Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin’s forces kill six and injure 49 in fresh wave of drone attacks – UK Times

Russian forces attacked Ukraine with 58 Shahed-type drones and decoy drones overnight on Wednesday, the Ukrainian Air Force has said.

Nine locations were struck by drones while 30 were destroyed by air defenses, it added according to Ukrainska Pravda.

“As of 08:30 on 18 June, air defence forces downed 30 enemy Shahed-type UAVs (and other types of drones) in the east and north of the country,” the Air Force said.

“Twelve were shot down with air defence assets, while 18 disappeared from radar or were suppressed by electronic warfare. Enemy strikes were recorded in nine locations.”

Drones were launched from the cities of Kursk, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, and Cape Chauda in Russian-occupied Crimea.

The Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions were the main targets of the attacks.

At least six civilians have been killed and 49 injured over the past day as a wave of Russian attacks continued hours after one of the most deadly strikes in months, Ukrainian authorities said.

Regional governors said civilians were killed in the Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kherson and Sumy regions following Russian strikes.

The most lethal strike was in the Kherson region, where two people were killed and 34 injured, governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.

The Kharkiv and Zapoizhzhia regions also came under attack by dozens of Russian drones, 12 of which were shot down by Ukrainian defenses.

Overnight on Wednesday, Ukraine suffered one of its most fatal attacks of the war when a residential apartment was destroyed in Kyiv.

By Wednesday morning, as rescuers continued to recover bodies from the rubble, at least 23 people had been confirmed killed.

Russia flattened a section of an apartment block in Kyiv yesterday, marking its deadliest attack on the Ukrainian capital this year, as a huge barrage of hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles killed at least 18 people and wounded 151.

“I have never seen anything like this before. It is simply horrific. When they started pulling people out, and everyone was cut up, elderly people and children… I do not know how long they can continue to torment us ordinary people,” said Viktoriia Vovchenko, 57, who lives nearby.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Services said operations proceeded throughout the day, with three bodies pulled from rubble late in the evening, bringing the casualty toll in Kyiv to 16 dead and 134 injured.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said the dead included a 62-year-old US citizen, who died from shrapnel wounds.

At least two people were killed and 17 injured in the Black Sea port of Odesa.

Trump administration officials have shelved an inter-agency working group created to formulate strategies for pressuring Russia into speeding up peace talks with Ukraine, it has been claimed.

The group was established earlier in the spring but lost steam in May as it became increasingly clear that Donald Trump was not interested in adopting a more confrontational stance toward Moscow, three US officials told Reuters.

“It lost steam toward the end because the president wasn’t there. Instead of doing more, maybe he wanted to do less,” one official was quoted as saying.

The final blow came roughly three weeks ago, when most members of the White House National Security Council, who were coordinating the group – including the entire team dealing directly with the Ukraine war – were dismissed as part of a broad purge, they alleged.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Russia’s top presidential security adviser Sergei Shoigu in Pyongyang yesterday as the two discussed a “special military operation” in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine, state media KCNA reported today.

Mr Kim and Mr Shoigu, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, discussed cooperation plans for Moscow’s rebuilding of the Kursk region, the report said, confirming earlier reports of the meeting by Russian media.

North Korea will send 5,000 military construction workers and 1,000 sappers to the region to help rebuild it after the Ukrainian incursion that North Korean troops helped Moscow repel this year, Mr Shoigu was cited as saying by the Russian state news agency TASS today.

His visit to Pyongyang and meeting with Mr Kim came nearly two weeks after his last meeting with the leader of the reclusive state on 4 June.

Plans to commemorate the “heroic feats” of North Korean soldiers in the operations in the Kursk region, a part of Russia which Ukrainian forces infiltrated last year, were also discussed during the meeting, KCNA said.

Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the overnight Russian attacks from Tuesday that killed 15 people and injured 150-plus in his country as he met with allies at G7 summit.

“Our families had a very difficult night, one of the biggest attacks from the very beginning of this war,” he said.

“We need support from allies and I’m here,” Mr Zelensky said. He added, “We are ready for the peace negotiations, unconditional ceasefire. I think it’s very important. But for this, we need pressure.”

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said the attack “underscores the importance of standing in total solidarity with Ukraine.”

While the summit was meant to showcase unity on top global issues, no joint statement on the conflict in Ukraine was released.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky departed from the G7 summit yesterday with new aid from host Canada for its war against Russia.

But before exiting, he warned that diplomacy is in “crisis” after the leaders missed the chance to press US president Donald Trump for more action.

“Today, we have concrete decisions on increased military support, new tranches of aid funded by frozen Russian assets, and additional sanctions targeting what fuels Russia’s war. It is important that partners are ready not only to support our defence now, but also to rebuild Ukraine together after the war ends,” Mr Zelensky said.