Punjabi: Russia and Ukraine War Like Situation

[Dalvinder Singh Grewal]

Russia-Ukraine exchange prisoners June 12, 2025

June 12, 20259:10 PM GMT+5:30Updated 18 hours ago

Freed Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) return after a swap, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in an undisclosed location in Ukraine June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Maksym Kishka

Ukraine and Russia exchanged another group of ill and severely wounded servicemen on Thursday, officials from both countries said.
All of the Ukrainian troops need treatment, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a message on the Telegram messaging app that did not go into details on the numbers involved.
The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Kyiv and Moscow agreed to a large exchange of POWs and the remains of thousands of dead soldiers during talks in s in Istanbul earlier this month.

Since then, Russia and Ukraine have swapped dozens of prisoners of war, focusing on under-25s and the severely wounded and sick. There are hopes they could build into some of the biggest exchanges in the war that was triggered by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Russia's defence ministry said a group of Russian troops had returned from Ukraine and crossed into neighbouring Belarus, in accordance with the agreements made on June 2.
"They are being provided with the necessary psychological and medical assistance," the ministry said on Telegram.
On Wednesday, Ukraine said it had bought home the bodies of 1,212 bodies of troops killed in the war with Russia. Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said Ukraine had returned the bodies of 27 Russian soldiers.

 

[Dalvinder Singh Grewal]

A concentrated, nine-minute-long Russian drone attack on Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv on Wednesday killed six people and injured 64, including nine children, Ukrainian officials said.
The attack followed Russia's two biggest air assaults of the war on Ukraine this week, part of intensified bombardment that Moscow says are retaliatory measures for Kyiv's recent attacks in Russia.
The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day.

A new wave of drone attacks on four city districts was reported early on Thursday by Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov, including a drone that landed in a school courtyard and smashed windows. There were no other reports of casualties or damage.

 

[Dalvinder Singh Grewal]

Russia has hit Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, with a massive drone and bomber attack, killing four people and injuring nearly 60, officials say.

Two people were also killed in Russian strikes on Kherson, in southern Ukraine, local authorities said.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 48 drones, two missiles and four glide bombs had been used against his city on Friday night, while more glide bombs were reportedly dropped on Saturday.

Earlier, Moscow said a massive wave of drone and missile attacks across Ukraine on Thursday night was in response to "terrorist attacks by the Kyiv regime", after attacks on Russian railway infrastructure and air bases last weekend.
n another development, Russian and Ukrainian officials released conflicting accounts about when a prisoner swap agreed at earlier talks would happen.
In Kharkiv, some 18 apartment buildings and 13 other homes were hit on Friday night, the mayor said. A baby and a 14-year-old girl were among the injured, he added.
One civilian industrial facility was attacked by 40 drones, one missile and four bombs, Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov said, adding that there might still be people buried under the rubble.
In the later Russian attack using glide bombs on Kharkiv on Saturday evening, one more person was killed and at least another 18 people injured, the city's mayor said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha urged allies to increase pressure on Moscow and to take "more steps to strengthen Ukraine" in response to Russia's latest attacks.
Six people were killed and 80 injured across Ukraine on Thursday night, when Russia attacked the country with more than 400 drones and nearly 40 missiles.

EPA
A psychologist provides assistance to a woman near the site of an air strike in Kharkiv on Saturday

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes on Kharkiv made "no military sense" and were "pure terrorism".
He accused his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, of "buying himself time to keep waging the war", and said "pressure must be applied" to stop the attacks.
During the latest round of direct talks in Istanbul earlier this week, the two warring sides agreed to exchange all sick and heavily wounded prisoners of war, those aged under 25, as well as the bodies of 12,000 soldiers.
Moscow's chief negotiator at the meeting, Vladimir Medinsky, said on Saturday that Ukraine had "unexpectedly postponed both the acceptance of bodies and the exchange of prisoners of war for an indefinite period".
He further said that the bodies of more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been taken to an agreed exchange point but that Ukrainian officials had never arrived.
A list of 640 prisoners-of-war had also been handed to Ukraine "in order to begin the exchange", Medinsky wrote on social media.
Ukrainian officials responded angrily to the allegations, telling Russia to "stop playing dirty games".

 

[Dalvinder Singh Grewal]

An overnight Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed 15 people and injured 156, local officials said Tuesday, with the main barrage demolishing a nine-story Kyiv apartment building in the deadliest attack on the capital this year.

Rescuers with service dogs prepare to look for residents, who could still be under the rubble of a destroyed apartment building, which was hit during a Russian missile strike in Kyiv(REUTERS)
At least 14 people were killed as explosions echoed across the Ukrainian capital for almost nine hours, Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said, destroying dozens of apartments.
Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Zelenskyy said, calling the Kyiv attack “one, of the most terrifying strikes" on the capital.
Ukraine's Interior Ministry said 139 people were injured in Kyiv. Mayor Vitalii Klitschko announced that Wednesday would be an official day of mourning. The attack came after two rounds of direct peace talks failed to make progress on ending the war, now in its fourth year.

Russia has repeatedly hit civilian areas of Ukraine with missiles and drones. The attacks have killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations. Russia says it strikes only military targets. Russia has in recent months stepped up its aerial attacks. It launched almost 500 drones at Ukraine on June 10 in the biggest overnight drone bombardment of the war. Russia also pounded Kyiv on April 24, killing at least 12 people.​

The intensified long-range strikes have coincided with a Russian summer offensive on eastern and northeastern sections of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where Ukraine is short-handed and needs more military support from its Western partners.

Uncertainty about U.S. policy on the war has fueled doubts about how much help Kyiv can count on. Zelenskyy had been set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at a G7 summit in Canada on Tuesday to press him for more help. But Trump returned early to Washington on Monday night because of tensions in the Middle East.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer denied that Trump’s refusal to back new sanctions on Russia or provide U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine makes it all but impossible to compel the Kremlin to accept a ceasefire.
The U.K announced new sanctions Tuesday on Russia’s defense industry and its oil-carrying “shadow fleet” of about 500 ships of uncertain ownership that allowed Moscow to dodge sanctions. The announcement coincided with Zelenskyy’s arrival as a guest at the G7 summit.

Zelenskyy is seeking to prevent Ukraine from being sidelined in international diplomacy. Trump said earlier this month it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace, but European leaders have urged him to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into accepting a ceasefire.​

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday it is unclear when another round of talks might take place.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia’s attacks during the G7 summit showed Putin’s “total disrespect” for the U.S. and other countries.
“Russia not only rejects a ceasefire or a leaders’ meeting to find solutions and end the war. It cynically strikes Ukraine’s capital while pretending to seek diplomatic solutions,” Sybiha wrote on social media.
Ukrainian forces have hit back against Russia with their own domestically produced long-range drones.
The Russian military said it downed 203 Ukrainian drones over 10 Russian regions between Monday evening and Tuesday morning.
Russian civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia reported briefly halting flights overnight in and out of all four Moscow airports, as well as those in the cities of Kaluga, Tambov and Nizhny Novgorod as a precaution.
Overnight Russian drone strikes also struck the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, killing one person and injuring 17 others, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the regional administration.
Putin "is doing this simply because he can afford to continue the war. He wants the war to go on. It is troubling when the powerful of this world turn a blind eye to it,” Zelenskyy said.

The Russian attack delivered “direct hits on residential buildings," the Kyiv City Military Administration said in a statement. "Rockets — from the upper floors to the basement,” it said.​

A U.S. citizen died in the attack after suffering shrapnel wounds, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko told reporters.
Thirty apartments were destroyed in a single residential block after it was struck by a ballistic missile, Klymenko said.
“We have 27 locations that were attacked by the enemy. We currently have over 2,000 people working there, rescuers, police, municipal services and doctors,” he told reporters at the scene of one attack.
Olena Lapyshniak, 49, was shaken from the strike that nearly leveled her apartment building. She heard a whistling sound and then two explosions that blew out her windows and doors.
“It's horrible, it's scary, in one moment there is no life,” she said. “There's no military infrastructure here, nothing here, nothing. It's horrible when people just die at night.”
People were wounded in the city's Sviatoshynskyi and Solomianskyi districts. Fires broke out in two other city districts as a result of falling debris from drones shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, the mayor said.
Moscow escalated attacks after Ukraine's Security Service agency staged an audacious operation targeting warplanes in air bases deep inside Russian territory on June 1.​​

 

[Dalvinder Singh Grewal]

STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE HANDOUT/EPA/Shutterstock
Russia attacked Ukraine with Missiles where 17 people died. The attacks targeted the region's main city Dnipro and the nearby town of Samar
At least 17 people were killed in Russian air strikes on southeastern Ukraine on Tuesday, damaging schools, hospitals and a passenger train, according to Ukranian officials.
The strikes, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, wounded more than 100 others, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said. Three more people, including a toddler, were reported killed in separate strikes on the northeastern city of Sumy.
The rare daytime attack came as Zelensky arrived at the Nato summit in the Netherlands for meetings with European leaders.
Zelensky is also expected to meet US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the summit to discuss defence arrangements and further sanctions on Russia.

Writing about the Dnipropetrovsk strikes on social media, Zelensky accused Russian forces of a "complete disregard for life".
"This is not a fight where it's hard to choose a side," he wrote. "Standing with Ukraine means defending life. I am grateful to everyone who is helping."
Emergency services in the region published images of rescuers helping civilians covered in blood after the attack.

Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration handout/EPA/Shutterstock
A train en route from Odesa to Zaporizhzhia was also damaged in the Russian attack


Although no-one was killed on the train, dramatic footage filmed by a passenger showed her being rocked and bloodied by the moment of impact.
The local military administration said it was damaged by the blast from a ballistic missile that landed nearby.
Dnipropetrovsk has come under threat from Russian battlefield advances in recent weeks, with small units crossing the border into the industrial region and Russia claiming to have gained a foothold there.
Ukrainian military officials say they have been successful in pushing Russian forces back from the border area.
In the Sumy region, the head of the military administration, Oleh Hryhorov, said a five-year-old boy was pulled from the rubble of a destroyed house.
"The strike took the lives of people from different families. They all lived on the same street. They went to sleep in their homes but the Russian drones interrupted their sleep - forever," Hryhorov said.
Two people were also killed in the town of Samar, close to Dnipro, state emergencies service said.
The timing of Tuesday's strikes – as President Zelensky arrived in the Hague for the Nato summit – has led to accusations from Kyiv that Russia is deliberately sabotaging peace talks between the two warring countries and seeking to prolong the war.
Last week, on the eve of anticipated talks between Zelensky and Trump at the G7 summit in Canada, Russia launched another barrage of strikes which pounded Kyiv for nine hours and killed more than 30 people across the country.
Direct talks between Russia and Ukraine held last month in Istanbul produced only an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war and the bodies of the dead, and no further negotiations have been scheduled.

 

[Dalvinder Singh Grewal]

Kyiv vows deeper strikes on Moscow; 'will increase scale and depth,' says army chief​

Ukraine's top commander, Oleksandr Syrsky, has vowed to escalate attacks on Russian territory, targeting only military infrastructure, as peace talks remain stalled. Syrsky acknowledged Russia's drone warfare advantage and asserted that Ukrainian forces still control territory within Russia's Kursk region.

Ukraine’s top military commander has pledged to intensify attacks on Russian territory, insisting that Kyiv will only target military infrastructure.“Of course, we will continue. We will increase the scale and depth,” Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said on Sunday.Syrsky described the strikes as “effective” and said Ukraine would not remain passive in the face of continued aggression. “We will not just sit in defence. Because this brings nothing and eventually leads to the fact that we still retreat, lose people and territories,” he said, quoted by AFP.His comments come amid a standstill in peace efforts. The last face-to-face talks between Ukraine and Russia took place nearly three weeks ago, with no follow-up discussions planned.Syrsky also acknowledged Russia’s edge in drone warfare, pointing to Moscow’s use of fibre-optic drones that are difficult to jam. “Here, unfortunately, they have an advantage in both the number and range of their use,” he noted.The commander further claimed that Ukrainian forces still hold 90 square kilometres of territory inside Russia’s Kursk region, despite Moscow’s assertion in April that it had regained full control.

Kyiv launched a cross-border incursion into the area last August.“These are our preemptive actions in response to a possible enemy offensive,” Syrsky explained.Russia currently occupies about one-fifth of Ukraine, including four regions it claims to have annexed since its 2022 invasion, along with Crimea, seized in 2014.Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately stalling peace efforts to prolong its offensive and grab more land.