On the eve of peace talks, Ukraine and Russia sharply ramped up the war with one of the biggest drone battles of their conflict and an ambitious attack that was carried out on nuclear-capable bombers deep in Siberia.
After days of uncertainty over whether Ukraine would even attend, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Defence Minister Rustem Umerov would sit down with Russian officials at the second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Monday.
The first round of talks more than a week ago yielded the biggest prisoner exchange of the war — but no sense of any consensus about how to halt the fighting.
Amid talk of peace, though, there was much war.
Ukraine attacked Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers at a military base deep in Siberia on Sunday, a Ukrainian intelligence official said, the first such attack so far from the front lines more than 4,300 kilometres away.
The official said the operation involved hiding explosive-laden drones inside the roofs of wooden sheds and loading them onto trucks driven to the perimeter of the airbases.
A total of 41 Russian warplanes were hit, according to the official.
Zelenskyy, writing on the Telegram messaging service, expressed delight at the “absolutely brilliant outcome.”
“And an outcome produced by Ukraine independently,” he wrote, noting that the operation had taken more than a year and a half to prepare. “This is our longest-range operation.”
Speaking shortly afterward in his nightly video address, the president noted that 117 drones had been used to attack the Russian bases and that Russian forces suffered “very tangible losses, and justifiably so.”
Russia’s Defence Ministry acknowledged on Telegram that Ukraine had launched drone strikes against Russian military airfields across five regions on Sunday.
It said the attacks repelled the assaults in all but two regions — Murmansk in the far north and Irkutsk in Siberia — where “the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire.”
The fires were extinguished without casualties. Some individuals involved in the attacks had been detained, the ministry said.
Russia launched 472 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force said, the highest nightly total of the war so far. Russia had also launched seven missiles, the air force said.
Russia said it had advanced deeper into the Sumy region of Ukraine, and open source pro-Ukrainian maps showed it had taken 450 square kilometres of Ukrainian land in May, its fastest monthly advance in at least six months.
Negotiators to meet in Turkey
U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded that Russia and Ukraine reach a peace deal and has threatened to walk away if they do not. This would potentially push responsibility for supporting Ukraine onto the shoulders of European powers, which have far less cash and much smaller stocks of weapons than the United States.
According to Trump envoy Keith Kellogg, the two sides will meet in Turkey to present their respective documents outlining their ideas for peace terms, though it is clear that after three years of intense war, Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart.
Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022, after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. The U.S. says more than 1.2 million people have been killed and injured in the war since 2022.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine war has changed drastically over time — particularly in terms of how he frames Russian President Vladimir Putin. Andrew Chang breaks down Trump’s criticism of Putin following Russia’s latest attack by explaining what it may signal about how the U.S. proceeds. Images provided by Getty Images, The Canadian Press and Reuters.
Trump has called Russian President Vladimir Putin “crazy” and berated Zelenskyy in public in the Oval Office, but the U.S. president has also said he thinks peace is achievable and that if Putin delays, he could impose tough sanctions on Russia.
In June last year, Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.
Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul will present to the Russian side a proposed road map for reaching a lasting peace settlement, according to a copy of the document seen by Reuters.
The document notes that there will be no restrictions on Ukraine’s military strength after a peace deal is struck, no international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow’s forces and reparations for Ukraine.
The document also states that the current location of the front line will be the starting point for negotiations about territory.
Russia currently controls a little under one-fifth of Ukraine, or about 113,100 square kilometres.
