Key Takeaways from the ISW:
- Russian forces recently advanced to the Dnipropetrovsk-Donetsk administrative border as Kremlin officials continued to demonstrate that Russia has wider territorial ambitions in Ukraine beyond Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts and Crimea.
- The Kremlin appears to be dangling the prospect of bilateral arms control talks with the United States to extract preemptive concessions from the United States about the war in Ukraine.
- Western security officials continue to assess that Russia is preparing for a protracted confrontation with NATO.
- Russian forces conducted the largest combined missile and drone strike of the war overnight on June 8 and 9.
- Ukrainian forces continue to conduct drone strikes against Russian military and defense industrial targets that are involved in Russia’s long-range drone and missile strikes against Ukraine.
- Ukraine and Russia on June 9 conducted the first round of the prisoner of war (POW) exchanges that the parties agreed to during the latest bilateral talks in Istanbul on June 2 as Russian officials continued to baselessly accuse Ukraine of failing to repatriate the bodies of killed in action (KIA) soldiers.
- Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Lyman. Russian forces recently advanced near Chasiv Yar, Toretsk, Novopavlivka, and Kurakhove.
Authors: Olivia Gibson, Anna Harvey, Christina Harward, and George Barros with William Runkel and Nate Trotter.
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