Ukraine’s capital came under a large-scale Russian drone and missile attack early Saturday with explosions and machine gun fire heard throughout the city, forcing many Kyiv residents to take shelter in underground subway stations.
The nighttime Russian attack came hours after Russia and Ukraine began a major prisoner exchange, swapping hundreds of soldiers and civilians in the first phase of an exchange that was agreed on by the two sides at a meeting in Istanbul last week. The agreement was a moment of cooperation in otherwise failed efforts to reach a ceasefire in the 3-year-old war.
The debris of intercepted missiles and drones fell in at least four city districts of the Ukrainian capital early Saturday, acting head of Kyiv military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, wrote on Telegram. According to Tkachenko, six people required medical care after the attack and two fires were sparked in the Solomianskyi district of Kyiv.
Prior to the attack, city mayor Vitalii Klitschko warned Kyiv residents of more than 20 Russian strike drones heading towards Kyiv. As the attack continued, he said drone debris fell on a shopping mall and a residential building in Obolon district of Kyiv. Emergency services were headed to the site, Klitschko said.
The prisoner swap Friday was the first phase of a complicated deal involving the exchange of 1,000 prisoners from each side.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the first phase brought home 390 Ukrainians, with further releases expected over the weekend that will make it the largest swap of the war. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it received the same number from Ukraine.
The swap took place at the border with Belarus in northern Ukraine, according to a Ukrainian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The released Russians were taken to Belarus for medical treatment, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
As the freed men entered the medical facility Friday, people holding signs and photos of their relatives shouted names or brigade numbers, seeking any news of a loved one. The returning men inspected the photos, and a serviceman said he shared a cell with one of those on the sea of portraits held out toward him.
“Vanya!” cried Nataliia Mosych, among the gathered relatives, “My husband!”
The exchange, the latest of dozens of swaps since the war began and the biggest involving Ukrainian civilians at one time, didn’t herald any halt in fighting.
Battles continued along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed, and neither country has relented in its deep strikes.
After the May 16 Istanbul meeting, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called the prisoner swap a “confidence-building measure” and said the parties had agreed in principle to meet again.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that there has been no agreement yet on the venue for the next round of talks to end the fighting as diplomatic maneuvering continued.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday night that Moscow would give Ukraine a draft document outlining its conditions for a “sustainable, long-term, comprehensive” peace agreement once the ongoing prisoner exchange had finished.
European leaders have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of dragging his feet in peace efforts while he tries to press his larger army’s battlefield initiative and capture more Ukrainian land.
The Istanbul meeting revealed that both sides remained far apart on key conditions for ending the fighting. One such condition for Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, is a temporary ceasefire as a first step toward a peaceful settlement.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had shot down 788 Ukrainian drones away from the battlefield between May 20 and May 23.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 175 Shahed and decoy drones, as well as a ballistic missile since late Thursday.
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14 Comments
Wick's pencil
No, the land that Russia wants to control is Russian territory, ever since the people voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in a referendum a few years ago.
Kiev forces will need to exit those territories for any ceasefire to happen.
HopeSpringsEternal
Eventually madness will end, as Kiev's running lower and lower on troops and military equipment, especially as DJ Trump believes it's an EU's problem and US has already done far too $much in a war that never should have started and remains unwinnable. Sanity coming soon.
Ego Sum Lux Mundi
The Ukrainian Army officers at the front know they can’t win the war or even hold back the Russians any longer.
Those who have studied the history of war know that there always comes a breaking point after which the outcome simply isn’t in doubt any longer. Tragically, the kings, generals, and politicians who wage wars very seldom accept the inevitable, and so they drag things out long past the breaking point, thereby leaving the losing country worse off than it would have been if they’d waved the white flag at the appropriate point and at the cost of far more lives than needed to be lost.
Ukraine is now at that point. Russia is advancing faster than at any point since the initial invasion, at a rate of 30 square kilometers per day, and it is doing so without launching the sort of Zhukov-style mass offensive for which the Russian military is famous. The extent to which the Ukrainian forces have been degraded suggests that this summer will bring one or more large-scale offensives that will finally break the Ukrainian lines and cause a crisis for the Kiev regime.
And at that point, many recriminations will be correctly aimed at the US and European leaders who failed to force a surrender that would have cost less in terms of territory and lives than the one that will inevitably follow.
HopeSpringsEternal
Ego Sum, nice analysis, Ukraine should have settled in late 2022 when they had their only military momentum, as it's been all downhill since then
But it remains likely that Putin was playing the long game the entire time to achieve his geopolitical and currency real asset purchasing power destruction 'inflation' objectives and would have not settled.
Never pick a fight you cannot win, Ukraine was played by globalists in Biden Admin and NATO who are busy getting rich in process, via these $secured arms deals indebting Ukraine, along with Trump's minerals deal etc.
chatanista
The Ukrainian Army officers at the front know they can’t win the war or even hold back the Russians any longer.
Those are the unfortunate facts, this is what one of the best Ukrainian military minds Valery Zaluzhny had to say yesterday.
Kiev can’t retake lost regions and Ukraine barely has the resources to fight for its own survival, Valery Zaluzhny has said couple days ago.
Kiev should abandon its ambition to regain control over the territories it has lost to Russia, Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, has said. Only through a “miracle” could Ukraine achieve such a goal, according to the general.
“I hope that there are no people in this hall who are still hoping for some miracle… that will bring peace to Ukraine and will bring back the borders of 1991 or 2022,” the former commander, who currently serves as Kiev’s ambassador to London, told a Ukrainian defense export forum on Thursday.
geronimo2006
The Russians over the past 6 months have been making very very incremental territorial gains at extremely high losses in terms of casualties, and the suggestion that the Ukranians are at a breaking point while they are almost entirely focused on defense is just mistaken. This kind of narrative has been used repeatedly by Russia, and is part of Russian propaganda. Ukraine must give up because they are losing - well, actually, no they aren't. They have large quantities of military support from the West. They have no shortage of shells and drones to kill huge numbers of Russian invaders with. They now have F-16 and long range missiles, and a growing industrial base to support their army. And it looks as if the US may be about to join Europe in applying tougher sanctions. This won't stop the war, but I think it might push Putin to the table. The Russian economy is a lot weaker than Russian propaganda would have you think. Collapse isn't going to be immediate, but it could be a lot sooner than many think if the war continues for long. Russia is running out of money and equipment, and the Ukranians know this, which is why they are standing up in the face of these drone and missile attacks. And clearly they won't give up and surrender whatever Putin thinks he can achieve by them.
Mr Kipling
This comes the day after Ukraine launched a drone attack on Russian airports.
Just Russia showing Ukraine that their actions will have consequences.
isabelle
No, it isn't.
It is legally Ukrainian, and no amount of Kremlin propaganda will change that.
All of us know that your statement is pro-Kremlin nonsense.
Those who have studied the history of war know that deception, and false information is a big part of warfare -- and particularly so now, online.
Your people even have a word for it: maskirovka.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception
All the "actions" have been caused by Putin.
He is solely responsible for this illegal, unprovoked, unilateral war of conquest. No-one else.
HopeSpringsEternal
The war will wind down later this year, because Trump and thus the US Govt. is busy tapering support. It's really that simple, just a matter of peace details, as the longer Ukraine waits, the palatable the final settlement
TaiwanIsNotChina
That's contrary to Trump's "mineral deal". All Kyiv really needs from the US is to be able to buy antiaircraft missiles and receive intelligence.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Ukrainians will have to exit territory on which they didn't hold russia's sham referendum. Fascinating. Perhaps russia needs some independence referendums held on its territory.
TaiwanIsNotChina
So after any Istanbul fiction. Got it. Also Still Putin's War.
TaiwanIsNotChina
This isn't the 13th century. Giving in to russian aggression will have implications elsewhere and will not just be shrugged off as russians being russians.
Only have to do that 10,000 more times to win. Pathetic.
Then why didn't the chess player in moscow end this in 2022?
Just two more weeks. Got it.
Nobody takes pride in attacking the weaker except the russian. Because he is pretty weak.
isabelle
You cannot know whether the war will "wind down later this year" because (at least):
1) We still don't know which way Trump will eventually go, and when
2) The EU/UK are ramping up their support for Ukraine, and will not let the country fail
It clearly isn't.