Wars 2022 02/24 Monitoring Russian and Ukraine War.

[Saif]

Ukraine, Russia exchange new group of POWs

Ukraine and Russia said on Thursday they had swapped a fresh group of prisoners of war, the third exchange this week as part of a deal agreed at peace talks in Turkey...

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Ukraine, Russia exchange new group of POWs
Agence France-Presse . Ukraine 13 June, 2025, 00:01

Ukraine and Russia said on Thursday they had swapped a fresh group of prisoners of war, the third exchange this week as part of a deal agreed at peace talks in Turkey.

In Istanbul last week the two sides agreed to each free more than 1,000 prisoners of war — all wounded or under the age of 25 — and return the bodies of killed fighters.

‘Today, warriors of our Armed Forces, National Guard, and Border Guard Service are back home,’ Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.

‘They all require medical treatment,’ as they were ‘severely wounded and seriously ill,’ he added.

Russia’s defence ministry also confirmed the swap, saying in a Telegram post that ‘a group of Russian servicemen was returned’ from Ukraine.

The swapped Russian soldiers were now in Belarus, Moscow’s close ally.

‘We continue working to bring everyone home from Russian captivity. We thank everyone who helps make these exchanges possible — so that each and every one of them can be home, in Ukraine,’ Zelensky said.

He published pictures of the Ukrainian servicemen, all with freshly shaved heads — draped in national flags.

The oldest Ukrainian soldier freed on Thursday was 59, with the youngest 22, and they include some who were believed to be ‘missing in action,’ Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said.

Russian state media showed Moscow’s troops in camouflage chanting ‘Russia, Russia’ with national flags around their shoulders.

The exchanges are the only concrete outcome from two rounds of peace talks in Istanbul, at which Russia rejected calls for an unconditional ceasefire and demanded Ukraine give up large swathes of territory and its bid to join NATO.

The first stages of the swap took place on Monday and Tuesday, with Russia on Wednesday handing back the bodies of 1,212 Ukrainian soldiers killed fighting Moscow’s invasion.

Meanwhile, Russian night-time strikes on Kharkiv wounded 14 people, including four children, Ukraine said, in the latest heavy bombardment of the northeastern city.

The strikes came a day after Russian attacks killed three people and wounded some 60 others in the city, some 30 kilometres from the Russian border.

Kharkiv has been heavily hit by Russian forces throughout their more than three-year invasion.​

 

[Saif]

Russia and Ukraine exchange prisoners of war, but Moscow received no war dead, Russia says

Russia and Ukraine exchanged prisoners-of-war (POWs) on Saturday, the Russian defence ministry said, and Russia handed over the bodies of 1,200 dead Ukrainian soldiers to Kyiv. The exchanges are part of agreements reached by the warring sides during talks in Istanbul earlier this month. Ukraine ea

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Russia and Ukraine exchange prisoners of war, but Moscow received no war dead, Russia says

REUTERS
Published :
Jun 14, 2025 18:51
Updated :
Jun 14, 2025 18:51

People in hazmat suits carry what is said to be remains of Ukrainian soldiers received from Russia in an unknown location in a screen grab from a Handout video released on June 13, 2025. Photo : Security Service Of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS/Files

Russia and Ukraine exchanged prisoners-of-war (POWs) on Saturday, the Russian defence ministry said, and Russia handed over the bodies of 1,200 dead Ukrainian soldiers to Kyiv.

The exchanges are part of agreements reached by the warring sides during talks in Istanbul earlier this month. Ukraine earlier on Saturday confirmed it had received the bodies of its soldiers killed in action.

However, Russian state media reported, citing sources, that Moscow had not received any of its war dead back from Kyiv, echoing a statement Russia made on Friday, when it said it had returned the bodies of 1,200 slain Ukrainian soldiers and received none of its own.

The Russian defence ministry did not say how many POWs were involved in the swap with Ukraine on Saturday, but it posted video showing its soldiers holding Russian flags and cheering before boarding a bus.

The Russian soldiers are in Belarus, where they are receiving medical treatment before transfer back to Russia, the defence ministry said.​

 

[Saif]

Ukraine hopes Israel-Iran crisis won’t decrease military aid

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped the escalation between Israel and Iran would not result in a drop in military aid to Kyiv, according to remarks published on Saturday.

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Ukraine hopes Israel-Iran crisis won’t decrease military aid
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 14 June, 2025, 22:33

This handout photograph taken and released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on Saturday shows Ukrainian prisoners of war wrapped with Ukrainian national flags hugging after an exchange of prisoners at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, amid the Russian invasion in Ukraine. | AFP photo

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped the escalation between Israel and Iran would not result in a drop in military aid to Kyiv, according to remarks published on Saturday.

‘We would like to see aid to Ukraine not decrease because of this,’ he said. ‘Last time, this was a factor that slowed down aid to Ukraine.’

Israel unleashed large-scale attacks on Iran Friday, targeting nuclear and military facilities as well as high-ranking generals and atomic scientists, sparking international calls to restraint as fears of broader conflict grow.

The attack on Iran sparked a rise in oil prices, which Zelensky said would benefit Russia.

‘The attacks led to a sharp rise in oil prices. This is bad for us,’ he added, reiterating a call to introduce price caps on Russian oil exports.

He added that hoped to raise the issue of price caps at a potential meeting with the US president Donald Trump in the near future.

However, the Israeli strikes might be favourable for Kyiv as well, if they lead to a reduction of military equipment supplies from Tehran to Moscow, which has relied heavily on Iranian-made attack drones.

The Ukrainian leader also warned that Europe’s support was stalling without Washington’s engagement, as ‘Europe has not yet decided for itself what it will do with Ukraine if America is not there’.

He also urged the United States to ‘shift tone’ in its dialogue with Russia, warning that it was ‘too warm’ now and that this would not help to end the war.

Meanwhile, Ukraine and Russia conducted another POW swap — the fourth one in a week — the warring sides said on Saturday, under agreements reached in Istanbul earlier this month.

‘We continue to take our people out of Russian captivity. This is the fourth exchange in a week,’ Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.

‘In accordance with the Russian-Ukrainian agreements another group of Russian servicemen was returned from the territory controlled by the Kyiv regime,’ Russia’s defence ministry said on Telegram.

Kyiv also said it had received another batch of 1,200 unidentified bodies from Russia, which it said Russia claimed ‘belong to Ukrainian citizens, including military personnel,’ as part of the Istanbul agreements as well.

Ukraine did not say whether it returned any bodies to Russia.

Photos published by Zelensky on Telegram showed men of various ages, mostly with shaved heads, wearing camouflage and draped in Ukrainian flags.

Some were injured, others disembarked from buses and hugged those welcoming them, or were seen calling someone by phone, sometimes covering their faces or smiling.

Moscow’s defence ministry released its own video showing men in uniforms holding Russian flags, clapping and chanting ‘Russia, Russia’, ‘glory to Russia’ and ‘hooray’, some raising their fists in the air.

The exchange came as Russia repeatedly rejected ceasefire calls and intensified its offensive along the front line, and especially in the northeastern Sumy region, where it seeks to establish a ‘buffer zone’ to protect its Kursk region, previously partly occupied by Ukraine.

Zelensky claimed Russia’s advance on Sumy was stopped, adding that Kyiv’s forces have managed to retake one village.

According to the Ukrainian president, Russia was using 53,000 men in the Sumy operation.​

 

[Saif]

Russian advance nears Ukraine’s Sumy region

Despite the driving rain, a few elderly residents wander into the streets of Stets’kivka in northeast Ukraine to catch a yellow bus to go shopping in nearby Sumy, the regional capital...

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Russian advance nears Ukraine’s Sumy region
Agence France-Presse . Stets’kivka, Ukraine 15 June, 2025, 23:44

Despite the driving rain, a few elderly residents wander into the streets of Stets’kivka in northeast Ukraine to catch a yellow bus to go shopping in nearby Sumy, the regional capital.

They are worried about the Russian drones that have been striking the area with increasing regularity, more than three years into Moscow’s invasion.

‘I’m afraid. Nobody knows what could happen to the bus we take,’ Galyna Golovko, 69, told AFP at the small shop she runs near the bus stop.

Golovko said she never goes out in the morning or evening when Russian drones criss-cross the sky.

‘It’s scary how many drones fly in the morning.... In the morning and in the evening it’s just hell,’ she said.

The border with the neighbouring Russian region of Kursk is just 17 kilometres away.

The Sumy region was the starting point for a Ukrainian incursion into Kursk last year.

Ukraine held swathes of the territory for eight months, until a spring offensive by Russian forces supported by North Korean troops pushed them back.

Moscow has since advanced towards the city of Sumy, taking several villages along the way and forcing mandatory evacuations of civilian residents.

At the Stets’kivka bus stop, an elderly woman said she had packed up in case Russian troops arrive in town, where Ukrainian soldiers have replaced a pre-war population of 5,500 people.

The town is just 10 kilometres from the front line, and residents said there is heavy fighting nearby.

Beyond Stets’kivka, ‘everything has been destroyed, there is not a single village,’ Golovko said.

On her shop counter, there was a plastic box with a few banknotes—donations for a local family that lost its home, destroyed by a Russian glide bomb.

Ten kilometres to the south lies Sumy, a city that had 255,000 inhabitants before the war.

So far, restaurants are crowded and there seems little concern about the Russian advance. But buildings in the city bear the scars of Russian bombardments. And, when the sounds of car horns go down in the evenings, explosions can be heard in the distance.

The streets are lined with concrete bunkers against the increasingly frequent strikes from Russia, which has said it wants to set up a ‘buffer zone’ to prevent future Ukrainian incursions.

‘The enemy is trying to advance,’ said Anvar, commander of the drone battalion of the 225th regiment, which is leading the defence of the region.

‘We are pushing them back. Sometimes we advance, sometimes they do,’ he told AFP in an apartment that serves as a base for his unit.

‘We still have troops in the Kursk region. Nobody has tried to drive them out,’ he said, calling the conflict in the region a ‘war of positions’.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said the Russian offensive in Sumy had been stopped, just a day after Russian forces said they had captured another village in the region.

Sitting next to Anvar, one of his men soldered microprocessors in silence, except for electronic clicking that made the room feel like a laboratory.

Surrounded by 3D printers and piles of batteries, the members of the brigade are busy transforming Chinese drones into flying weapons.

‘It is now a drone war,’ the commander said.

Anvar said that Russia was continually sending ‘cannon fodder’ along this part of the front to try and overwhelm Ukrainian troops.

‘I know people who have gone mad because of the number of people they manage to kill in a day’.

Russian soldiers ‘continue marching calmly’ amid the bodies of their fallen comrades, he said.

In Stets’kivka, Golovko voiced confidence that Ukrainian soldiers would hold the line and said she was ‘not going anywhere’.

‘I will stay at home,’ she said tearfully, beating the counter with her fist.

‘I have travelled to Russia. We have friends there, and relatives. Everything was fine before.

‘One day, this madness will end. The madness that Putin unleashed will end,’ she said in a shaky voice.​

 

[Saif]

Overnight Russian attack on Ukraine kills 15 and injures 156

An overnight Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed 15 people and injured 156, local officials said Tuesday, with the main barrage demolishing a nine-story Kyiv apartment building in the deadliest attack on the capital this year. At least 14 people were killed as explosions echoed

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Overnight Russian attack on Ukraine kills 15 and injures 156

REUTERS
Published :
Jun 17, 2025 21:42
Updated :
Jun 17, 2025 21:42

A Russian drone attacks a building during Russia's massive missile and drone air attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 17, 2025. Photo : AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

An overnight Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed 15 people and injured 156, local officials said Tuesday, with the main barrage demolishing a nine-story Kyiv apartment building in the deadliest attack on the capital this year.

At least 14 people were killed as explosions echoed across the Ukrainian capital for almost nine hours, Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said, destroying dozens of apartments.

Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, calling the Kyiv attack “one of the most terrifying strikes” on the capital.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said 139 people were injured in Kyiv. Mayor Vitalii Klitschko announced that Wednesday would be an official day of mourning.

The attack came after two rounds of direct peace talks failed to make progress on ending the war, now in its fourth year.

Russia steps up aerial attacks

Russia has repeatedly hit civilian areas of Ukraine with missiles and drones. The attacks have killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations. Russia says it strikes only military targets.

Russia has in recent months stepped up its aerial attacks. It launched almost 500 drones at Ukraine on June 10 in the biggest overnight drone bombardment of the war. Russia also pounded Kyiv on April 24, killing at least 12 people.

The intensified long-range strikes have coincided with a Russian summer offensive on eastern and northeastern sections of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where Ukraine is short-handed and needs more military support from its Western partners.

Uncertainty about U.S. policy on the war has fueled doubts about how much help Kyiv can count on. Zelenskyy had been set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at a G7 summit in Canada on Tuesday to press him for more help. But Trump returned early to Washington on Monday night because of tensions in the Middle East.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer denied that Trump’s refusal to back new sanctions on Russia or provide U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine makes it all but impossible to compel the Kremlin to accept a ceasefire.

The U.K announced new sanctions Tuesday on Russia’s defense industry and its oil-carrying “shadow fleet” of about 500 ships of uncertain ownership that allowed Moscow to dodge sanctions. The announcement coincided with Zelenskyy’s arrival as a guest at the G7 summit.

Ukraine tries to keep the world’s attention

Zelenskyy is seeking to prevent Ukraine from being sidelined in international diplomacy. Trump said earlier this month it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace, but European leaders have urged him to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into accepting a ceasefire.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday it is unclear when another round of talks might take place.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia’s attacks during the G7 summit showed Putin’s “total disrespect” for the U.S. and other countries.

“Russia not only rejects a ceasefire or a leaders’ meeting to find solutions and end the war. It cynically strikes Ukraine’s capital while pretending to seek diplomatic solutions,” Sybiha wrote on social media.

Ukrainian forces have hit back against Russia with their own domestically produced long-range drones.

The Russian military said it downed 203 Ukrainian drones over 10 Russian regions between Monday evening and Tuesday morning.

Russian civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia reported briefly halting flights overnight in and out of all four Moscow airports, as well as those in the cities of Kaluga, Tambov and Nizhny Novgorod as a precaution.

Overnight Russian drone strikes also struck the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, killing one person and injuring 17 others, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the regional administration.

Putin “is doing this simply because he can afford to continue the war. He wants the war to go on. It is troubling when the powerful of this world turn a blind eye to it,” Zelenskyy said.

Russian attack demolishes apartment building

The Russian attack delivered “direct hits on residential buildings,” the Kyiv City Military Administration said in a statement. “Rockets — from the upper floors to the basement,” it said.

A U.S. citizen died in the attack after suffering shrapnel wounds, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko told reporters.

Thirty apartments were destroyed in a single residential block after it was struck by a ballistic missile, Klymenko said.

“We have 27 locations that were attacked by the enemy. We currently have over 2,000 people working there, rescuers, police, municipal services and doctors,” he told reporters at the scene of one attack.

Olena Lapyshniak, 49, was shaken from the strike that nearly leveled her apartment building. She heard a whistling sound and then two explosions that blew out her windows and doors.

“It’s horrible, it’s scary, in one moment there is no life,” she said. “There’s no military infrastructure here, nothing here, nothing. It’s horrible when people just die at night.”

People were wounded in the city’s Sviatoshynskyi and Solomianskyi districts. Fires broke out in two other city districts as a result of falling debris from drones shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, the mayor said.

Moscow escalated attacks after Ukraine’s Security Service agency staged an audacious operation targeting warplanes in air bases deep inside Russian territory on June 1.​

 

[Saif]

‘We won’t just sit in defence’

Ukraine’s top military commander vowed to increase the “scale and depth” of strikes on Russia in remarks made public yesterday, saying Kyiv would not sit idly by while Moscow prolonged its three-year invasion.

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‘We won’t just sit in defence’
Ukraine army chief vows to expand strikes on Russia

Rescuers carry a body from a damaged building following a Russian strike in Kramatorsk yesterday, amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: AFP

Ukraine's top military commander vowed to increase the "scale and depth" of strikes on Russia in remarks made public yesterday, saying Kyiv would not sit idly by while Moscow prolonged its three-year invasion.

Diplomatic efforts to end the war have stalled in recent weeks. The last direct meeting between the two sides was almost three weeks ago and no follow-up talks have been scheduled.

Russian attacks on Ukraine have killed dozens of people during the interim, including in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, according to officials.

"We will not just sit in defence. Because this brings nothing and eventually leads to the fact that we still retreat, lose people and territories," Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky told reporters including AFP.

Syrsky said Ukraine would continue its strikes on Russian military targets, which he said had proved "effective".

"Of course, we will continue. We will increase the scale and depth," he said.

Ukraine has launched retaliatory strikes on Russia throughout the war, targeting energy and military infrastructure sometimes hundreds of kilometres from the front line.

Kyiv says the strikes are a fair response to deadly Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and civilians.

In wide-ranging remarks, Syrsky also conceded that Russia had some advantages in drone warfare, particularly in making fibre-optic drones that are tethered and difficult to jam.​

 

[Saif]

Russian barrage kills 10 in Kyiv

Russia fired dozens of drones and missiles at Ukraine on Monday, ripping open a housing bloc in Kyiv, killing 10 civilians and burying others beneath the rubble...

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Russian barrage kills 10 in Kyiv
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 23 June, 2025, 23:56

Russia fired dozens of drones and missiles at Ukraine on Monday, ripping open a housing bloc in Kyiv, killing 10 civilians and burying others beneath the rubble.

A flurry of diplomatic efforts to end the three-year-long war have stalled, with the last direct meeting between Kyiv and Moscow coming almost three weeks ago and no follow-up talks scheduled.

AFP journalists heard drones over the capital and explosions ringing out during the barrage.

Kyiv resident Natalia Marshavska was awake during the attack and described how the buzzing of a drone grew louder until it was directly overhead.

‘I realised it was right above us. And then there was an explosion — all in a matter of seconds,’ she said.

The blast threw her across the room and shattered the windows in her flat before smoke began billowing everywhere, she said.

‘It was horrible.’

The Russian army said it had used precision weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles to strike Ukrainian military facilities.

‘All the designated targets were destroyed,’ it claimed.

Prosecutors in Kyiv said nine people were killed in the capital’s Shevchenkivsky district, including an 11-year-old girl. Another person was killed in Bila Tserkva just outside the capital, officials said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia had launched 352 unmanned aerial vehicles — including Iranian-designed drones — and 16 missiles at Ukraine, adding that some of the munitions were provided by North Korea.

‘Everyone in countries neighbouring Russia, Iran and North Korea should be thinking carefully about whether they could protect lives if this coalition of murderers persists and continues spreading their terror,’ he added.

He landed in the United Kingdom — one of Kyiv’s staunchest allies — on Monday for a surprise visit, where he said he would be discussing defence issues and sanctions on Russia.

Zelensky met with Britain’s King Charles III at Windsor Castle and a Ukrainian source also said that he would meet UK prime minister Keir Starmer.

The visit comes ahead of a NATO summit later this week in The Hague.

Zelensky is set to attend on the side-lines but his involvement is being kept to a minimum to avoid a confrontation with US president Donald Trump.

Since returning to office, Trump has upended the West’s approach towards Russia’s war on Ukraine by undercutting Kyiv and opening the door to closer ties with Moscow.

The latest strikes came less than a week after another attack on Kyiv killed at least 28 people.

Separate Russian attacks on Monday in the southern Odesa region left two people killed and another dozen wounded, local authorities said.

Zelensky said a school was hit.

‘Sadly, some people may still be trapped under the rubble,’ he added.

In Moscow, the defence ministry said its air defence systems had downed 23 Ukrainian drones over western regions of Russia.

Russia occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions since invading in 2022. It captured Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.

Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging a peace deal in order to prolong its full-scale offensive and to seize more territory.​

 

[Saif]

Zelensky urges NATO before Hague summit to support Ukraine defence industry

President Volodymyr Zelensky urged NATO countries on Tuesday to support Ukraine’s defence industry, speaking before a summit that is likely to heed US calls to sign off a big new spending goal for the alliance. US President Donald Trump, en route to the summit in the Netherlands, singled out

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Zelensky urges NATO before Hague summit to support Ukraine defence industry

REUTERS
Published :
Jun 24, 2025 21:27
Updated :
Jun 24, 2025 21:34

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky reacts next to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (not pictured), European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (not pictured) and European Council President Antonio Costa (not pictured) on the first day of a NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands June 24, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Yves Herman

President Volodymyr Zelensky urged NATO countries on Tuesday to support Ukraine’s defence industry, speaking before a summit that is likely to heed US calls to sign off a big new spending goal for the alliance.

US President Donald Trump, en route to the summit in the Netherlands, singled out Spain for criticism after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared Madrid did not need to meet the spending target that the Americans have been demanding.

The two-day gathering is intended to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that NATO is united, despite Trump’s previous criticism of the alliance, and determined to expand and upgrade its defences to deter any attack from Moscow.

TRUMP AND ZELENSKIY SET TO MEET

Trump is expected to meet Zelensky for talks at some point during the summit in the Dutch city of The Hague.

Zelensky said it was essential that Ukraine led in drone technology, which has shaped the battlefield and developed at breathtaking pace in the 40 months the war has lasted so far.

“Please, let’s make sure that our defence potential and potential of our partners work for our peace, not for Russia’s madness,” he said.

Rutte said the US leadership was committed to NATO. He added, however, that this came with an expectation that European countries and Canada spend more on defence.

The former Dutch prime minister underlined the need for transatlantic cooperation in the defence industry to meet the challenge of rearmament.

“Today, NATO’s military edge is being aggressively challenged by a rapidly rearming Russia, backed by Chinese technology and armed with Iranian and North Korean weapons,” he said.

“Only Europe and North America together can rise up to meet the challenge of rearmament.”

RUSSIA CRITICISES NATO’S SPENDING BOOST

The Kremlin accused NATO of being on a path of rampant militarisation and portraying Russia as a “fiend of hell” in order to justify its big increase in defence spending.

The summit and its final statement will be focused on heeding Trump’s call to spend 5% of GDP on defence - a significant jump from the current 2 percent goal. It is to be achieved both by spending more on military items and by including broader security-related spending in the new target.

However, the war between Israel and Iran and the uncertain status of a ceasefire make the summit much less predictable than Rutte - hosting the gathering in his home city - and other NATO member countries would like.

Russia has cited its neighbour’s desire to join the US-led transatlantic defence pact as one of the reasons why it invaded Ukraine in 2022.

NATO was founded by 12 Western countries in 1949 to resist the threat from the communist Soviet Union.

Russia denies any plan to attack the alliance, which now boasts 32 members, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was “largely a wasted effort” to assure the grouping of this because it was determined to demonise Russia.

“It is an alliance created for confrontation ... It is not an instrument of peace and stability,” he said.​