Ukraine war live: ‘Over 40’ Russian planes destroyed in drone attack as Putin’s airbases targeted

The commander of Ukraine’s land forces, one of the most senior positions in the country’s armed forces, announced on Sunday that he was tendering his resignation, citing a lethal strike on Ukrainian military training facility.

Ukrainian negotiators will present to the Russian side a proposed roadmap for reaching a lasting peace settlement in Istanbul, according to a copy of the document seen by news agency Reuters.

The proposed roadmap begins with a full ceasefire of at least 30 days, to be followed by the return of all prisoners held by each side, and of Ukrainian children taken into Russian-held territory, and then a meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Under the blueprint, Moscow and Kyiv – with the participation of the United States and Europe – will work to hash out the terms on which they can agree to put a complete end to their three-year-old war, the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two.

Ukrainian officials said earlier this week that they had sent the blueprint to the Russian side in advance of the Istanbul talks.

A source from Ukraine’s SBU security agency has claimed an airfield more than 4,000 kilometres inside Russia was struck, in what has been hailed as an unprecedented wave of drone strikes.

Here’s what the source told The Kyiv Independent about how the attack was carried out.

Ukraine will send a delegation to Istanbul for a new round of direct peace talks with Russia on Monday, president Volodymyr Zelensky said, even as Russia pounded Ukraine with a missile strike that killed 12 soldiers and the biggest drone assault of the three-year war.

In a statement on Telegram, Zelenskyy said Sunday that defense minister Rustem Umerov will lead the Ukrainian delegation. “We are doing everything to protect our independence, our state and our people,” Mr Zelensky said.

Ukrainian officials had previously called on the Kremlin to provide a promised memorandum setting out its position on ending the war before the meeting takes place. Moscow had said it would share its memorandum during the talks.

Ukraine did not notify the United States in advance of drone attacks carried out on Russian air bases, a Ukrainian government official told Reuters on Sunday.

Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, the SBU, said it was responsible for the attacks on four bases and a security official said a total of 41 Russian warplanes were hit. Russia’s Defence Ministry said aircraft had caught fire at bases in two regions, but the blazes had been extinguished

The government has announced plans to build six new munitions and weapons factories – at a cost of £1.5bn – as ministers seek to improve the UK’s war readiness in the face of growing hostility from Russia.

The plans will form part of a war-ready – or “always on” – pipeline that can be scaled up at short notice.

Making the announcement ahead of a new defence review published on Monday, defence secretary John Healey said the “hard-fought lessons” of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine “show a military is only as strong as the industry that stands behind them”.

Whitehall editor Kate Devlin reports:

Ukrainian secret services were able to attack strategic bomber aircraft at Russian air bases on Sunday by hiding explosive-laden drones inside the roofs of wooden sheds, according to a Ukrainian security official and images posted online.

The sheds were loaded onto trucks that were driven to the perimeter of the air bases. The roof panels of the sheds were lifted off by a remotely-activated mechanism, allowing the drones to fly out and begin their attack, the official said.

The security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said strikes were conducted on Sunday on four air bases, and that a total of 41 Russian warplanes were hit. The claim has not been independently verified.

Unverified video and pictures posted on Russian social media showed Russian strategic bombers on fire at the Belaya air base in the Irkutsk region of Siberia.

Ukraine’s attack on Russian airfields, which Kyiv says destroyed dozens of warplanes, is “unprecedented” and a “huge win”

“This is unprecedented. They haven’t been able to hit this number of aircraft on this scale, going to those regions of the country,” said John Lough, head of foreign policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre.

“To go out to east Siberia is absolutely phenomenal,” he added.

The scale of the damage will be hard to ascertain, he added, but assuming Kyiv has damaged a number of Russian aircraft quite seriously, it is a “huge win” for Kyiv which will help boost morale, Mr Lough said.

“What it again shows is that the Russians are vulnerable to this type of surprise attack, and they just cannot see this coming. It points to the weaknesses of the Russian system.”

He added: “God knows how [the Ukrainians] actually succeed in doing these things, it’s not simply. But again, it probably shows you the incompetence of Russia and the level of corruption that they’re able to get these drones onto lorries.”

Vladimir Putin will be furious about large-scale Ukrainian attacks on Russian warplanes, an expert on Russia has told The Independent, describing it as a “humiliation” for the Russian president.

It will “infuriate” Putin that Ukraine has carried out “something on this scale and nobody knew about it”, said John Lough, head of foreign policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre.

Mr Lough said it is a “significant moment” for the Ukrainians who have found a “vulnerability” in Russia. “These are very valuable aircraft. The so-called Z patriots, these Russian pro-war bloggers, are absolutely up in arms about this.”

He added: “It’s an embarrassment. It’s just another humiliation at a moment where Putin is very keen to show the Americans in particular that Ukraine is losing, and [that] it’s only a matter of time before the Russians roll them over.

“It will take the sting out of the Russian claims that they’re about to break through [in the war] or the Ukrainians are about to collapse. It’s a big morale booster [for Kyiv].”