Ukraine-Russia war latest: Moscow launches largest missile and drone attack on Ukraine since start of war – UK Times

“They do want to have the anti-missile missiles, OK, as they call them, the Patriots,” the US president said. “And we’re going to see if we can make some available. We need them, too. We’re supplying them to Israel, and they’re very effective, 100 per cent effective. Hard to believe how effective. They do want that more than any other thing.”

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a decree on the country’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, which bans the production and use of anti-personnel mines, the presidential website said on Sunday.

Ukraine ratified the convention in 2005.

“Support the proposal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine to withdraw Ukraine from the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction of September 18, 1997,” the decree, published on Zelenski’s website, stated.

A senior Ukrainian lawmaker, Roman Kostenko, said that parliamentary approval is still needed to withdraw from the treaty.

“This is a step that the reality of war has long demanded. Russia is not a party to this Convention and is massively using mines against our military and civilians,” Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on national security, defence and intelligence, said on his Facebook page.

“We cannot remain tied down in an environment where the enemy has no restrictions,” he added, saying that the legislative decision must definitively restore Ukraine’s right to effectively defend its territory.

It remains unclear whether this will be debated in parliament.

Russia launched its biggest aerial attack on Ukraine overnight, a Ukrainian official said on Sunday, part of an escalating bombing campaign that has further dashed hopes for a breakthrough in efforts to end the three-year-old war.

Russia fired a total of 537 aerial weapons at Ukraine, including 477 drones and decoys and 60 missiles, Ukraine’s air force said.

Of these, 249 were shot down and 226 were lost, probably having been electronically jammed.

Yuriy Ihnat, head of communications for Ukraine’s air force, told the Associated Press that the overnight onslaught was “the most massive air strike” on the country, taking into account both drones and various types of missiles.

North Korea’s deployment of its troops to Ukrainian territory will represent “significant battlefield inflection”, the Institute for the Study of War.

“The North Korean and Russian military commands authorising the deployment of North Korean forces to Ukrainian territory would mark a significant battlefield inflection that may improve Russian forces’ ability to sustain simultaneous offensive operations in multiple directions, which the Russian military has traditionally struggled to conduct,” the US-based think tank said in its latest assessment.

According to the South Korean intelligence, North Korea may deploy an unspecified number of additional North Korean forces to Russia to fight against Ukraine as early as July or August 2025 and that North Korea continues to arm Russia with artillery ammunition and missiles.

A Russian missile attack killed three people and wounded at least 14 in the city of Samar in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Friday, the governor said.

This was the second Russian missile attack in the last three days on the industrial city in central Ukraine. Regional officials gave no immediate details on damage.

Ukraine has announced it has pushed back Russian forces on the battlefield and said they have prevented an advance into the northern Sumy region, which has been one of the hottest fighting areas along the war frontline.

Ukraine’s top military commander, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said that Ukrainian successes in Sumy have prevented Russia from deploying about 50,000 Russian troops, including elite airborne and marine brigades, to other areas of the frontline.

Here’s what we know about the region caught in heavy attacks.

1. Sumy, the city which is the capital of the Ukrainian region of the same name, had a prewar population of around 250,000.
2. It lies about 20km (12 miles) from the frontline. Russia’s push into the region earlier this year compelled Ukraine to strengthen its defences there.
3. Sumy borders Russia’s Kursk region, where a surprise Ukrainian incursion last year captured a pocket of land in the first occupation of Russian territory since the Second World War.
4. The long border is vulnerable to Ukrainian incursions, Russian president Vladimir Putin said, and creating a buffer zone could help Russia prevent further cross-border attacks there.
5. General Syrskyi said a special defence group has been formed to improve security in Sumy and surrounding communities, with a focus on improving fortifications and accelerating construction of defensive barriers.