The Ukrainian military said it had shot down ten Russian missiles and 25 drones overnight, which were sent by Russian forces over the capital Kiev, the city of Dnipro and the provinces of eastern Ukraine. A rocket also hit a hospital in Dnipro.
In May, the Russian army intensified its attacks on Ukrainian cities, mostly targeting infrastructure and logistics facilities on Ukrainian territory. According to Kiev’s claims, its military shot down ten rockets fired from near the Caspian Sea, 23 Iranian-made drones and two other drones during the night. A few missiles hit targets in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk areas. No casualties were reported.
“We have a very difficult night behind us. It was very loud as the enemy launched a large-scale attack on our countryside,” said Dnipropetrovsk Governor Sergiy Fox, who added that several houses and cars were destroyed in the Dnipro. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky then announced that the hospital had also been hit. One person died, 15 people were injured.
In Kiev, the roof of a shopping center, a private house and several vehicles were damaged in the attacks. “Another air raid on Kiev, the thirteenth in a row since the beginning of May! And as always at night,” the city’s military administration announced on its Telegram account. They wrote that Russian Tu-95MS strategic bombers fired cruise missiles at the city from the Caspian Sea area.
In its daily morning report, the Ukrainian General Staff reported 55 Russian airstrikes in the past day, including 36 by drones and four by rockets. The S-300 missile hit a dam in the Karlivka area of the Donetsk region, so there is a high risk of flooding other nearby settlements, they added.
In Russia, meanwhile, according to local authorities, a detonation damaged a building in the city of Krasnodar, which lies near the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, but did not claim any casualties.
Scholz still plans to talk to Putin
German chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an interview with the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that he intends to speak with the Russian president again in the future Vladimir Putin. He insisted that his goal was further “actively support Ukraine”, however “while also preventing direct conflict between NATO and Russia”.
When asked about the possibility of ending the conflict through negotiations, he said that Putin must understand that the war cannot be ended by concluding some kind of cold peace. “For example, by turning the current front line into a new ‘border’ between Russia and Ukraine,” he said. A condition for a just peace is the withdrawal of the Russian army.
He declined to answer the question of whether Putin should step down, saying that in the end an agreement between the governments in Moscow and Kiev would be necessary. Some time has passed since his telephone conversation with Putin, he admitted, but he is ready for further talks. “When the moment is right, I plan to talk to Putin again,” he said.
The last time the two leaders spoke on the phone was at the beginning of December last year. In that hour-long conversation, Scholz called on Putin to withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine, and Putin accused the West of pursuing a “destructive” policy.
Since then, tensions between Moscow and Berlin have only escalated, especially after Scholz’s government authorized the shipment of German-made battle tanks to Ukraine in January.
Japan tightens sanctions
Meanwhile, Japan announced a new set of sanctions against Russia and condemned Russia’s announcement that it will install tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus. “Japan, as the only country to have experienced the consequences of a nuclear bomb during wartime, will never accept the Russian nuclear threat, let alone the use of nuclear force,” said the chief of staff of the Japanese prime minister Hirokazu Matsuno. At the same time, Tokyo announced that it would freeze the assets of 78 Russian organizations and 17 individuals and ban exports for 80 Russian companies.
Source: Rtvslo
