Live, war in Ukraine: the latest news

According to Vadym Filachkin , head of the Donetsk Oblast military administration, the region has been targeted by Russian shelling 17 times in the past 24 hours. These have injured at least six people in various locations. In addition, one person was killed in the town of Kostiantynivka ( 🚩 ) and several homes were damaged.

In an article published on Sunday, June 29, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Russian forces are now only 20 kilometers from Sumy, in northern Ukraine. After expelling Ukrainian forces from Kursk earlier this year, Russian forces are now advancing toward Sumy. According to the WSJ, 50,000 troops have been deployed, outnumbering Ukrainian forces by about 3 to 1.

Earlier this month, Ukraine sent elite units to help stabilize the situation, partially halting the Russian advance. However, the situation remains tense for Ukrainian troops, who find themselves outnumbered almost everywhere along the front line.

In Kherson Oblast, several Russian shelling raids early this morning in various locations in the region killed two people and injured eight others, the head of the region's military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported on Telegram . The Russian attacks also hit an apartment building and about ten houses.

Update on the situation on the Ukrainian front and the slow advance of Russian troops, mainly in the east of the country.

While Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, has been bombed in the past, the recent intensification of strikes—which have affected the entire country—has worried the city's three million residents and created a heightened sense of insecurity. On June 17, 28 people were killed in a strike involving 175 drones and 14 cruise and ballistic missiles. On June 6, three rescue workers died in an airstrike.

Guillaume Herbaut/VU' for “Le Monde”

For a long time, the prevailing feeling in Kyiv was that it was a city relatively protected from war, despite the occasional Russian bombing raids. But the recent intensification of strikes lasting several hours at night, depriving the Ukrainian capital's 3 million inhabitants of sleep, has imposed a heightened sense of insecurity. These massive bombings affect the entire territory. On the night of Saturday, June 28, to Sunday, June 29, alone, 477 drones and 60 missiles were launched by Russia on six regions, according to Ukrainian authorities, who announced the deaths of three people, including a young F-16 pilot tasked with defending the skies during this attack, one of the largest since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of the country on February 24, 2022.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul accused the Russian president on Monday of wanting to impose Ukraine's "capitulation" without any real willingness to negotiate, after arriving in Kiev for an unannounced visit. While Ukraine is ready for genuine negotiations with Moscow, "Putin, for his part, is not giving in to any of his maximalist demands: he doesn't want negotiations, but capitulation," according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry.

China's top diplomat begins a European tour on Monday. Wang Yi, a 71-year-old veteran diplomat and a well-known figure abroad, is scheduled to visit the European Union (EU) headquarters in Brussels, as well as France and Germany.

His visit comes as Beijing seeks to strengthen its relations with the Old Continent in the face of unpredictable President Donald Trump's United States, which regularly describes China as its strategic rival. However, differences remain between Beijing and Brussels, including the war in Ukraine.

In France, the Chinese minister will meet with his counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot, who visited China in March. The war in Ukraine is expected to be on the agenda of his discussions in Europe, according to Agence France-Presse.

China regularly calls for peace talks and respect for the territorial integrity of all countries—including Ukraine. But it has never condemned Russia and has strengthened its trade, diplomatic, and military ties with it. Europeans regularly accuse it of providing Moscow with crucial economic support for its war effort.

Russian air defense systems reportedly destroyed 15 Ukrainian drones overnight, according to the Russian Defense Ministry on Monday. Ten drones were shot down over Kursk Oblast, and five more over the Sea of ​​Azov, the ministry said on Telegram.

No damage was immediately reported. The Defense Ministry only reported the number of drones destroyed by its forces, not the number launched by Ukraine.

A resident of the Synelnykove region ( 🚩 ) in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast has been killed by Russian airstrikes, said Serhi Lyssak , head of the regional military administration. A fire also broke out at a school in the same area, he added.

"Infrastructure" was also destroyed by drone raids and artillery fire in Nikopol, in the south of the oblast, added Serhi Lyssak, without providing further details. Russian forces said they launched an offensive earlier this month in the region, which borders Donetsk and Zaporizhia. Kyiv confirmed in mid-June that they had not managed to gain a foothold there.

Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he had posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine to the pilot of the F-16 shot down on Sunday . "Maksym Ustymenko had been fighting since [2014] , he had mastered four types of aircraft and had achieved truly important results for Ukraine," the president said in a speech broadcast on social media , offering his condolences to his loved ones and his brothers in arms.

Russian artillery fire killed a 54-year-old civilian in Kupiansk, Kharkiv Oblast, on Sunday, and another, aged 32, was seriously injured, the regional prosecutor's office reported.

The bill proposing to impose a 500 percent tax on imports from countries that buy Russian oil will be passed after the July recess, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, the bill's co-rapporteur, announced on ABC News .

"For the first time yesterday, the President [Donald Trump] said to me, while we were playing golf, 'It's time to introduce your bill,'" he said. "We're going to give the President the tools he lacks today, after the July recess (...), but how he applies them is up to him. We're trying to bring [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to the negotiating table," Graham added.

The Senate had decided to postpone consideration of this bill until at least July, due to the conflict between Iran and Israel.

A civilian was killed by Russian military fire in the center of Kherson, reports Oleksandr Prokudin , head of the oblast's military administration.

The Ukrainian president has signed a decree providing for Ukraine's withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, which bans the production and use of anti-personnel mines, the Ukrainian presidency announced on Sunday.

"I decide to put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of June 29, 2025, on Ukraine's withdrawal 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 presidential decree reads.

However, there are several steps left before an effective withdrawal: first, the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, must vote in favor of such a decision, and then kyiv must notify the UN. kyiv ratified the Ottawa Convention in 2005.

The "barrage detachments" or "barrage squadrons," made infamous by the Soviet NKVD, have not disappeared from the Russian army. The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry (HUR) published audio messages from Russian military mobile devices on Saturday, in which Russian soldiers complain about the formation of such detachments.

On September 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin signed amendments to the Russian criminal code providing for up to ten years in prison for military personnel who surrender "without authorization" to the enemy, refuse to fight, or disobey orders during periods of mobilization, as is currently the case.

In its daily update of November 4 of the same year on the situation in Ukraine, the British Ministry of Defense also reported the "probable" deployment in the Russian army of "blocking units" , responsible for motivating - or even punishing - deserters.

The Ukrainian Telegram account Ychtchy Svoykh , which allows users to search for relatives of Russian soldiers killed or captured in the fighting in Ukraine, showed, without it being possible to verify this, in June 2023 a group of soldiers fleeing the fighting who were apparently shot dead by soldiers presented as Chechens.

These measures echo Stalin's Order ^No. 227 of July 28, 1942, known for its slogan "Not a step back!" , which prohibited any retreat on the battlefield. On October 29, 1944, the barrage detachments were officially disbanded by Stalin's Order ^No. 349, citing the changing situation at the front.

Despite its insistence that it is seeking dialogue with the United States, Russia is expanding its military cooperation with Beijing, reports the Kyiv Post , citing sources within the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (HUR). As a sign of the close partnership between the two countries, the Russian army is expected to welcome around 600 Chinese soldiers in 2025 for training at Russian armed forces bases and military centers. "The Kremlin has decided to allow the Chinese military to study and adopt the combat experience Russia has gained in its war against Ukraine," according to a HUR source.

The Chinese military will be trained to counter Western weapons, with an emphasis on training tank operators, gunners, engineers, and air defense specialists. The intelligence source cited said this underscores the fact that "such moves by Moscow and Beijing clearly illustrate the Russian regime's intention to align itself with China in a global confrontation with the West."

At the end of May, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that China had stopped selling drones to Ukraine and Western countries, while continuing to supply them to Russia. “The Chinese Mavic is available to Russians, but closed to Ukrainians,” Zelensky told reporters, referring to the popular quadcopter drone made by the Chinese company DJI. “There are production lines on Russian territory where Chinese representatives are located,” he added, according to Bloomberg .

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is embarking on a European tour to hold talks with his French, German, Belgian and EU counterparts, as China hopes to improve its relations with the Europeans.

Russia is expanding the Sergei Gorbunov Aircraft Plant in Kazan [ 🚩 ], where Russian Tu-22 and Tu-160 strategic bombers and Tu-204 and Tu-214 airliners are assembled and upgraded, reports Yle , Finland's national public broadcaster. "The largest structure is about 320 meters long, covering an area of ​​about 19,000 square meters, the equivalent of three football pitches," the Finnish media outlet reports.

The Kazan plant produces and modernizes Tu-22M3 and Tu-160M ​​bombers, and also manufactures new Tu-160M2s. Despite this expansion, Yle reports that production remains slow, with only two Tu-160M2s and two Tu-160Ms completed this year.

According to the channel, the Kazan plant is the only one in Russia capable of replacing strategic bombers damaged or destroyed by recent Ukrainian drone strikes, as part of the so-called "Operation Spider Web."

According to an investigation conducted by Yle , Russia has acquired Western aircraft components worth at least €1 billion by circumventing sanctions, and it is also difficult for Russia to acquire the equipment necessary for their production.

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's foreign intelligence service (SVR), announced that he had a telephone conversation with John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, Russian media reported. According to him, the two sides agreed to maintain the possibility of rapid contacts. "I had a telephone conversation with my American counterpart, and we agreed to call each other at any time to discuss issues of interest to us," Naryshkin told Russian state television, without giving further details.

In the context of the rapprochement between Moscow and Washington, a first call took place in mid-March between the two men.