{"id":178794,"date":"2025-06-12T16:21:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T16:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/178794\/"},"modified":"2025-06-12T16:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T16:21:13","slug":"ukraine-keeps-up-pressure-on-russian-airfields-and-war-production-russia-ukraine-war-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/178794\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine keeps up pressure on Russian airfields and war production | Russia-Ukraine war News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukraine has kept up the pressure on Russian airfields and war production in the past week after its highly successful Operation Spiderweb<\/a>, which destroyed Moscow\u2019s strategic bombers on June 1.<\/p>\n

Russia responded with its biggest air raids<\/a> on Ukrainian cities, causing dozens of civilian casualties and introducing a jet-powered version of the Iranian-designed Shahed drone.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Ukraine struck at least three fuel tanks at Engels airbase 500km (310 miles) southeast of Moscow. Fires were also reported at Dyagilevo airbase, 170km (105 miles) from the capital. Both had been targeted in Operation Spiderweb.<\/p>\n

Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine\u2019s Center for Countering Disinformation, also said Kyiv\u2019s forces struck the JSC Progress plant in Michurinsk, a key link in Russia\u2019s defence industrial chain manufacturing electronic stabilisation and control systems for artillery and rocket systems.<\/p>\n

Ukraine hit Russia\u2019s munitions industry again on Sunday, targeting the Azot chemical plant in Novomoskovsk, which produces military explosives.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian drones also stopped operations at the Tambov Gunpowder plant, 430km (270 miles) southeast of Moscow, on Wednesday. Kovalenko said it was \u201cone of the main suppliers of explosives for the Russian army\u201d, providing gunpowder for bullets, shells and rocket systems.<\/p>\n

Geolocated footage confirmed the hit.<\/p>\n

\"INTERACTIVE-WHO(Al Jazeera)<\/p>\n

At the start of this week, Ukraine destroyed two fighter planes on the tarmac of the Savasleyka airbase in the region of Nizhny Novgorod east of Moscow. The planes were used to fire Kinzhal ballistic missiles, the Ukrainian military\u2019s General Staff said.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian drone strikes caused fires at a plant in the city of Cheboksary, 500km (310 miles) east of Moscow, which manufactures Comet antennas that provide Russian Shahed drones with resistance to Ukrainian electronic warfare. The plant also makes guidance kits retrofitted onto inertial bombs, turning them into precision-guided glide bombs.<\/p>\n

Russia has been dropping more than 3,000 of these bombs onto Ukrainian front-line positions every month. It is key to Moscow\u2019s ability to maintain pressure on the ground. Ukraine\u2019s strikes against airfields and factories aim to stop these bombs\u2019 production and delivery.<\/p>\n

\"UkrainianUkrainian servicemen fire a BM-21 Grad multiple-rocket launch system towards Russian troops in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine [Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy\/Reuters]<\/p>\n

Russia reported that it downed 102 Ukrainian long-range drones on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have come very close to the moment when we can force Russia to stop the war. We feel it,\u201d Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an ABC interview on Saturday, a possible reference to the growing effectiveness of Ukrainian long-range interdiction of Russian war production.<\/p>\n

French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Saturday that carmaker Renault was launching a new partnership in Ukraine to build drone production lines \u2013 a result of Kyiv\u2019s months-long effort to attract more Western investment in domestic weapons production.<\/p>\n

Russia strikes back<\/p>\n

Stung by the loss of perhaps a third of its strategic bomber fleet, used to launch cruise missiles against Ukraine, Russia has scaled up its attacks.<\/p>\n

It launched more than 1,400 Shahed drones in the past week and launched at least 59 cruise missiles.<\/p>\n

On June 5, two Russian attacks destroyed the Kherson regional administration building. On Friday, a deadly cocktail of 407 drones and 45 missiles of various kinds killed at least four people in Kyiv and injured dozens across the country.<\/p>\n

At least one person was reported killed when Russian bombs hit an apartment building in Kharkiv on Saturday. Kharkiv, which is only 30km (20 miles) from the Russian border, had been shelled continuously for 24 hours, Zelenskyy said. Ukraine\u2019s air force said on Saturday that Russia had launched 215 drones across the country overnight.<\/p>\n

Russia launched its largest yet attack of drones and missiles on Sunday night at Kyiv and Dubno in the Rivne region of Ukraine. Ukraine\u2019s air force said on Monday that it had intercepted 479 of 499 Russian air targets. Of the 479 downed objects, 460 were drones.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday Ukraine said it intercepted 277 out of 315 launched drones and stopped seven missiles.<\/p>\n

\"INTERACTIVE-WHO(Al Jazeera)<\/p>\n

A further salvo of drones targeted Kyiv on Tuesday, which reportedly included a jet-propelled version of the Shahed for the first time, capable of reaching speeds of 600 kilometres per hour (370 miles per hour). The strike targeted \u201cUkraine\u2019s aviation, missile, armour and shipbuilding industries in Kyiv\u201d, Russia\u2019s Ministry of Defence<\/a>\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

At least two people were killed in Kharkiv on Wednesday after 17 Shahed drones fell on the city.<\/p>\n

Russia is now capable of manufacturing 2,700 Shahed drones and 2,500 decoys each month, compared with 500 a year ago, according to Ukraine\u2019s Defence Intelligence Service, meaning that strikes of this scale and density are indefinitely sustainable.<\/p>\n

In addition, Russia has come to an agreement with North Korea to build Harpy and Shahed-type drones, Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine\u2019s intelligence community, said in an interview with The War Zone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is extremely dangerous both for Europe and for East and Southeast Asia,\u201d Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. \u201cThis must be addressed now \u2013 not when thousands of upgraded \u2018Shahed\u2019 drones and ballistic missiles begin to threaten Seoul and Tokyo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russia reaches Dnipropetrovsk<\/p>\n

While the air war played out at these new levels of intensity, Russian troops in eastern Ukraine\u2019s Donetsk region at the weekend reached the border of Dnipropetrovsk, a Ukrainian region that Russian boots had yet to step on in the more than three-year war, achieving a psychological milestone.<\/p>\n

While Ukrainian officials said fighting was still raging in Donetsk and had not spilled over the administrative border, geolocated footage on Monday showed that the Russians had reached it.<\/p>\n

Russian units were \u201cdeveloping an offensive on the territory of the Dnepropetrovsk Region\u201d, Russia\u2019s Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\"AA rescue worker assists a woman during an evacuation from an apartment building damaged by a Russian drone strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine [Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy\/Reuters]<\/p>\n

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian troops intended to create a buffer zone in Dnipropetrovsk, using the same argument Russia has offered for its second attempt to invade northern Ukraine\u2019s Kharkiv and Sumy regions last year and this year, respectively.<\/p>\n

The deputy chairman of Russia\u2019s National Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, sought to leverage the news to diplomatic advantage on Telegram: \u201cThose who refuse to acknowledge the realities of war at the negotiating table will face new realities on the battleground,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOur Armed Forces have launched an offensive in the Dnepropetrovsk region.\u201d<\/p>\n

EU and US pull further apart<\/p>\n

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not attend the 28th Contact Group for Ukraine on June 4, in keeping with US President Donald Trump\u2019s freeze on aid to Ukraine, but Ukraine\u2019s European allies did show up and pledged significant military upgrades.<\/p>\n

Britain said it would spend $476m to build 100,000 drones for Ukraine in 2025, 10 times its drone assistance last year.<\/p>\n

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced that a long-range weapon Ukraine has been building with German funding could enter service imminently. \u201cThe first systems can be put into operation in the armed forces of Ukraine in a few weeks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the European Commission floated an 18th package of sanctions targeting Russia\u2019s banks, energy revenues and military.<\/p>\n

Among other things, the sanctions would forbid any transactions involving Russia\u2019s damaged and currently inoperable Nord Stream gas pipelines. The measure would send \u201ca clear message to global liquefied natural gas producers, which may be hesitant to expand partnerships with the European buyers as long as a relapse to Russian gas dependence is a possibility\u201d, wrote Olga Khakova, deputy director for European energy security at the Atlantic Council.<\/p>\n

\"INTERACTIVE-WHO(Al Jazeera)<\/p>\n

Europe has already banned all Russian oil imports but allows tankers insured in the European Union to trade oil to third parties for up to $60 a barrel. It would now lower that price cap to $45.<\/p>\n

The proposals also included sanctioning an additional 22 Russian banks and banks from third countries.<\/p>\n

The oil price cap was to be discussed at the Group of Seven meeting in Canada next week. EU leaders are to approve the sanctions later this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cEurope remains focused on the war and, let\u2019s say, continues to engage in militaristic bravado,\u201d Peskov said. \u201cThere are absolutely no signals about the willingness to seek any common ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the US has pledged no new aid since Trump took office on January 20, and even reversed some of the former administration\u2019s pledges. Zelenskyy confirmed what the Wall Street Journal revealed on June 4, that the US had redirected 20,000 anti-drone rockets commissioned for Ukraine to US forces in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president is committed to peace in this conflict,\u201d Hegseth said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukraine has kept up the pressure on Russian airfields and war production in the past week after its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,12,332,7661,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-178794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-russia","12":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","13":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114671313663977374","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}