Here’s where things stand on Sunday, June 8:
Fighting
- Russian forces attacked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv at night and in the evening with drones, missiles and guided bombs, killing at least four people and wounding more than 60, including a baby, according to local officials.
- “Kharkiv is currently experiencing the most powerful attack since the start of the full-scale war,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov said in a post on Telegram.
- Elsewhere in Ukraine, three people were killed in the front-line Donetsk region, which has seen the most intense fighting of the war, and three more in the Kherson region, which is partially occupied by Moscow’s forces, the AFP news agency reported.
- Russian forces took control of a section of the Yunakivka-Sudzha highway in Ukraine’s Sumy region, which “Ukrainian troops once used to supply their group in the [Russian] Kursk Region”, Russia’s TASS news agency reported, citing a military analyst.
- The Ukrainian military said that Russia launched 206 drones, two ballistic and seven other missiles at Ukraine overnight. Kyiv said its air defence units shot down 87 drones while another 80 drones were lost.
- It also said on Telegram that a Russian Su-35 fighter jet was shot down after “a successful Air Force operation in the Kursk direction”.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Kyiv’s forces recently destroyed three Iskander missile systems and damaged Russian military helicopters. “This helps our defence – every complication for Russia is important for us,” he said in his evening statement.
- German Major General Christian Freuding, meanwhile, said his country estimates that a recent Ukrainian attack damaged 10 percent of Russia’s long-range bomber fleet but said the attack will only have an “indirect effect” since Moscow still retains 90 percent of its strategic bombers.
- In Russia, officials said a Ukrainian drone attack in the Moscow region wounded two people.
- The Russian Ministry of Defence said that air defence units had intercepted and destroyed 36 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory on Saturday, including the Moscow region.
Prisoner Exchange
- Russia and Ukraine accused each other of endangering plans to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action, agreed upon during direct talks in Istanbul on Monday.
- Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation, said that Kyiv called a last-minute halt to an imminent swap. In a Telegram post, Medinsky said that refrigerated trucks carrying more than 1,200 bodies of Ukrainian troops from Russia had already reached the agreed-upon exchange site at the border when the news came.
- In response, Ukraine said that Russia was playing “dirty games” and manipulating facts.
- According to the main Ukrainian authority dealing with such swaps, no date had been set for repatriating the bodies. In a statement on Saturday, the agency also accused Russia of submitting lists of prisoners of war for repatriation that did not correspond to agreements reached on Monday.
Weapons
- Zelenskyy appealed to the United States to “urgently” send “positive signals” regarding Ukraine’s request to buy air defence systems, following the latest deadly Russian attacks on Kharkiv. Zelenskyy first publicly requested to buy US Patriot air defence systems in mid-April this year.
- France’s armed forces minister, Sebastien Lecornu, told France’s LCI news that a French car maker is preparing to manufacture drones in Ukraine.
- Canadian Minister of National Defence David McGuinty announced military assistance worth 35 million Canadian dollars ($25.5m) for Ukraine, including Coyote and Bison armoured vehicles.
Diplomacy
- Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told TASS that Russia had asked US officials to resume direct flights between the two countries and lift restrictions on Russian diplomats in the US.
- “To put it mildly, at this point, they are not very enthusiastic,” Ryabkov said regarding the proposal to resume flights.
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