LIVE UPDATES: Russia-Ukraine war

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Here’s where things stand on Wednesday 11 June 2025:

• Russia and Ukraine say they exchanged captured soldiers – the second stage of an agreement struck at peace talks last week for each side to free more than 1,000 prisoners.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia launched more than 320 drones and missiles at Kyiv and Odesa – one of the heaviest assaults of the bloody three-year war.
• At least two people were killed and several others wounded in a drone attack on the southern port city of Odesa.
• In Russia, officials say all airports serving Moscow and St Petersburg were temporarily shut down because of Ukraine’s drone strikes that did not cause any damage.

Ukrainian, Lithuanian officials visit Odesa hours after Russian strike

Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha and Lithuanian National Security Advisor Kęstutis Budrys have visited the southern port city of Odesa, hours after a deadly Russian air strike struck civilian infrastructure.

“The third region we visited today with Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys was Odesa. Together with representatives of the diplomatic corps we honoured the victims of another brutal Russian attack last night,” Sybiha wrote on X.

“The targets included a maternity hospital, residential buildings, and a film studio.”

At least two people were killed and nine injured in the attack, which caused damage to homes, an emergency medical station, a maternity hospital, and the historic Odesa Film Studio.

A fire also broke out at Odesa Zoo, and the State Archives of the Odesa region was affected.

“Russian crimes have no limits. Everyone responsible for these atrocities must be held accountable,” Sybiha said.

“We continue to work closely with Lithuania to mobilise a strong international response and decisive actions to put an end to Russia’s war and ongoing terror against civilians.”

Ukraine criticises Hungary over ‘baseless accusations’

Tensions between Ukraine and Hungary have flared after Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi accused Budapest of spreading “baseless accusations” and demonising President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“The Hungarian government’s communication line, which demonises Ukraine and President Zelenskyy, has gone off rails,” Tykhyi said. “We don’t see Hungary’s demands that Russia accept a ceasefire… It continues to absurdly accuse Ukraine of refusing to make peace.”

The statement came in response to Hungarian government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács, who said Zelenskyy wanted “a puppet government in Hungary that would send Hungarian money to Ukraine”.

He added: “Hungary stands for peace – it does not send weapons or money to Ukraine.”

The row comes amid a war of words after Zelenskyy accused Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of being anti-Ukrainian. That followed Orbán’s use of Zelenskyy’s image on campaign billboards during Hungary’s election.

Budapest remains the EU’s most pro-Russian member state, refusing to send arms to Kyiv and blocking several joint aid packages.

Baltic states need to show strength to deter Russia, says Estonian president

The Baltic states need to show strength to deter Russia, the Estonian president has said.

“Because we are very small countries, we have to build our defence on deterrence. As we all know, Russia only recognises might, which means power,” Alar Karis said in an interview with the Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT.

“We have a neighbour who has been very aggressive, not only now in Ukraine but also [elsewhere] in the past. We forgot at some point that ambitions to grab land from neighbours are in Russia’s genes,” he added.

Arguing that Russia cannot be trusted, Karis also called for security guarantees for Ukraine.

“We had a peace agreement between Estonia and Russia in 1920, but 20 years later, they invaded our country. So these peace treaties don‘t help,” he said.

Family hope US teacher held by Russia will be exchanged

The family of a 73-year-old American held in a Russian prison, Stephen Hubbard, are hoping he will be included in a potential prisoner swap, his New York-based lawyer has told the AFP news agency.

Hubbard, a retired English teacher, was taken captive by Russia in Ukraine’s city of Izium at the start of its 2022 offensive and sentenced to almost seven years in prison, accused of acting as a “mercenary” for Kyiv. He denies the charges.

A Ukrainian who was held with Hubbard told AFP last year that the American was tortured in custody.

His lawyer Martin De Luca told AFP that Hubbard’s family were able to hold a brief call with him and locate him, in the Russian region of Mordovia, known for its harsh prisons.

“The family got one short phone call after years of nothing. It was devastating, but also incredibly important to give them hope,” De Luca said. “They’re cautiously optimistic now. Being able to hear his voice, even briefly, gave them something to hold onto for the first time in years,” he added.

He said it was “not a simple task to identify his location”, saying that “there were clearly steps taken to obscure where he was being held.”

German leader condemns Russian ‘terror against civilians’ in Ukraine

Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz denounced Russian “terror against the civilian population” in Ukraine after Moscow launched heavy drone and missile strikes.

Speaking at a press conference with his Dutch counterpart Dick Schoof, Merz called the recent Russian attacks “the most serious war crimes” and said Moscow had “attacked no military targets but the civilian population”.

Russia attacked two Ukrainian cities with waves of drones and missiles early on Tuesday, killing three people and wounding at least 13 in Kyiv and Odesa.

The attacks came a day after Moscow launched almost 500 drones at Ukraine in the biggest overnight bombardment of the war. Ukrainian and Western officials have been anticipating Moscow’s response to Kyiv’s audacious June 1 drone attack on distant Russian air bases.

Russian attack on Kyiv cathedral ‘unacceptable and catastrophic’, Zelenskyy says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has denounced a Russian attack overnight that damaged St Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv’s historic centre as “unacceptable and catastrophic”.

Zelenskyy said the attack on one of Ukraine’s most cherished monuments caused part of the facade to collapse on the 11th-century cathedral, a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“For all people who truly know history and are not strangers to Christianity, even the threat of damage to or the destruction of St Sophia is an absolutely unacceptable thing, catastrophic,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.

“But not for Russia, mad with Shaheds [Iranian-designed drones] and the red button. And catastrophes are precisely the meaning of their existence. They produce nothing and will leave nothing else behind.”

Ukraine’s path to NATO ‘irreversible’, says Rutte

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte says Ukraine’s future in the military alliance remains assured, describing its membership path as “irreversible” – even if this is not explicitly stated in the final communique of an upcoming summit.

“The irreversible path of Ukraine into NATO is there, and it is my assumption that it is still there after the summit,” Rutte said during remarks at Chatham House in London, as reported by The Kyiv Independent.

“Whether it is again in the communique or not, I think that’s not relevant, because all the language we previously agreed on is there, until we decide it is no longer there.”

The NATO summit, scheduled to take place in The Hague from June 24 to 25, comes at a critical time in the war, with Ukraine still pushing for stronger Western security guarantees.

Survivor describes heavy Russian strikes on Ukraine’s capital

In Kyiv, Kateryna Zaitseva, 38, and her 14-year-old son looked at the rubble in their apartment, which received a direct hit by a drone. The explosion destroyed one room, damaged another and blew in the door of the bathroom in which they were hiding.

“We started moving blindly to the entrance door. I heard the voice of the emergency worker… I shouted there were two of us, that we were unhurt and he helped us,” said Zaitseva, a laboratory technician.

The overnight strikes followed Russia’s biggest drone assault of the war on Ukraine on Monday and were part of intensified bombardments in what Moscow says is retaliation for attacks by Ukrainian forces on Russia.

Russia backs Belarus’s deeper involvement in BRICS

Russia has pledged its support to Belarus in strengthening its role within the bloc BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and other international organisations.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow is ready to help Belarus integrate more fully with the emerging global alliance.

“We stand prepared to assist our Belarusian partners in deepening their engagement within BRICS, where Belarus has been granted partner status,” Lavrov said.

The comments come as BRICS – an economic grouping originally composed of five countries – has expanded its influence among countries seeking alternative routes to cooperation beyond Western-dominated institutions.

US says Russia’s strikes against Ukraine’s cities need to stop immediately

Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities need to stop immediately, a US State Department spokesperson has said, condemning the strikes after Russia launched one of its largest air raids on Kyiv.

“We have seen these reports, and we are monitoring the situation closely, including the strikes that hit a maternity hospital in Odesa,” the spokesperson said.

“Russia’s strikes against Ukraine’s cities need to stop immediately. We condemn these strikes and extend our deepest condolences to the victims and to the families of all those affected.”

Russia wants to ‘impose the rule of might’: EU chief

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says “strength is the only language that Russia will understand” as Brussels unveiled new sanctions targeting Moscow’s energy revenues, military sector, and banking system.

“Russia’s goal is not peace; it is to impose the rule of might,” von der Leyen told reporters.

The proposed 18th package of sanctions against Russia comes more than three years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It is designed to hit Russia’s war economy by restricting oil revenue, curbing sanctions evasion, and tightening oversight on its financial system.

“My assumption is that we do that together as the G7,” von der Leyen said. “We started that as G7, it was successful as a measure from the G7, and I want to continue this measure as G7.”

‘My job’: Zelenskyy says only he will discuss territory with Putin

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says it’s his responsibility to lead negotiations with Russia on territorial matters, stressing Ukraine’s sovereignty is not up for discussion by intermediaries.

“It is my job to hold talks on territories – and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, who seized them. I will not discuss my position on this with anyone else,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with Hungarian outlet Valasz Online.

His comments came in response to a question about Ukraine’s willingness to compromise during ongoing peace negotiations with Russia. He confirmed a memorandum submitted to Moscow during last week’s talks in Istanbul no longer referenced Ukraine’s 1991 borders.

“Our memorandum is the basis for negotiations. Based on this, our delegation has a mandate to discuss humanitarian issues – the issue of prisoners of war and abducted children – or a ceasefire. However, they do not have a mandate to discuss Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. This is our own constitutional matter,” said Zelenskyy.

Ukraine’s Kherson bolsters front line with electronic warfare systems

Oleksandr Prokudin, head of Kherson’s regional military administration, announced the arrival of new electronic warfare systems for troops.

The move comes as part of a wider national strategy to harden Ukraine’s defences against Russian drones and communications interference.

“The next batch of electronic warfare systems was received by the units of the Defence Forces of the Kherson region,” Prokudin said in a statement on Telegram.

“These electronic warfare devices will protect the personnel and equipment of the National Guard fighters and artillerymen. The work of our defenders will be safer.”

The systems, valued at two million Ukrainian hryvnia ($48,000), were procured with funds from nine local cities, towns and villages in Ukraine.

If you’re just joining us

Here are the latest developments:

• Russia launched a major drone-and-missile assault on Ukraine, killing one person in Kyiv and two in the southern port city of Odesa.
• A Ukrainian drone attacked a petrol station in the Russian city of Belgorod, killing one person and injuring several others.
• Despite the tit-for-tat strikes, Russia and Ukraine completed a second prisoner swap following yesterday’s exchange of POWs under the age of 25.
• The European Commission proposed an 18th package of sanctions against Russia, targeting its energy revenues and military industry.
• A Russian attack overnight damaged St Sophia Cathedral in the historic centre of Kyiv, one of Ukraine’s most significant monuments and a World Heritage Site.

Russian opposition figure Lev Shlosberg arrested over anti-war comments

Russian opposition politician Lev Shlosberg has been arrested and charged with discrediting the Russian army after calling the war on Ukraine a game of “bloody chess”.

The 61-year-old made the comment during a video debate in January in which he urged an end to the conflict. “We must first stop killing people,” Shlosberg said at the time. “If we achieve peace, we will regain freedom.”

His political party Yabloko said the charges were directly linked to those remarks and confirmed Shlosberg denies the allegations.

He was detained after authorities searched his home and the party’s office in the western city of Pskov, near the Estonian border. He was placed in pre-trial detention ahead of a court hearing on Wednesday.

Photos: Ukraine and Russia complete prisoner swap

Hegseth says US military aid for Ukraine to be reduced in upcoming defence budget

That could mean Kyiv will receive fewer critical air defence systems in the future that have been key to countering a continuous onslaught of Russian missiles.

“It is a reduction in this budget,” Hegseth told Us lawmakers. “This administration takes a very different view of that conflict. We believe that a negotiated peaceful settlement is in the best interest of both parties and our nation’s interests, especially with all the competing interests around the globe.”

The US to date has provided Ukraine more than $66bn in aid since Russia invaded in February 2022.

Ukraine says freed troops ‘all urgently need medical care’

As images emerge of Ukrainian soldiers returning from captivity in Russia, Kyiv says “all” require medical treatment.

Following historic negotiations in Istanbul last month, about 1,200 prisoners of war (POWs) are expected to be exchanged. Footage shared by Ukrainian officials show soldiers draped in Ukrainian flags singing the national anthem and embracing each other.

In a statement shared on X, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry emphasised “the exchanges must and will continue”.

“Today marked the first stage of returning our wounded and severely injured defenders from Russian captivity,” the ministry said.

“They all urgently need medical care. Now back in Ukraine are service members from across our defence and security forces: the Armed Forces, the National Guard, the State Border Guard Service, and the State Special Transport Service. This is only the beginning,” it added.

“We are doing everything possible to find and bring back every Ukrainian held in Russian captivity. Gratitude to everyone working to make this happen.”

Ukraine urges ‘action’ from allies as Russian attacks mount

Ukrainian  President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on Western allies to take “concrete action” after Russia unleashed another barrage of drone and missile strikes.

The strikes launched early on Tuesday hit targets across the country, including Kyiv. It was the latest in a series of large-scale bombardments by Russian forces and spurred Zelenskyy to try once again to persuade United States President Donald Trump that Moscow is not interested in a ceasefire.

Two people were killed and nine injured in the southern port city of Odesa, where a maternity hospital and residential buildings were struck. Four people were injured in the attack on Kyiv – one of the largest on the Ukrainian capital so far – while the Dnipro and Chernihiv regions were also targeted, Ukrainian officials said.

“Russian missile and Shahed strikes drown out the efforts of the United States and others around the world to force Russia into peace,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post.

“It’s  is vital that the response to this and other similar Russian attacks is not silence from the world, but concrete action,” he said.

“Action from America, which has the power to force Russia into peace. Action from Europe, which has no alternative but to be strong. Action from others around the world who called for diplomacy and an end to the war – and whom Russia has ignored.”

Russia used 315 drones and seven missiles, two of them North Korean-made, in the latest wave of attacks, he said. An attack the previous night was reported as the biggest overnight drone bombardment of the more than three-year war.

The increased bombardment comes after Ukraine knocked out a large number of planes in Russia’s strategic bomber fleet deep inside Russian territory in an unprecedented operation this month codenamed Spiderweb.

Russian President Vladimir Putin promised revenge shortly before the intensified wave of air strikes began, but Moscow had been relentlessly attacking Ukraine before Kyiv’s surprise attack.

Zelenskyy’s plea for action from the US comes as the two sides are no closer to any temporary ceasefire agreement as a concrete step towards ending the conflict despite some initial momentum from the United States. Trump appears to be losing patience in his campaign for a ceasefire, even suggesting recently that the two foes be left to fight longer like “children in a park” before they are pulled apart.

While Russia and Ukraine have met for negotiations and have continued to exchange prisoners, there has been no pullback on the battlefield.

Russia  said on Tuesday that it had exchanged captured soldiers with Ukraine, the second stage of an agreement struck at peace talks held in Turkiye last week for each side to free more than 1,000 prisoners as well as large numbers of fallen soldiers.

“In accordance with the Russian-Ukrainian agreements reached on June 2 in Istanbul, the second group of Russian servicemen was returned,” the Russian Ministry of Defence said on social media, adding: “In exchange a group of Ukrainian prisoners of war was handed over.”

Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s European allies have been seeking to persuade the US president, who has often appeared to side with Putin in discussing the conditions surrounding a potential truce, that the Russian leader is not serious about finding a peaceful solution to the conflict, which began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Ukrainian president continues to try to persuade Trump that the US must press Russia into taking ceasefire efforts seriously.

“There must be strong pressure for the sake of peace,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine says Russia took 20,000 children during war. Will some be returned?

Ukraine says Russia took 20,000 children during war. Will some be returned?

Russian President Vladimir Putin faces criminal charges for the “unlawful deportation and transfer of children”.

That is the definition of the 2023 arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court, the intergovernmental tribunal based in The Hague.

On June 2, as ceasefire talks rumbled on, Ukrainian diplomats handed their Russian counterparts a list of hundreds of children that they said were taken from Russia-occupied Ukrainian regions since 2022.

The return of these children “could become the first test of the sincerity of [Russia’s] intentions” to reach a peace settlement, Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, told media. “The ball is in Russia’s corner.”

But Ukraine claims the number of children taken by Russia is much higher. Kyiv has so far identified 19,546 children who it says were forcibly taken from Russia-occupied Ukrainian regions since 2022.

The list could be far from final, as Ukrainian officials believe that some children lost their parents during the hostilities and cannot get in touch with their relatives in Ukraine.

As of early June, only 1,345 children had returned home to Ukraine.

But why did Russia take them in the first place?

“The aim is genocide of the Ukrainian people through Ukrainian children,” Daria Herasymchuk, a presidential adviser on children’s rights, told Al Jazeera. “Everybody understands that if you take children away from a nation, the nation will not exist.”

Putin, his allies and Kremlin-backed media insist that Ukraine is an “artificial state” with no cultural and ethnic identity.

Russian  officials who run orphanages, foster homes and facilitate adoptions are being accused of changing the Ukrainian children’s names to deprive them of access to relatives.

“Russians do absolutely everything to erase the children’s identity,” Herasymchuk said.

The Reckoning Project, a global team of journalists and lawyers documenting, publicising and building cases of alleged war crimes Russia commits in Ukraine, said “indoctrination” is at play.

“The system is in the aspects of indoctrination, the re-education of children, when they are deprived of a certain identity that they had in Ukraine, and another identity, a Russian one, is imposed upon them,” Viktoria Novikova, the Reckoning Project’s senior researcher, told Al Jazeera.

Russia’s ultimate goal is to “turn their enemy, the Ukrainians, into their friend, so that these children think that Ukraine is an enemy so that [Russia] can seize all of Ukraine”, she said.

A group of researchers at Yale University that helps locate the children agrees that the alleged abductions “may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

Moscow  conducts a “systematic campaign of forcibly moving children from Ukraine into Russia, fracturing their connection to Ukrainian language and heritage through ‘re-education’, and even disconnecting children from their Ukrainian identities through adoption,” said the Humanitarian Research Laboratory of the Yale School of Public Health.

The group has located some 8,400 children in five dozen facilities in Russia and Belarus, Moscow’s closest ally.

In 2022, Sergey Mironov, head of A Just Russia, a pro-Kremlin party, adopted a 10-month-old girl named Marharyta Prokopenko, according to the Vaznye Istorii online magazine.

The girl was taken from an orphanage in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson that was occupied at the time. Her name was changed to Marina Mironova, the magazine reported.

The girl’s name is on the June 2 list.

The alleged abductions are far from “chaotic” and follow detailed scenarios, Herasymchuk said.

She said some children are taken from parents who refuse to collaborate with Moscow-installed “administrations” in Russia-occupied areas.

During this “filtration” procedure, she alleged that Russian intelligence and military officers and Ukrainian collaborators interrogate and “torture” the parents, checking their bodies for pro-Ukrainian tattoos or bruises left by recoiling firearms.

Viktoria Obidina, a 29-year-old military nurse taken prisoner after failing a “filtration” that followed the 2022 siege of the southern city of Mariupol, feared such an abduction.

She also thought that her daughter Alisa, who was four at the time, would witness her torture and then end up in a Russian orphanage.

“They could have tortured me near her or could have tortured her to make me do things,” Obidina told Al Jazeera after her release from Russian captivity in September 2022.

Instead, she opted to hand Alisa to a complete stranger, a civilian woman who had already undergone the “filtration” process and boarded a bus that took 10 days of endless stops and checks amid shelling and shooting to reach a Kyiv-controlled area.

Another alleged method is “summer camping”, in which children in Russia-occupied areas are taken to Crimea or Russian cities along the Black Sea coast and are not returned to their parents, Herasymchuk claimed.

Some parents plunge into the abyss of trying to reach Russia to get their kids back.

But very few succeed, as Ukrainians trying to enter Russia are often barred from re-entry.

Attempts to return a child are “always a lottery”, Herasymchuk said.

Children of preschool age often do not remember their addresses and do not know how to reach out to their relatives, while teenagers are more inventive, she said.

Ukrainian boys are especially vulnerable as they are seen as future soldiers who could fight against Ukraine, she said.

“All the boys undergo militarisation, they get summons from Russian conscription offices so that they become Russian soldiers and return to Ukraine,” she said.

A return is often more feasible through a third nation such as Qatar, whose government has helped get dozens of children back home.

On Wednesday, Russia’s children’s rights ombudswoman said she had received the list of 339 Ukrainian children. She denied that Russia had abducted tens of thousands of children.

“We see that there aren’t 20,000-25,000 children; the list contains only 339 [names], and we will work thoroughly on each child,” Maria Lvova-Belova told the Tass news agency.

In 2022, Lvova-Belova adopted a 15-year-old boy from Ukraine’s Mariupol.

Along with Putin, she is wanted by the International Criminal Court for her role in the alleged abductions.

Ukrainian observers hope that the children’s return may be one of the few positive things to come out of the stalled Ukraine-Russia peace talks, which were last held in Turkiye’s Istanbul.

“Once everyone understands that no ceasefire is discussed in Istanbul, the Ukrainian side is trying to squeeze things out maximally out of the humanitarian track,” Vyacheslav Likhachyov told Al Jazeera.