Ukraine-Russia war latest: Kyiv ‘recaptures area two times size of Birmingham’ as Zelensky calls Trump envoys – UK Times

Ukrainian forces have recaptured more than 600 square km of territory so far this year, according to Ukraine’s top military commander.

In May alone, Ukraine recaptured 100 square km more territory than it lost, Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Monday.

President Volodymyr Zelensky also said last month that Ukraine had recaptured around 600 square km in 2026, an area around double the size of Birmingham.

Independently determining lines of territorial control in Ukraine is difficult because of drone warfare that has created a wide no-man’s land “kill zone” along the front.

But independent groups that map the battlefield have also reported Russia’s total advances slowing or reversing in recent months, for the first time since a failed Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023.

Syrskyi said Russian forces were still trying to advance in the country’s east and south, noting that the number of daily battlefield clashes has substantially increased and describing the frontline situation as “difficult and dynamic”.

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that “small mistakes can break big friendship” following the decision by Reform UK councils to take down Ukrainian flags from outside town halls.

Some Reform-run councils have lowered the Ukrainian flag from their civic buildings which were hoisted in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion, in favour of flying only local flags and the Union flag.

Ukraine’s president expressed his hope that they would change their course in an interview with the Guardian newspaper which took place in London after he met with Sir Keir Starmer, and the political leaders of France and Germany, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz.

“I hope they will put it back”, Mr Zelensky told the newspaper.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky ended his visit to the UK by meeting King Charles III as he thanked the country for supporting his war-hit nation.

“As always, a good audience with His Majesty King Charles III of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I thank His Majesty, the people, and the entire United Kingdom for their ironclad support for our people,” he said, sharing a photo from his audience with King Charles in a post on X.

At a special session of the UN Security Council yesterday, the fifth held on the war in Ukraine in 20 days, representatives from the European Union, the US and China, ‌among others, urged continued efforts to reach a ceasefire.

Indrika Ratwatte, acting assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told Security Council members that Russia was escalating the scale and intensity of its attacks on major Ukrainian population centers.

At least 30 civilians were reported killed and 200 injured since Friday, he said.

Seven humanitarian vehicles were also damaged in attacks in the southern Kherson region, ⁠Ratwatte said, injuring aid workers and volunteers in what he called “unacceptable attacks”.

Ukraine’s permanent representative to the UN, Andriy Melnyk, told the debate that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had rejected outright Zelensky’s proposal for a meeting of the two leaders in a letter he sent to the Kremlin leader last week.

Russian representative Vasily Nebenzya dismissed the Ukrainian ​leader’s proposal as “rudeness and ultimatums” and said Moscow sought a real settlement not “imitation talks”.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said he had a “positive” conversation with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and praised what he called their readiness to work on a settlement of the Ukraine war in the coming weeks.

“A very positive conversation,” Zelensky said on Telegram during a stopover in the Moldovan capital Chisinau.

“Grateful for the readiness to work as actively as possible already in the weeks to come to give a boost to diplomacy for ending Russia’s war ⁠against Ukraine,” he wrote.

Zelensky was returning to Kyiv from talks in London with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany on how to move forward with a settlement of the more than four-year-old war.

At least four people were killed and more than were 20 injured after Russia hit Ukraine’s Kharkiv region with missiles and drones, according to officials.

The latest strikes ⁠on Ukraine resulted in the deaths of two men, one 70 and the other 56, as well ​as two ⁠women, a 22-year-old and a 70-year-old in the ‌town of Chuhuiv in northeastern Kharkiv, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram, posting a photo of a destroyed apartment building on fire.

He also noted that an overnight drone attack on the regional capital of Kharkiv had caused 15 people, including three children, to seek medical assistance.

A separate post from ‌Chuhuiv’s mayor, Galina Minaeva, said six people in the town were injured.

Russia and Belarus are constantly ready to use all available means, including nuclear weapons, “to ensure security”, Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Galuzin told the Izvestia newspaper.

In remarks published ⁠this morning, Galuzin ​said ⁠Russia has ‌a military presence in Belarus and that ‌the countries regularly conduct ‌joint readiness checks.

“We remain in a ⁠constant state of readiness to employ all means, including nuclear ones, to ensure the security of ‌the Union State,” he ​said, referring ‌to the ⁠political, security and economic ⁠alliance between Russia and ‌Belarus.

France and Germany have agreed to scrap a landmark project to develop and build a new-generation fighter jet, two German officials said on Monday.

Friedrich Merz and Emmanuel Macron discussed the troubled project on the sidelines of the EU-Western Balkans summit in Montenegro last week and concluded there was no prospect of breaking months of deadlock, the officials said.

The project, which centres on a core fighter jet supported by drones and linked by a classified “combat cloud”, had been in doubt for months as the two sides have wrangled over specifications and control.

A European source briefed on the matter said the two sides were moving towards a face-saving solution in which the remaining systems outside the core fighter, such as the “combat cloud” of highly secure links, would maintain the same name: Future Combat Air System or FCAS.