Russia Ukraine war latest update: Is Vladimir Putin losing 3-year long battle against Volodymyr Zelenskyy?

Russia and Ukraine's delegations are holding pivotal talks in Turkey on Monday. However, after a string of major attacks over the weekend have raised questions over President Vladimir Putin's control over the three-year long war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Sunday's drone strikes on Russian airbases deep a "brilliant operation". Meanwhile, Russia on Sunday fired the biggest number of drones — 472 — at Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s air force said.

Fierce fighting has continued along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, and both sides have hit each other’s territory with deep strikes. Russian forces shelled Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, killing three people and injuring 19 others, including two children, regional officials said Monday. Also, a missile strike and shelling around the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, killing five people and injured nine others, officials said.

Russian air defenses downed 162 Ukrainian drones over eight Russian regions overnight, as well as over the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday. Ukrainian air defenses damaged 52 out of 80 drones launched by Russia overnight, the Ukrainian air force said.

Ukraine Drone Attacks Setback for Russia?

Ukraine was triumphant after targeting distant Russian air bases. Ukraine said on Sunday it launched a spectacular surprise attack on four Russian airbases thousands of kilometers (miles) apart, destroying more than 40 warplanes. The raid was unprecedented in its scope and geographic reach, targeting bases in Russia’s Arctic, Siberia and Far East more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) from Ukraine.

The head of the Ukrainian security service, Vasyl Maliuk, who led the planning of the operation, said its success was "a major slap in the face for Russia’s military power.” He said the drones struck simultaneously in three time zones and the complex logistics took over a year and a half to prepare.

President Zelenskyy said the setbacks for the Kremlin would help force it to the negotiating table, even as its pursues a summer offensive on the battlefield. “Russia must feel what its losses mean. That is what will push it toward diplomacy,” he said at a summit Monday in Vilnius, Lithuania with leaders from the Nordic nations and countries on NATO’s eastern flank.

Vladimir Putin-led Russia's Response

The official Russian response was muted, with the attack getting little coverage on the state-controlled television. Russia-1 TV channel on Sunday evening spent for a little over a minute on it with a brief Ministry of Defense’ statement read out before images shifted to Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian positions.

Ukraine has occasionally struck air bases hosting Russia’s nuclear capable strategic bombers since early in the war, prompting the Russian air force to redeploy most of them to the regions farther from the front line.

Because Sunday's drones were launched from trucks close to the bases targeted in five Russian regions, military defenses had virtually no time to prepare for them.

Many Russian military bloggers chided the military for its failure to build protective shields for the bombers despite previous attacks, but the large size of the planes makes that a challenging task.

The attacks were "a big blow to Russian strategic airpower" and exposed significant vulnerabilities in Moscow’s military capabilities, according to Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. "This is hard to underestimate," O’Brien wrote in an analysis.

FAQs

Q1. Who is President of Russia?
A1. President of Russia is Vladimir Putin.

Q2. Who is President of Ukraine?
A2. Ukrainian President is Volodymyr Zelenskyy.