Russia Ukraine war latest: Kyiv’s drones hit Putin’s bombers and cruise missile carriers deep inside Russian territory

Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that Ukraine’s operation against Russian airfields struck one third of the strategic cruise missile carriers stationed at air bases.

“Today, a brilliant operation was carried out. The preparation took over a year and a half,” he wrote on X alongside his Sunday evening address.

“What’s most interesting, is that the ‘office’ of our operation on Russian territory was located directly next to FSB headquarters in one of their regions.

“In total, 117 drones were used in the operation with a corresponding number of drone operators involved. 34% of the strategic cruise missile carriers stationed at air bases were hit. We will continue this work.”

Russian and Ukrainian officials are due to sit down today in the Turkish city of Istanbul for their second round of direct peace talks since 2022, but the two sides are still far apart on how to end the war and the fighting is stepping up.

The Russian delegation will be headed by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who after the first round invoked French general and statesman Napoleon Bonaparte to assert that war and negotiations should always be conducted at the same time.

After keeping the world guessing on whether Ukraine would even turn up for the second round, president Volodymyr Zelensky said defence minister Rustem Umerov would meet with Russian officials in Istanbul.

The first round of talks on 16 May yielded the biggest prisoner swap of the war but no sign of peace – or even a ceasefire as both sides merely set out their own opening negotiating positions.

US president Donald Trump has demanded Russia and Ukraine make peace, but so far they have not and the White House has repeatedly warned the United States will “walk away” from the war if the two sides are too stubborn to reach a peace deal.

Ukraine’s overnight drone attacks on Russia’s Kursk and Voronezh regions sparked residential fires and disrupted traffic on a major highway, regional officials said early this morning.

Russian air defence units destroyed a total of 162 Ukrainian drones overnight, downing 57 of the air weapons over the Kursk region that borders Ukraine.

Falling debris from destroyed drones in the Kursk region sparked fires at several houses and damaged private apartments, said acting governor Alexander Khinshtein.

In the southern Russian region of Voronezh, where Russian air units destroyed 16 Ukrainian drones, regional governor Alexander Gusev said drone debris cut through power lines which fell on the M-4, a major expressway.

A small section of the highway, which links the cities of Moscow, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar, was closed, Mr Gusev said. Falling drone debris also damaged the facade of several houses, he added on Telegram.

There were no injuries reported, the governors of the regions said.

The attacks come as both Russia and Ukraine are about to meet for a round of peace talks, trying to find a way to end the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion on its smaller neighbour more than three years ago.

At least seven people were killed and 30 hospitalised after “illegal interference” caused a bridge to collapse and a train to derail in Russia’s Bryansk region that borders Ukraine, Russian authorities said yesterday.

The train’s locomotive and several cars derailed “due to the collapse of a span structure of the road bridge as a result of an illegal interference in the operation of transport”, Russian Railways said on Telegram.

Two children were among those hospitalised, one of them in a serious condition, according to Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Bryansk.

Among those killed was the locomotive driver, Russia’s state news agencies reported, citing medics. Russia’s ministry of emergency situations said its main efforts were aimed at finding and rescuing victims and that some 180 personnel were involved in the operation.

Russia’s Baza Telegram channel, which often publishes information from sources in the security services and law enforcement, reported without providing evidence that the bridge was blown up.

Since the start of the war that Russia launched more than three years ago, there have been continued cross-border shelling, drone strikes, and covert raids from Ukraine into the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions that border Ukraine.

The train was going from the town of Klimovo to Moscow, Russian Railways said. It collided with the collapsed bridge in the area of a federal highway in the Vygonichskyi district of the Bryansk region.The district lies some 100km from the border with Ukraine.

Russia launched at least 472 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force said yesterday, the highest nightly total of the war so far.

The air force said in a statement that Russia had also launched seven missiles.

It added that 382 of the drones were shot down or otherwise neutralised, along with three of the missiles.

Russia has recently stepped up the amount of drones it launches at Ukraine in its regular nightly barrages.

Vladimir Putin will be “infuriated” by the “unprecedented” attack if it is as damaging as Kyiv claims, Russia expert John Lough told The Independent, describing it as a “huge win” for Ukraine that will boost morale within the military.

“It’s an embarrassment [for Russia]. 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,” said Mr Lough, head of foreign policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre.

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 the Second World War.

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

Volodymyr Zelensky has hailed the “absolutely brilliant” operation against Russian warplanes, saying it will “undoubtedly be in history books”.

“A result achieved solely by Ukraine. One year, six months, and nine days from the start of planning to effective execution. Our most long-range operation,” Mr Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian agents involved in the operation were successfully extracted from Russian territory, he added.

Appearing to refer to the fact that a limited number of videos have so far been released – with analysts saying they cannot independently verify Kyiv’s claim that 41 planes were destroyed – Mr Zelensky said: “I instructed the Security Service of Ukraine to inform the public about the details and results of the operation that can be disclosed. Of course, not everything can be revealed at this moment, but these are Ukrainian actions that will undoubtedly be in history books.”

In a later post on X, Mr Zelensky claimed one third of Russian strategic cruise carriers had been destroyed.“In total, 117 drones were used in the operation with a corresponding number of drone operators involved. 34 per cent of the strategic cruise missile carriers stationed at air bases were hit. We will continue this work.”

Nato should prepare for a possible attack from Russia within the next four years, Germany’s chief of defence has told the BBC.

Russia is producing hundreds of tanks per year, which could be used for an attack on Nato Baltic state members before 2029, General Carsten Breuer said.

Nato is facing a “very serious threat” which is more significant than General Breuer has seen in his four decades of service, he told the BBC at the Shangri-la Dialogue, a defence summit in Singapore.

Russia is producing nearly 1,500 battle tanks per year, he added.

“Not every single tank is going to [the war in] Ukraine, but it’s also going in stocks and into new military structures always facing the West,” he said. “There’s an intent and there’s a buildup of the stocks.”

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.