Popko said the “systematic attacks” with the drones showed Russia was “testing new tactics, looking for new approach routes to the capital, trying to expose the location of our air defence”. Ukraine’s air defence systems destroyed 35 of the 39 drones and two cruise missiles that Russia had launched overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram. The weapons targeted 10 of Ukraine’s regions, it said.
A Russian missile damaged critical infrastructure in the Shostkynskyi district of Sumy, the region’s military administration said on Telegram. It did not provide detail on what infrastructure was hit in the north-eastern Ukrainian region, which borders Russia.
Russian missiles and artillery fire in north-east and southern Ukraine killed at least three people on Saturday, law enforcement agencies said. A missile attack was launched around 3.15am on the town of Barvinkove in Izium district, the north-east Kharkiv region’s prosecutor’s office said. The statement listed the dead as two men aged 48 and 69 and said about 50 buildings were damaged in the strike, apparently by three Russian Iskander missiles. Another strike hit an agricultural business in the village of Oleksiivka, it said, with no reported casualties.
Separate artillery shelling later on Saturday killed a 44-year-old man in the city of Nikopol in Ukraine’s south, the national police said.
Russia’s air defence systems destroyed eight drones that Ukraine launched overnight, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. Three of the drones were destroyed over the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, and three were intercepted in the Black Sea, it said on Telegram.
The death toll from a Russian strike on a playground in Mykolaiv on Friday rose to four, including one child, with 24 injured, the mayor of the southern city, Oleksander Senkevitch, posted on Telegram.
Chechen soldiers known for their antics on TikTok are being put on the Ukraine war’s front line in a sign of the Russian military’s “desperation”, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said. In a video posted to X, it said pro-Russian Chechen forces had been fighting in Ukraine since 2014 but after initial heavy losses had became “largely relegated to conducting rear area security operations”. However, since the withdrawal of Wagner forces from the war, “these TikTok soldiers are being pressed back into frontline service”, the MoD said. It added that about 42,000 Russian soldiers had been trained at a Chechnya military university since 2022, according to Chechnya’s leadership, but with only up to 10 days’ training likely, its effectiveness was in doubt. “The use of Chechen TikTok soldiers on the frontline and to train Russian solders illustrates the desperation and resources strain within the Russian military.”
Donald Trump says he will “prevent world war three from happening” and that he will have the war between Russia and Ukraine “settled” if he is re-elected in November. “You’re very close to world war,” the US Republican presidential nominee told a campaign rally in Michigan. “I will restore a thing called peace through strength.” Trump’s comments came a day after he said he had a call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy and told the Ukrainian president he would end the war. Trump has repeatedly claimed he would end the war quickly, without giving details as to how. Zelenskiy said he had agreed to arrange a meeting with Trump.