Here’s where things stand on Thursday, June 5:

Fighting

• Russian drones have struck apartment buildings in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, triggering fires and injuring at least nine people, the city’s mayor said early on Thursday.
• New Ukrainian drone attacks hit energy infrastructure in Russian-occupied parts of the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions in southern Ukraine, Russian-installed officials said. The Russian-appointed governor of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, said the attacks left 97 settlements, with some 68,000 residents, without power.
• Russian forces have taken control of the settlements of Ridkodub in eastern Ukraine and Kindrativka in Ukraine’s Sumy region, the Russian Ministry of Defence said.
• Commenting on Ukraine’s attack on the Crimean bridge – a major Russian-built road and rail bridge linking Russia and the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula – the Kremlin said that while there was an explosion, the bridge was undamaged.

Ceasefire talks

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said he does not think Ukraine’s leaders want peace after accusing them of ordering a bomb attack in Western Russia on Saturday, which killed seven people and injured 115.
• Putin described the attack, which struck a highway bridge over a railway line carrying passenger trains, as a “terrorist” action aimed at wrecking the peace talks.
• Putin also told United States President Donald Trump during a phone call that he would have to respond to Ukraine’s Sunday drone attacks, which targeted Russia’s nuclear-capable bomber fleet deep in Siberia and Russia’s far north.
• Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy aide to Putin, said the Russian leader told Trump on the call that ceasefire talks “on the whole were useful”, despite attempts by Ukraine to “disrupt” them.
• Two unnamed US officials have told the Reuters news agency that Ukraine’s drone attack in Siberia hit about 20 Russian warplanes, destroying about 10 of them, a figure that is about half the number estimated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
• Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, said the risk of escalation from the war in Ukraine was “going way up” after Ukraine’s drone attack over the weekend.
• Zelenskyy has proposed implementing a ceasefire until a meeting can be arranged with Putin. “My proposal, which I believe our partners can support, is that we agree a ceasefire with the Russians until the leaders meet,” he told a briefing in Kyiv.
• Pope Leo urged Russia to take steps towards ending its war on Ukraine when he spoke to Putin for the first time over the phone, the Vatican has said.

International diplomacy

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has met Russia’s Security Council secretary, Sergei Shoigu, as he pledged unconditional support for Moscow’s position on Ukraine.
• Ukraine is invited to the NATO summit in The Hague, which will take place in a few weeks, Mark Rutte, the military bloc’s chief, said.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will tell Trump on his upcoming visit that Europe is firmly on Ukraine’s side and that no chance for peace must be passed up, Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, has said.
• Wadephul also said that Germany is pushing for new sanctions against Moscow, which should be coordinated with the US, as he accused Russia of not seriously engaging in peace talks.
• Ukraine has discussed with the US how to make a minerals fund operational by the end of the year. The fund’s first meeting is expected in July, Ukraine’s economy minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, who is also a deputy prime minister, said during her visit to Washington, DC.
• Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, DC, during his visit there.
• Kyiv’s allies have voiced a willingness to pay for defence manufacturing by Ukrainian companies in allied countries, Ukrainian Minister of Defence Rustem Umerov said after meeting Western counterparts at the Ukraine Defence Contact Group.
• United Kingdom Defence Secretary John Healey said the UK will increase tenfold the number of drones it will deliver to Ukraine, aiming to ship 100,000 of the devices.

Trump: Russia, Ukraine like ‘two children fighting in a park’

“Sometimes you let them fight for a little while.” Donald Trump said Russia and Ukraine are like two children fighting in a park and sometimes it’s better to wait before breaking them up. He was speaking in an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz who said America is in a strong position to end the war.

Russian drone strike kills 5 as Moscow pledges response to Ukraine attacks

Regional Governor Viacheslav Chaus said the family was among five people killed when Russia launched six drones to attack the town overnight.

Six others were admitted to hospital, he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy slammed the attacks and accused Moscow of “constantly trying to buy time for itself to continue killing.

“When it does not feel strong enough condemnation and pressure from the world – it kills again,” he wrote on X.

This  is yet another reason to impose maximum sanctions and put pressure together. We expect action from the United States, Europe, and everyone in the world who can really help change these terrible circumstances,” he urged.

In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, 18 people were injured, including four children, in a Russian drone attack, Klymenko said.

Resident Anastasiia Meleshchenk told the Reuters news agency that the overnight strike had flown into her neighbour’s apartment, and she managed to run out into the hallway with her child.

Yesterday , workers had just finished repair work in my apartment after the previous attack,” she said.

There was no immediate comment from Russia.

Later on Thursday, Ukrainian authorities said two people were killed in a Russian attack on army training facilities in the Poltava region, eastern Ukraine the previous day.

“Doctors unfortunately failed to save the lives of two people who were wounded as a result of an enemy attack on the training ground,” senior regional official, Volodymyr Kohut, wrote on Telegram.

In Russia, Ukraine’s military said it struck missile systems in the Bryansk region, which it said were preparing to attack Ukraine.

Russia pledges response

The attacks come days after Ukraine targeted four of Russia’s military airfields in Siberia and the far north in an operation using 117 unmanned aerial vehicles launched from containers close to the targets, codenamed “Spider’s Web”.

Russia also accused it of blowing up rail bridges in the south of the country, killing seven people.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Russia will respond to the attacks as and when its military sees fit.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday that the warplanes that were held in the facilities were damaged and would be restored.

Two US officials told Reuters that Washington assesses that up to 20 warplanes were hit and about 10 were destroyed.

In recent weeks, fighting and aerial attacks have escalated despite the two warring sides holding direct talks in Turkiye aimed at ending the conflict.

Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s John Hendren said, the “US embassy has warned US citizens here in Ukraine that major strikes are to come.

“Donald Trump, the US president, said in a conversation with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin that lasted about an hour and 15 minutes that Putin was going to have to retaliate for the strikes on Russian airfields,” Hendren said.

Russia’s war on Ukraine intensifies as peace talks appear at dead end

Russia’s war on Ukraine intensifies as peace talks appear at dead end

Russia’s war on Ukraine intensifies as peace talks appear at dead end

Ukraine has destroyed Russian strategic bombers in an unprecedented undercover drone operation while Russia launched its biggest-yet air raid on Ukraine’s cities and intensified attacks on its northern region of Sumy, when the two sides met for peace talks in Istanbul.

The two respective drone operations were emblematic of how direct peace talks, which began on May 15, have not abated the intensity of the conflict and may have deepened it.

Russian  President Vladimir Putin has reportedly pledged a response.

Russia’s drone-and-missile attack on Saturday night involved 472 Shahed kamikaze drones, four cruise missiles and three ballistic missiles. Ukraine neutralised 385 aerial targets, its air force said, including three of the cruise missiles.

Ukraine’s operation Spiderweb came a day later, and hit the types of planes Russia has used to launch those cruise missiles – Tupolev-22M3, Tupolev-95 and Tupolev-160, among others.

Spiderweb involved 117 drones smuggled into Russia and launched simultaneously near Russian airfields where the bombers were parked.

Video released by Ukraine showed Tu-95s exploding in orange flames as the drones passed over them, demonstrating that their fuel tanks were full and they were in service.

Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU), which carried out the operation, told Ukrainian media 41 planes were hit, which, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, amounted to “34 percent of the strategic cruise missile carriers stationed at air bases”. The SBU estimated the damage at $7bn.

Western military analysts and open-source media had not fully corroborated Ukraine’s story by Wednesday, but fires and explosions were reported at five Russian bases.

For the first time, Ukraine claimed to have hit the Olenya airbase in the Russian Arctic, almost 2,000km (1,240 miles) from Ukraine, where all Tu-95 bombers were reported destroyed.

Also  reportedly struck were the Belaya airbase in Irkutsk, more than 4,000km (2,500 miles) from Ukraine, where three Tu-95 strategic bombers were reported destroyed; the Dyagilevo airbase in Ryazan, only 175km (110 miles) from downtown Moscow; and the Ivanovo airfield, 250km (155 miles) northeast of the Russian capital, where at least one A-50 was destroyed – a $500m airborne radar Russia uses to identify Ukrainian air defence systems and coordinate Russian fighter jet targeting. Fire was reported at a fifth airfield, also near Moscow.

Zelenskyy  called it “an absolutely brilliant result, an independent result of Ukraine”, and said it had been “a year, six months and nine days from the start of planning”.

 Ministry of Defence admitted that “in Murmansk and Irkutsk Regions, as a result of [First Person View] drones launched from an area in close proximity to airfields, several aircraft caught fire,” but that similar attacks were repelled in Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur.

Russia also said “some participants of the terrorist attacks were detained,” although Zelenskyy said “our people who prepared the operation were withdrawn from Russian territory on time.”

“Russia regularly deploys Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 to launch … cruise missiles against Ukraine,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, adding, “The downing of Russian A-50 aircraft has previously temporarily constrained Russian aviation activities over Ukraine.”

Russian pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Rybar and Ukrainian military observer Tatarigami said Russia no longer builds chassis for Tu-95s and Tu-22s, making them impossible to replace. Bloomberg reported that Russia’s reliance on sanctioned Western components will keep it from putting even damaged aircraft back into service.

The New York Times estimated Ukraine may have destroyed or damaged 20 aircraft, but it is possible that not all strike video has yet been posted on open-source media.

“If even half the total claim of 41 aircraft damaged/destroyed is confirmed, it will have a significant impact on the capacity of the Russian Long Range Aviation force to keep up its regular large scale cruise missile salvoes against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure,” aviation expert Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute told The New York Times.

The operation “will force Russian officials to consider redistributing Russia’s air defence systems to cover a much wider range of territory”, said the ISW.

Ukraine s ally  SBU struck again on June 3, damaging the Kerch Bridge, a vital Russian supply line to Crimea, for the third time during the war. Video showed an underwater explosion against one of the bridge’s stanchions, suggesting Ukraine had used an underwater unmanned vehicle.

Moscow denied there was any real damage.

Russia creeps forward

Marring Ukraine’s success was the news of persistent Russian advances.

The most alarming were near the northern city of Sumy, only 30km (20 miles) from the Russian border.

Geolocated footage showed that Russian troops took the villages of Konstyantynivka on the border and Oleksiivka, 4km (2.5 miles) from the border, on Sunday.

By Tuesday, Russian forces were close enough to launch rocket artillery into the city of Sumy, reportedly killing four people and wounding 30.

“Rocket artillery against an ordinary city – the Russians struck right on the street, hitting ordinary residential buildings. Sleazebags,” said Zelenskyy.

On Sunday, Russian troops also appeared to have seized the settlements of Dyliivka and Zorya, north and west of Toretsk in Ukraine’s east.

Geolocated footage indicated that Russian troops had also advanced towards Lyman and Kurakhove, two other key targets in Ukraine’s east.

These gains were part of a slow advance that has gone on for more than a year, but they were signs of Putin’s determination to complete his conquest of Ukraine’s east.

Talks secure another POW exchange

That determination was on display in Istanbul, where Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met on Monday for a second round of peace talks.

Russia presented a ceasefire memorandum that demanded Ukraine formally cede all the territory Russia has taken in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, plus the parts of those regions it has not yet seized, which could take years to conquer and come at great cost.

Syrskii said Russian casualties this year alone passed the 200,000 mark on Tuesday – a figure Al Jazeera is unable to independently verify.

Russia’s memorandum also demanded a limit to the size of Ukraine’s armed forces, and a commitment that Ukraine will neither join foreign military alliances nor allow foreign troops on its soil.

It also demanded a Ukrainian election within 100 days of signing the ceasefire agreement, underlining Moscow’s desire to replace the pro-Western Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

These demands are consistent with the terms Putin laid out in a speech in June 2024, and Ukrainian negotiators, who had not seen Russia’s memorandum before arriving at the talks at 1pm on Monday, departed after little more than an hour.

 two sides did agree to an exchange of at least 1,000 prisoners of war, and possibly as many as 1,200, prioritising the young (18-25) and wounded. They also agreed to an exchange of 6,000 bodies a side.

They agreed to hold a third round of talks in the last 10 days of June, with Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, suggesting it involve Putin and Zelenskyy, “because decisions can only be made by those who really make decisions”.

Some observers thought it was possible that the two leaders would meet at the first round of talks on May 15, but only Zelenskyy showed up.

“The Istanbul talks are not for striking a compromise peace on someone else’s delusional terms but for ensuring our swift victory and the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi regime,” explained Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, on his Telegram channel.

Our army is pushing forward and will continue to advance. Everything that needs to be blown up will be blown up, and those who must be eliminated will be,” he concluded.

More sanctions for Russia?

United States President Donald Trump has refrained from imposing new sanctions on Moscow, but his stance is now losing supporters in the US Congress.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former presidential adviser, and Lindsey Graham said they would this week table legislation imposing 500 percent tariffs on any country that imports oil, gas and uranium from Russia. Graham called it “the most draconian bill I’ve ever seen in my life in the Senate.”

They made the announcement after a weekend trip to Kyiv and a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

“What I learned on this trip was he’s preparing for more war,” Graham said of Putin.

The bill would target China and India, which account for the bulk of Russian energy exports, totalling 233bn euros ($266bn) last year, according to a BBC investigation.

But it could theoretically include European Union members, who spent a reported 23bn euros ($26bn) on Russian oil and gas last year.

A number of EU members sought exceptions from Russian oil bans in early 2023, and the EU has never banned Russian gas, though it has almost completely stopped importing it.

Trump: Russia, Ukraine like ‘two children fighting in a park’

“Sometimes you let them fight for a little while.” Donald Trump said Russia and Ukraine are like two children fighting in a park and sometimes it’s better to wait before breaking them up. He was speaking in an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz who said America is in a strong position to end the war.

Trump, Merz discuss trade, NATO spending and Russia’s war on Ukraine

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called on the US to apply more pressure on Russia to end its three-year-old war on Ukraine.

“You know that we gave support to Ukraine and that we are looking for more pressure on Russia,” Merz told US President Donald Trump at the start of their meeting on Thursday at the Oval Office.

Merz emphasised that Germany “was on the side of Ukraine”, while Trump likened the war to a fight between two young children who hated each other.

“Sometimes, you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart,” Trump said. He added that he had relayed that analogy to Russian President Vladimir Putin in their phone conversation on Wednesday.

Asked about Trump’s comments as the two leaders sat next to each other, Merz stressed that both he and Trump agreed “on this war and how terrible this war is going on,” pointing to the US president as the “key person in the world” who would be able to stop the bloodshed.

Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett said that, while the two men agreed that the war needed to end, how that happens “seems to be a point of contention”.

“What What we saw there was the German chancellor suggesting and pointing out that … Russia continues to hit back at civilian targets, whereas, when it comes to Ukraine, the focus in the eyes of Germany has been strictly on military targets inside Russia,” she said from Washington, DC.

Halkett added that Trump revealed during the meeting that he “implored the Russian president not to retaliate for that attack that took place over the weekend … and Vladimir Putin said he was going to attack regardless.”

A ‘decent’ relationship

Thursday’s meeting marked the first time that the two leaders sat down in person. After exchanging pleasantries – Merz gave Trump a gold-framed birth certificate of the US president’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, who immigrated from Germany – the two leaders were to discuss issues such as Ukraine, trade and NATO spending.

Trump and Merz have spoken several times by phone, either bilaterally or with other European leaders, since Merz took office on May 6. German officials say the two leaders have started to build a “decent” relationship, with Merz wanting to avoid the antagonism that defined Trump’s relationship with one of his predecessors, Angela Merkel, in the Republican president’s first term.

The 69-year-old Merz, who came to office with an extensive business background, is a conservative former rival of Merkel’s who took over her party after she retired from politics.

awhteg has thanked Trump for his support for an unconditional ceasefire while rejecting the idea of “dictated peace” or the “subjugation” of Ukraine and advocating for more sanctions against Russia.

In their first phone call since Merz became chancellor, Trump said he would support the efforts of Germany and other European countries to achieve peace, according to a readout from the German government. Merz also said last month that “it is of paramount importance that the political West not let itself be divided, so I will continue to make every effort to produce the greatest possible unity between the European and American partners.”

Under Merz’s immediate predecessor, Olaf Scholz, Germany became the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United States. Merz has promised to keep up the support and last week, pledged to help Ukraine develop its own long-range missile systems that would be free of any imposed range limits.

At home, Merz’s government is intensifying a drive that Scholz started to bolster the German military after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In Trump’s first term, Berlin was a target of his ire for failing to meet the current NATO target of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defence, and Trump is now demanding at least 5 percent from allies.

The White House official said the upcoming NATO summit in the Netherlands later this month is a “good opportunity” for Germany to commit to meeting that 5 percent mark.

During their meeting on Thursday, Trump described Merz as a good representative of Germany and also “difficult,” which he suggested was a compliment. He said US troops would remain in Germany and said it was positive that Berlin was spending more money on defence.

“Ok with tariffs’

Another top priority for Merz is to get Germany’s economy, Europe’s biggest, moving again after it shrank the past two years. He wants to make it a “locomotive of growth,” but Trump’s tariff threats are a potential obstacle for a country whose exports have been a key strength. At present, the economy is forecast to stagnate in 2025.

Germany exported $160bn worth of goods to the US last year, according to the Census Bureau. That was about $85bn more than what the US sent to Germany, a trade deficit that Trump wants to erase.

“Germany is one of the very big investors in America,” Merz told reporters Thursday morning. “Only a few countries invest more than Germany in the USA. We are in third place in terms of foreign direct investment.”

The United States and the European Union are in talks to reach a trade deal, which would be critical for Germany’s export-heavy economy, but Trump said he would be fine with an agreement or with tariffs.

“We’ll end up hopefully with a trade deal,” Trump said. “I’m OK with the tariffs, or we make a deal with the trade.”