Following Ukraine’s successful “Operation Spiderweb” strike on Russian airfields on June 1, the Kremlin dropped its pretense of seriously pursuing peace talks, ramping up retaliatory strikes in Kyiv, Odesa, and other cities.
The Kremlin is counting on its summer offensive to achieve Ukrainian capitulation or, at a minimum, favorable conditions for a ceasefire.
Independent investigations into Russian mobilization contradict Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims that more Russians are willing to fight in Ukraine, as recruitment slowed in the first half of 2025.
Russia continues its barrage of drone strikes on Ukraine. On June 24, Russian forces launched an attack on the city of Dnipro, killing 16 and injuring at least 279 civilians. The strike damaged infrastructure across the city, including educational and medical facilities, administrative buildings, and residences (Ukrainska Pravda, June 24). On the night of June 10, Russia carried out massive strikes on Kyiv and Odesa. In Odesa, the drone struck a maternity hospital, killing at least three people (Ukrinform, June 10). In Kyiv, a drone hit a multi-story building,
injuring civilians (Nastoyashee Vremya, June 10). Pro-war Russian Telegram channel “Rybar” claimed the Kyiv strike was “the most large-scale” yet, declaring that it damaged the Ukrainian “military-industrial complex” (Telegram/@rybar, June 10). Rybar claimed that the targets “were large industrial enterprises: the Kyiv tank armor plant and workshops of the Artem plant … the Kyiv ship repair plant and other industrial zones in many areas of the city,” as well as infrastructure in Kyiv, Dnipro, and Borispol (Telegram/@rybar, June 10).
Preceding these attacks, on June 1, Ukraine conducted a large-scale strike called “Operation Spiderweb” on Russian air bases. U.S. experts estimated that this drone attack hit up to 20 Russian military aircraft, destroying 10 (Reuters, June 5; Ukrainska Pravda, June 7). Reports indicate that Moscow will likely require years to replace the damaged aircraft, and German military specialists estimate that “Operation Spiderweb” has damaged around 10 percent of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet (Reuters, June 7). In response, the Kremlin threatened retaliatory strikes while continuing its nightly shelling of Ukrainian cities and ramping up its summer offensive in eastern Ukraine (see EDM, June 9).
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