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Stay on top of Russia-Ukraine war 02-06-2025 developments on the ground with KyivPost fact-based news, exclusive video footage, photos and updated war maps.
Ukrainian and Russian sources confirm a wave of robot planes pounded a Russian military airfield. Flight tracking data points to a US Air Force recon op hours before the drones hit.
Ukrainian robot aircraft broke through air defenses and hit a major military airfield in mainland Russia on Thursday morning, following a noticeable spike in American military aircraft activity over the western Black Sea hours before the attack.
The strike hit the Primorsko-Akhtarsky air base in Russia’s southwestern Krasnodar region. The facility is used for aviation basing, storage, preparation, and launch of Russian kamikaze and observation UAVs against Ukrainian targets and supports Russian military aviation operating above Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, according to a Ukrainian General Staff statement.
The announcement of the arrival of a new batch of F-16 warplanes coincides with the arrival of French Mirage 2000 fighters.
Ukraine received an additional batch of F-16 fighter jets from the Netherlands, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said on Thursday.
Umerov did not specify the number of jets, nor exactly when they had arrived in Ukraine. He also did not specify if the aircraft had arrived within the same timeframe as French Mirage 2000 jets, which reportedly arrived on Thursday.
Kyiv says a key goal of its struggling operation – the largest by a foreign army on Russian soil since World War II – was to build up reserves of Russian soldiers to exchange for Ukrainian POWs.
Ukraine said Thursday it had captured more than 900 Russian troops in six months of fighting in the western Russian Kursk region, a shock campaign hailed by President Volodymyr Zelensky as a possible bargaining chip in peace talks.
Kyiv says a key goal of its struggling operation – the largest by a foreign army on Russian soil since World War II – was to build up reserves of Russian soldiers to exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Ukraine’s 2024 summer drought led to a spike in inflation and affected sunflower oil production, with Kernel “ceasing operations” at one of its sites.
Fewer sunflowers grown in 2024 led to Ukraine’s largest sunflower oil producer and exporter, Kernel, halting production at one of its sunflower oil sites in January 2025, the company reported.
Last year’s excessive drought meant only 10.2 million tons of sunflowers were harvested in Ukraine as of the end of December despite capacity being 50% higher – the worst result since 2014. In 2023, the harvest yielded 12.8 million tons, LIGA Business wrote.
Russian Telegram channels reported an outage of Starlink satellite communications across the front, though details remain murky at present.
Russian bloggers began reporting Starlink satellite communications outage on the front for Russian troops, with one claiming that a tenth across the front was blocked starting Tuesday, Feb. 4.
Starlink is a satellite internet service developed by billionaire Elon Musk’s tech firm SpaceX, providing high-speed internet connection using low-Earth orbit satellites. Starlink exports to Russia were officially banned, though some have been smuggled into the country and subsequently the Ukrainian front.
Russian milbloggers report that Ukrainian troops launched a surprise offensive in Kursk with 500 personnel and 50 armored vehicles, damaging gas pipelines and shaking Russian control.
Ukraine has launched a new offensive in the Kursk oblast, according to reports from the Russian Ministry of Defense and Russian milbloggers on Telegram.
Russian sources say Ukrainian troops attacked southeast of Sudzha, moving toward the settlements of Fanaseyevka and Ulanok.
A high-explosive fragmentation warhead weighing 2.5 kg was discovered inside a relatively low-cost foam-plastic decoy drone meant to pass for a kamikaze UAV used by Russia.
Russian forces have begun installing warheads in their foam-plastic “Gerbera” drones, which were initially designed as decoys to mislead air defense systems, Ukrainian electronic warfare specialist Serhii Beskrestnov, known as “Flash,” reported on Telegram, sharing photos as evidence.
The Gerbera UAV is a lightweight, low-cost drone with a 2-meter (6.6-foot) length, 2.5-meter (8.2-foot) wingspan, and a weight of about 10 kilograms (22 pounds) It has a flight range of up to 300 kilometers (186 miles) without a warhead and costs approximately $10,000 per unit.
Rumors that movie stars including Ben Stiller and Angelina Jolie among others were paid to visit the war-torn country by USAID were dismissed out of hand by Stiller.
US actor and UN Goodwill Ambassador Ben Stiller has rejected rumors that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) funded his trip to Ukraine.
Stiller, who visited Ukraine and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky in June 2022 to mark World Refugee Day, said the trip was self-funded and said the rumors were Russian disinformation:
Ukraine, battling a Russian invasion since February 2022, stopped supplies to the West at the beginning of the year, dealing a blow to the heavily dependent Slovakia.
Slovakia’s gas transit company SPP said Thursday the country was now getting Russian gas via Turkey after Ukraine halted flows via its territory.
Ukraine, battling a Russian invasion since February 2022, stopped supplies to the West at the beginning of the year, dealing a blow to the heavily dependent Slovakia.
Ballistic missiles furnished to Russia by Pyongyang to attack Ukraine have shown a marked improvement in accuracy in recent weeks, according to senior Ukrainian sources.
Two unidentified senior Ukrainian sources, one military the other a politician, cited by Reuters said that North Korean ballistic missiles fired against Ukraine by Russia’s have become noticeably more accurate in recent weeks.
Between the first confirmed Russian use of North Korean provided Hwasong-11A (US/NATO: KN-23/24) ballistic missiles at the end of 2023 and the beginning of last December Moscow used around 80 of them which were considered very much a hit and miss addition to Russia’s arsenal.
As Russian settlers replace the local inhabitants, the last remaining industrial resources in occupied Ukraine are being drained to fuel Russia’s war machine against Ukraine.
Having razed eastern Ukraine into a battered and barren landscape, Moscow is now plundering through the vast mineral wealth beneath the soil where generations of Ukrainians once lived and stood.
Once prosperous towns and cities are now turned into wastelands in eastern Ukraine – as a result of the fighting, infrastructure and housing in cities and villages are being destroyed, and businesses are ruined.
In the past half year, Russian forces have suffered approximately 39,900 casualties in the Kursk Oblast, including 16,100 killed, according to Ukrainian officials.
Russian forces have suffered nearly 40,000 casualties, including more than 16,000 killed, in the six months since the start of Ukraine’s Kursk offensive operation, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) reported on Thursday, Feb. 6.
“For the first time in 11 years of war, hostilities have shifted onto Russian territory. Our troops continue to hold hundreds of square kilometers of the ‘buffer zone’ inside the Russian Federation,” the statement shared via Telegram read.
With their arrival, the Mirage 2000s became the second Western fighter aircraft provided to Ukraine, following the delivery of F-16s.
Ukraine has received its first upgraded Mirage 2000 fighter jets from France, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced on Thursday, Feb. 6.
The exact number of jets was not specified, but Lecornu confirmed they arrived with Ukrainian pilots on board, who had completed several months of training in France.
According to Ukraine’s General Staff, the airfield serves as a base for Russian Shahed drones and aircraft operating over Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Ukraine launched a drone strike on a Russian military airfield in Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai, early in the morning on Thursday, Feb. 6, targeting a site used for launching attacks on Ukrainian territory.
According to Ukraine’s General Staff, the airfield serves as a base for Russian Shahed drones and aircraft operating over Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Reports confirm explosions, fires, and damage, though the full extent is still to be assessed.
Latest from the British Defence Intelligence.
In this current world, menaced by resurgent imperialism, we must use the transactional approach by which Trump deals with geopolitical quandaries to our advantage.
We are in a surreal world where the US is no longer protecting the global order. US policymakers don’t seem to be interested in the geopolitical status quo anymore. It’s vital to understand that chaos is the new normal. Appealing to prominent figures in the current US administration to keep the international order from breaking apart is unlikely to cause significant shifts in their policies.
Donald Trump loves chaos
A changed Washington is firing warning shots at Europe. The survival of the EU and NATO will depend on how Europeans respond and adapt.
At this week’s informal summit, EU leaders discussed European defense and how to enhance defense capabilities. Before considering possible solutions to the present security situation, however, the EU urgently needs to agree on the scale and scope of the challenges facing Europe.
In the words of President António Costa to the members of the European Council: “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has brought high-intensity war back to our continent – violating the core principles of international law and threatening European security – coupled with growing hybrid and cyberattacks on Member States and their economies and societies. Peace in Europe depends on Ukraine winning a comprehensive, just and lasting peace. This geopolitical context, which is also marked by the situation in the Middle East, will remain challenging in the foreseeable future.”
Several undersea telecom and power cables have been severed in the Baltic Sea in recent months, with experts accusing Russia of orchestrating a hybrid war against Western countries supporting Ukraine.
Denmark’s maritime authority said Wednesday it will strengthen checks of oil tankers cruising its waters to target Russia’s sanctions-busting “shadow fleet” suspected of underwater sabotage.
Several undersea telecom and power cables have been severed in the Baltic Sea in recent months, with experts and politicians accusing Russia of orchestrating a hybrid war against Western countries supporting Ukraine.
Belarus could restrict signs in English and other foreign languages as part of a move to protect the “national cultural space” and shape “patriotic attitudes.”
In a policy document, the country’s trade ministry has recommended limiting the public use of foreign words, including abbreviations, Euroradio reported.
In practice, it means replacing English with Russian, according to the Poland-based Belarusian news service, Belsat.
Why did folks expect something different?
We should have learned from Trump 1.0 that Trump does everything, and more than he says. It is a question of “read my lips,” “watch my body language,” for the full sensory Trump experience.
So on trade and tariffs, reigning in DEI, China, migration, DOGE, Middle East policy, et al, his bite will absolutely be as bad as his bark, actually worse.
Russia assists the migration of workers from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan – but some workers are then forced to fight at the front line of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
From post-Soviet republics Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Russia is attracting workers to occupied territories in eastern and southern Ukraine. But contrary to what they’re led to believe, they’re not only sent to rebuild destroyed buildings, but also forced to serve on the front line of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainska Pravda reported.
Though Russia’s allocated $23 billion for reconstruction projects in occupied Ukrainian territories, it often has a deficit of workers, Ukrainska Pravda wrote.
Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.
Key Takeaways from the ISW:
Zelensky “has already indicated he will soften his position on land,” said US special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, who will discuss details in Munich, Bloomberg reports.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported that US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, said that he has confirmed that he will reveal Trump’s plan for peace in Ukraine next week when he meets with the Munich Security Council.
In a social media post on Tuesday, Kellogg said that “Trump’s goal to end the bloody and costly war in Ukraine,” will be addressed in Munich, adding later that he plans to huddle there with “America’s allies who are ready to work with us.”
“If our allies believe that diplomacy is the way forward, let’s be honest, isn’t even a single conversation with Putin a compromise?’ Zelensky asks.
The Kremlin on Wednesday dismissed President Volodymyr Zelensky saying he was ready for direct talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as “empty words”.
Talk of a negotiated end to the nearly three-year conflict has risen with US President Donald Trump, who has pledged to end the fighting, back in the White House and Ukraine’s troops struggling on the battlefield in the east.
As part of the new US administration’s “house-cleaning” operations, intelligence officials were told they could receive eight months of pay if they quit.
US President Donald Trump’s administration continued its widespread efforts to downsize the federal government. On Wednesday, Central Intelligence Agency employees reported that they had received letters offering them resignation packages.
“These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position the CIA to deliver on its mission,” the agency said in a statement.
