Ukraine war: Putin’s losses ‘rise above 500,000’ as Kyiv strike sparks nuclear alarm

One person was killed and three wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Oryol region on Monday, the regional governor, Andrey Klychkov, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Klychkov said a drone had crashed into a gas station, damaging it, and a second fell on it later, killing a firefighter

Ukraine’s drone attack on a Russian facility tracking nuclear missiles has raised concern in the West over the benefits of targeting a nuclear-armed nation’s infrastructure for atomic weapons.

Kyiv said it had hit the Armavir radar station in the Krasnodar border last week on Thursday, targeting a critical facility which supports both Moscow’s conventional air defence and also forms part of its nuclear warning system.

The strike has been criticised by experts in the West. Hans Kristensen, a nuclear arsenal expert at the Federation of American Scientists, said the move to hit the critical Russian nuclear facility was “not a wise decision on the part of Ukraine”. “Bombers and military sites in general are different because they’re used to attack Ukraine,” he said.

Thord Are Iversen, a Norwegian military analyst, said targeting a unit of Russia’s nuclear warning system was “not a particularly good idea, especially in times of tension.”

“It’s in everyone’s best interest that Russia’s ballistic missile warning system works well,” he said.

Precious few choices are available to Alexander, a 26-year-old Russian soldier, since his capture: Clothes, meals and the hours of his day are rigidly accounted for in the camp for prisoners of war.

But Ukraine allows Alexander to call home to his family in Kursk, a Russian city about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the Ukrainian border, and he says that has kept him grounded.

It is a lifeline unavailable to Ukrainian POWs. Now, infuriated Ukrainian families are demanding an end to the phone calls imprisoned Russian soldiers get to make.

For imprisoned Ukrainians, calls are nonexistent and even letters rare. Families usually learn their fate only when comrades freed in exchanges bring back word.

Vladimir Putin, making his third foreign trip since his re-election in March, arrived in ex-Soviet Uzbekistan yesterday. He met with his counterpart Shavkat Mirziyoyev ahead of the start of formal talks.

Mr Mirziyoyev met the Russian president on arrival in Tashkent in the evening and the two leaders travelled together in a single car.

Photos and video footage posted on the Kremlin website and by Russian news agencies showed Mr Putin visiting the New Uzbekistan park in Tashkent and laying a wreath at a monument to Uzbek independence.

Russia was open to broader cooperation on gas supplies with Uzbekistan, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, adding that “the possibilities here are very extensive”.

Mr Putin has already visited China and Belarus since starting his fifth term as Russian president.

The Kremlin leader has travelled abroad only infrequently since the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Askold Krushelnycky reports from Sumy, near the border with Russia. About three hours’ drive from the fierce battles around Kharkiv, the area is preparing for its own assault by Moscow’s troops:

Russia has lost over half a million soldiers in its invasion of Ukraine, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has said.

A total of 501,190 Russian forces have either been killed or injured in the battlefield, with 1,110 casualties recorded in the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military said yesterday in its update.

Russia has also lost 7,662 tanks, 14,803 armoured fighting vehicles, 17,639 vehicles and fuel tanks, 12,953 artillery systems, 1,083 multiple launch rocket systems, 814 air defence systems, 357 airplanes, 326 helicopters, 10,425 drones, 27 ships and boats, and one submarine, the General Staff said.

None of these numbers have been confirmed by Russia, which treats figures on its losses in Ukraine as a state secret.

Officials from Chile have met at the bottom of the planet in a bid to bolster claims in Antarctica as tensions escalate over Russian movement in the area.

Members of Chile‘s parliamentary defence committee flew to a desolate air base for a meeting billed as an assertion of national sovereignty.

Singling out Russia as posing such a threat, committee member Camila Flores said: “We are going to be sitting in Antarctica in an act of sovereignty, of safeguarding and supporting our national integrity in the face of any threats.”

Russian shelling killed three people in three different towns in Donetsk region yesterday, regional officials said.

The civilians died in Siversk in the north of the region and further south in Krasnohorivka and Chasiv Yar, prosecutors in Donetsk region said. Russia has illegally annexed Donetsk, despite only having a limited military presence in the oblast.

One more civilian died near the town of Chuhuyev, southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, where at least 14 people were killed in an attack on a hardware store on Saturday.

Russia’s military has advanced towards Chasiv Yar, the gateway to other cities in Donetsk region, a town it considers crucial to its military goals in Ukraine.

Russia claimed a Ukrainian drone attack has killed one person and wounded three others in western Russian.

One of the drones hit a gas station and damaged it, and another fell on it later, killing a firefighter, regional governor Andrei Klychkov said.

Russian forces have taken over the village of Berestove in Ukraine‘s northeastern Kharkiv region, the TASS news agency cited Russia‘s defence ministry as saying on Sunday.

Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield reports.