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KYIV, June 1 (Reuters) - 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...

Russian forces damaged Ukrainian energy and gas infrastructure overnight in their first major missile attack since the U.S. paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine, piling pressure on Kyiv as President Donald Trump seeks a swift end to the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, seeking to shore up Western support for his country after Trump's diplomatic pivot towards Moscow, called for a truce covering air and sea, though not ground troops - an idea first mooted by France. "The first steps to establishing real peace should be forcing the sole source of this war, Russia, to stop such attacks," Zelenskiy said on...

Ukraine finished work on a draft minerals agreement and handed it back to the United States for review, two sources in the Ukrainian delegation at the Munich Security Conference told Reuters on Friday. The sources said the U.S. side asked for until 5 p.m. (1600 GMT) to review the agreement, which is at the heart of Kyiv's push to win the backing of U.S. President Donald Trump as he strives to bring about a rapid end to the war with Russia. "The Ukrainian side passed its vision and the U.S. side took a pause until 1700 to assess," one of...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals during an interview with Reuters on Friday, part of a push to appeal to Donald Trump's penchant for a deal. The U.S. president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine's war with Russia, said on Monday he wanted Ukraine to supply the U.S. with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. "If we are talking about a deal, then let's do a deal, we are only for it," Zelenskiy said, emphasising Ukraine's...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals during an interview with Reuters on Friday, part of a push to appeal to Donald Trump's penchant for a deal. -snip- "We need to stop Putin and protect what we have - a very rich Dnipro region, central Ukraine," he said. -snip- "The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most. And they should have this priority, and they will. I would also like to talk about this with President Trump." -snip- In addition, Zelenskiy said Kyiv...

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday his team spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump's national security adviser and his top envoy on the war in Ukraine this week, and that they were working to arrange a visit by a U.S. delegation. Kyiv has been trying to establish close relations with the new administration of Trump, who has said he wants to bring a quick end to the nearly three-year-old war with Russia. "We already have working dates when the American team will arrive. Now the dates and members of the delegation are being agreed upon, and we are waiting for...

-snip- Serhiy Dubovik, deputy head of Ukraine's Central Election Commission, said it would take at least four to six months to prepare so that campaigning could start ahead of an election, given the displacement of voters and widespread destruction. Millions of Ukrainians still live abroad, millions more are internally displaced by the war, a fifth of Ukraine is occupied and front-line areas have been devastated. -snip- Zelenskyy's public trust rating is above 50%, according to opinion polls, although it has dropped since Russia's Feb. 24, 2022 invasion, when it rose to over 90% as Ukrainians rallied around the flag. The...

A new ballistic missile fired by Russia at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro last week carried multiple warheads but no explosives, and caused limited damage, two senior Ukrainian government sources said. -snip- One of the sources said the missile was carrying dummy warheads and described the damage caused as "quite small". The second source said: "In this case, (the missile) was without explosives...There were no types of explosions like we expected. There was something, but it was not huge." -snip- U.S. officials have said Russia probably possesses only a handful of these missiles, which Western experts say appears to have...

-snip- A Ukrainian military spokesperson told Reuters that Russia was also moving trained assault groups to forward positions in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and they were preparing to attack. -snip- "(The assaults) could begin in the near future, we're not even talking about weeks, we're expecting it to happen any day," said Vladyslav Voloshyn, spokesperson for the southern military sector. Although it was not clear if they would involve a single offensive push or separate assaults, intelligence assessed that Moscow's troops planned to use armoured vehicles and a considerable number of drones, he said. "They are preparing both armoured groups...

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy touted a newly developed Ukrainian "drone missile" on Saturday that he said would take the war back to Russia and scornfully derided Russia's Vladimir Putin as a "sick old man from Red Square". As Ukraine marked 33 years of post-Soviet independence, Zelenskiy said the new weapon, Palianytsia, was faster and more powerful than the domestically made drones that Kyiv has so far used to fight back against Russia, striking its oil refineries and military airfields. "Our enemy will ... know what the Ukrainian way for retaliation is. Worthy, symmetrical, long-ranged," he said. Zelenskiy said the new class...

Ukraine's top commander said on Thursday Kyiv had set up a military commandant's office in the occupied part of Russia's Kursk region where he said his forces were still advancing, even as Moscow's troops stepped up its offensives in Ukraine's east. The remarks by Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi were the strongest sign yet that Kyiv's forces plan to dig in after launching a lightning cross-border assault on Russia last week that has opened a new front in the 2-1/2 year-old all-out war. "We are moving forward in Kursk region. A military commandant's office has been created which must ensure order...

KYIV, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Ukraine said on Tuesday its biggest cross-border assault of the war to date had taken control of 74 settlements in Russia's region of Kursk and was still advancing, making gains of one to three kilometres in the last 24 hours. Ukraine blindsided Moscow by pouring thousands of troops into the western Russian region of Kursk last week in a surprise operation that has given Ukraine its biggest battlefield gains since 2022 after months on the backfoot.

Ukraine said on Monday its biggest cross-border assault of the war had captured 1,000 square kilometres (386 square miles) of Russia's Kursk region and that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have to be forced into making peace. With Russia still struggling to repel the surprise assault a week after it began, Ukraine's top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi briefed President Volodymyr Zelenskiy by video link and said the advance into Russian territory was ongoing. "We continue to conduct an offensive operation in the Kursk region. Currently, we control about 1,000 square kilometres of the territory of the Russian Federation," he said in...

KYIV (Reuters) -A Ukrainian drone targeted a long-range radar deep inside Russia on Sunday, the second such strike in a week on infrastructure used by Moscow to monitor Ukraine’s military activities, a Kyiv intelligence source said. The source said the strike was aimed at a “Voronezh M” radar near the city of Orsk in the Orenburg region some 1,500 km from the closest territory held by Kyiv’s forces. The source, who declined to be named, did not say if there was any damage, but the move would make it one of the deepest attempted drone strikes in Russian territory since...

Ukraine destroyed a Russian landing warship off the coast of occupied Crimea in an operation with naval drones that breached the vessel's port side on Wednesday and caused it to sink, Kyiv's military spy agency and armed forces said. There was no immediate comment from Russia, which said earlier that it had destroyed six drones in the Black Sea. The Kremlin declined to comment. "The Ukrainian Armed Forces, together with the Defence Ministry's intelligence unit, destroyed the Tsezar Kunikov large landing ship. It was in Ukraine's territorial waters near Alupka at the time of the hit," the military said on...

Ukrainian missiles struck one of the few bridges linking the Crimea Peninsula with the Ukrainian mainland early on Thursday, cutting one of the main supply routes for Russian occupation forces in southern Ukraine as Kyiv pushes to drive them out. Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Russian-installed administration in occupied parts of Ukraine's Kherson province, released video of himself on the Chonhar road bridge, where craters had been blasted through the asphalt. "Another meaningless act perpetrated by the Kyiv regime on orders from London. It solves nothing as far as the special military operation is concerned," he said, vowing to...

DNIPRO, Ukraine/KYIV, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Ukraine insisted the West must speed up its supply of weapons, with the city of Dnipro reeling from a Russian missile strike that killed at least 40 people in an apartment block and Ukrainian troops under increased pressure on the eastern front.... ....Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his Monday night video address that the attack on Dnipro and Russia's attempts to gain the initiative in the war underscored the need for the West "to speed up decision-making" in supplying weapons. Western countries have produced a steady supply of weapons to Ukraine since Russian...

Moscow has said no “Christmas ceasefire” was on the cards after nearly 10 months of war in Ukraine, with fighting looking set to drag on through the winter. ...Zelenskiy had called on Russia this week to start withdrawing its troops by Christmas as the first step towards a peace deal, but Peskov said on Tuesday there would be no peace with Kyiv until Zelenskiy accepted the “realities” on the ground – referring to Russian control over parts of four Ukrainian regions it annexed in September following coercive and illegal “referendums”. After a series of lightning Ukrainian counteroffensives, Kyiv has regained...

A Russian-installed occupation official in southern Ukraine said on Thursday Moscow was likely to pull its troops from the west bank of the Dnipro River, signalling a huge retreat that, if confirmed, would be a major turning point in the war. Still, Ukrainian officials and Western analysts remained cautious about signs that Russia was abandoning the area, and there was silence from higher-ups in Moscow over what would amount to one of Russia's most humiliating retreats so far. Kyiv said it was still fighting in the area and was wary that Moscow could be setting a trap by feigning a...

SVIATOHIRSK/KYIV (Reuters) - Ukrainian forces have broken through Russia’s defences in the south of the country while expanding their rapid offensive in the east, seizing back more territory in areas annexed by Moscow and threatening supply lines for Russian troops. Making their biggest breakthrough in the south since the war began, Ukrainian forces recaptured several villages in an advance along the strategic Dnipro River on Monday, Ukrainian officials and a Russian-installed leader in the area said. The southern breakthrough mirrors recent Ukrainian advances in the east, even as Moscow has tried to raise the stakes by annexing land, ordering mobilisation,...