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Here’s where things stand on Sunday, June 1:
Fighting
- The governor of Russia’s Bryansk, Alexander Bogomaz, said seven people were killed, and 30 were injured in a train derailment in the region bordering Ukraine. Moscow Railway said in a post on Telegram that the derailment and bridge collapse was a result of “illegal interference in transport operations”. Ukraine’s military did not immediately comment.
- A Russian attack killed a child and wounded another person in the Ukrainian village of Dolynka in Zaporizhia, the region’s governor said.
- A man was also killed by Russian shelling in Ukraine’s Kherson region, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.
- The Ukrainian Air Force said Russian forces launched an estimated 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine on Friday and overnight. Ukrainian forces destroyed 42 of the drones, it added.
- Russia’s military said it captured the Ukrainian village of Vodolahy in the Sumy region and Novopil in the Donetsk region.
- The announcement came after Ukraine ordered the evacuation of 11 more villages in the Sumy region, saying Russia had amassed some 50,000 troops in the area.
Politics and diplomacy
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia did not “look very serious” and had given “no clear information” on what it plans to achieve at peace talks in Istanbul, Turkiye, next week.
- He did not comment on whether Ukraine would participate in the new round of negotiations, though Russia has said it would send a delegation led by Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister.
- China’s embassy in Singapore criticised French President Emmanuel Macron for comparing the defence of Ukraine with the need to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, saying that “the two are different in nature and not comparable at all”.
- Russia’s war on Ukraine will be at the top of the agenda when German Chancellor Friedrich Merz meets with United States President Donald Trump on Thursday at the White House, according to a spokesman for the German government.
- Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said new rules set to regulate foreign ships crossing Swedish territorial waters from July 1 come amid “a growing number of concerning incidents in the Baltic Sea”, as Russia’s so-called Shadow Fleet continues to run into problems.
Weapons
- British Defence Secretary John Healey announces plans to build at least six new factories producing weapons and explosives, saying that “the hard-fought lessons from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine show a military is only as strong as the industry that stands behind them.”
Bridges collapse in two Russian regions bordering Ukraine, killing seven
Two bridges have collapsed in different Russian regions bordering Ukraine, derailing trains, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens, Russian authorities said.
A bridge collapsed in the Kursk region early on Sunday when a freight train was crossing it, acting Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein and Russian Railways said on the Telegram messaging app.
The area on the Trosna-Kalinovka highway is about 11km (6.8 miles) east of the border with Ukraine.
“Part of the train fell onto a road underneath the bridge,” Khinshtein said, adding that the locomotive caught fire, which was quickly extinguished.
One of the drivers sustained leg injuries, and he and the team operating the train were taken to a local hospital, Khinshtein said.
The Kursk incident came hours after a highway bridge collapsed onto railway tracks, derailing an approaching train, in the Bryansk region late on Saturday, Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations and regional officials said.
“Unfortunately , there are seven fatalities,” Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz said in a post on Telegram, adding that 66 others were injured, including three children.
“Three victims are in serious condition, including one child,” he said, with a total of 44 people hospitalised.
The driver of the train was among those killed, according to Russian news agencies. The area lies some 100km (62 miles) from Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Moscow Railway, in a post on Telegram, said the bridge had collapsed “as a result of an illegal interference in the operation of transport”. It did not elaborate further.
“The bridge was blown up while the Klimovo-Moscow train was passing through with 388 passengers on board,” Interfax quoted Bryansk region’s Governor Alexander Bogomaz as telling Russia’s public broadcaster.
Explosions have derailed multiple trains, most of them freight trains, in Russian regions near Ukraine as fighting between Russia and Ukraine continues. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Andrei Klishas, a senior member of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, said on Telegram that the incident in Bryansk shows that “Ukraine has long lost the attributes of a state and has turned into a terrorist enclave”.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, there have been continued cross-border shelling, drone strikes and covert raids from Ukraine into Russia’s Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions, which border Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Kyiv City Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Ukraine’s air defence units were trying to repel a Russian air attack on the Ukrainian capital. Russian drone and missile attacks killed at least two people in Ukraine on Saturday, officials said.
United States President Donald Trump has urged Moscow and Kyiv to work together on a deal to end the war, and Russia has proposed a second round of face-to-face talks with Ukrainian officials next week in Istanbul.
Ukraine is yet to commit to attending the talks on Monday, saying it first needs to see Russian proposals, while a leading US senator warned Moscow it would be “hit hard” by new US sanctions.