ACCUSATIONS OVER WILLINGNESS FOR PEACE
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that he did not think Ukraine’s leaders wanted peace, after accusing them of ordering a bombing in Bryansk, western Russia, that killed seven people and injured 115 a day before talks in Turkey.
Ukraine, which has not commented on the attack on a Bryansk bridge, has similarly accused Moscow of not seriously seeking peace, citing as evidence Russian resistance to an immediate ceasefire.
Russia is demanding international recognition of Crimea, a peninsula annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014, and four other regions of Ukraine that Moscow has claimed as its own territory. Ukraine would have to withdraw its forces from all of them.
Russia controlled 113,273 sq km, or 18.8 per cent, of Ukrainian territory as of Jun 7, according to the Deep State map. That is an area bigger than the US state of Virginia.
The areas under Russian control include Crimea, more than 99 per cent of the Luhansk region, over 70 per cent of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, all in the east or southeast, and fragments of the Kharkiv and Sumy regions in the northeast.
Putin told Trump on Wednesday that he would have to respond to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s bomber fleet and the bombings of the railways.
The United States believes that Putin’s threatened retaliation against Ukraine over its attacks has not happened yet in earnest and is likely to be a significant, multi-pronged strike, US officials told Reuters.
Russia also hit the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Friday evening and overnight with drones, missiles and guided bombs, killing at least four people and injuring more than 60, including a baby, local officials said on Saturday.
Russia also said it had downed 61 Ukrainian drones overnight on Sunday in the Moscow region. Two major airports serving Moscow were closed temporarily.
