Ukraine War News Today - Top Stories and Breaking Updates from Kyiv Post

Ukraine previously approved a moratorium on payments until the government negotiates new terms of debt in full.

Ukraine will skip a $665 million scheduled payment on the securities linked to economic growth until it agrees new terms with creditors. 

The GDP warrants – securities from pre-wartime following debt restructuring in 2015 – were designed to honor Ukraine’s obligation to pay creditors for the country’s economic growth. 

This week marked one of the most intense bombardments since the start of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine.

The Ottoman Empire’s elite army was largely made up of “brainwashed” Europeans abducted as children – a Canadian study suggests Russia might be planning the same thing for Ukrainian kids.

Canada’s Globe and Mail news outlet published a story on Thursday titled “The children’s gulag.” It reports how Hala Systems, a Lisbon-based tech company, was funded by Canada’s Global Affairs department to assist the Ukrainian NGO “Save Ukraine” to track down children abducted from the occupied territories.

Using satellite imagery, mobile phone data, and accessing open-source intelligence, Hala identified 136 “camps” in which as many as 20,000 kidnapped Ukrainian children, some as young as eight, are being held and forcibly indoctrinated. 

European governments frequently blame the vessels for damaging – deliberately or not – undersea cables, and for posing a maritime environmental threat.

Sweden on Saturday announced new rules upping checks on foreign vessels in the Baltic from July 1, reinforcing a crackdown on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers deployed to circumvent sanctions on its oil trade.

Since the Western-led sanctions imposed after its 2022 all-out invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has been relying on hundreds of such ships that operate under murky ownership and dodgy insurance. 

The latest attempts by the Russian president to play the nuclear threat game has once again failed which only serves to undermine its current and future value as a weapon of intimidation.

Vladimir Putin’s game of nuclear blackjack has gone bust, and the world is waking up to the Kremlin’s paper tiger routine. The Russian strongman’s latest attempt to flex his nuclear muscle – a desperate bid to intimidate both the West and Ukraine – has been exposed as a catastrophic misfire, both literally and figuratively.

Recent reports of failed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests, including a spectacular flop just days after the much-hyped phone call with Trump, reveal the crumbling state of Russia’s nuclear arsenal and the hollowness of Putin’s nuclear blackmail campaign. The score? A humiliating string of duds, explosions, and wayward missiles that threaten Russia’s own cities more than anyone else’s.

Kyiv is bracing for a major Russian summer offensive in northeastern Ukraine as Moscow continues to amass troops and diplomatic efforts toward a ceasefire have failed to produce results.

Ukraine is evacuating 11 more villages in the northeastern Sumy region on Saturday ahead of a widely anticipated Russian offensive.

The announcement came after Russian troops reportedly breached several border villages in the region and seized parts of the Yunakivka and Khotin communities after Russian leader Vladimir Putin called for the creation of a so-called buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory. 

Kyiv Post exclusive: Part 1 interview with Volodymyr Zhemchuhov – saboteur, demolitionist, and Hero of Ukraine – on the 2014 eastern occupation, first partisans, and today’s movement.

Volodymyr Zhemchuhov is an extraordinary individual: A miner and later a businessman who worked for a long time in the Caucasus countries, who never imagined he would become one of the main saboteurs in his native Donbas.

But in 2014, after the Russians occupied his hometown in the Luhansk region, he managed to organize a network of saboteurs and demolitionists consisting of several dozen people. They carried out dozens of bombings on roads and railways, several assassination attempts on terrorist leaders – with some operations not only planned by him but also executed personally. During the last one, he lost his hands and was captured by Russian forces.

Witkoff previously replaced Kellogg as Russia envoy, while Kellogg — known for his tougher stance on Moscow — now focuses solely on Ukraine, amid stalled US peace efforts.

Keith Kellogg, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, has warned his colleague Steve Witkoff on Friday to consult European leaders before placing his faith in Russian leader Vladimir Putin. 

Witkoff has been visiting Russia and negotiating with Putin on Trump’s behalf. Witkoff’s pro-Russian narratives have sparked concerns and criticisms over his approach to the US’s largest adversary. 

U.S. envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg added that America does not want to see Ukraine join the Western military alliance.

Russia has said it is “pleased” after President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine said that Moscow’s concern over the eastward enlargement of NATO was fair.

US envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg made the comments on Friday, days ahead of a potential second round of Ukraine-Russia talks in Istanbul, adding that America does not want to see Ukraine join the Western military alliance.

The Russian government has proposed resuming negotiations on a ceasefire in Istanbul on Monday and said it will set out its terms in a memorandum.

The Russian government has proposed resuming negotiations on a ceasefire in Istanbul on Monday and said it will set out its terms in a memorandum. Meanwhile, at a meeting in Berlin on Wednesday German Chancellor Friedrich Merz assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Germany would provide five billion euros in military aid.

Low expectations

Ukraine said it intercepted 69 drones and three missiles overnight Friday to Saturday, days ahead of Moscow-led peace talks on Monday, which Kyiv has not confirmed.

The Ukrainian military said on Saturday that Russia has launched a total of 114 drones and missiles across Ukraine between Friday evening and Saturday morning. 

The attacks, recorded since 7:30 p.m. on Friday, targeted eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Sumy and Donetsk regions. 

Latest from the British Defence Intelligence.

• Over three consecutive nights, 23-26 May 2025, Russia conducted three of its largest-scale One Way Attack Uncrewed Aerial Systems (OWA UAS) attacks against Ukraine since the start of the war. The OWA UAS strikes were part of a wider multi-axis, multi-weapon strike package, particularly targeting Kyiv.
• Over 900 OWA UAS were fired at Ukraine over the three-day period. Russian Long Range Aviation (LRA) bombers were involved on back-to-back nights on 25 and 26 May 2025. These two overnight strikes are the first instance of Russia utilising LRA including Tu-95 BEAR-H aircraft on consecutive days since August 2024.
• Russia’s most recent combined strike package utilisingLRA prior to 24-25 May 2025 was on 24 April 2025.Russia’s post-strike rebuilding of its stockpile enables LRA to sit ready to conduct strikes such as these with little to no notice, at a time of Russia’s choosing.

Confronted by the Russian onslaught on Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov has redefined resistance and taken Ukraine’s heroic fight back to Moscow itself.

In the theater of modern warfare, where conventional battles collide with cyber tactics, drone strikes, and sabotage, few figures have reshaped the narrative as profoundly as Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence.

At just 38 years old, Budanov has become not only a symbol of national defiance but a master of shadow warfare, orchestrating strikes that have pierced the heart of Russia, even Moscow itself.

Russia ignores calls for a ceasefire and continues its attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Russian shelling and air strikes on southern Ukraine overnight killed a man and a nine-year-old girl in separate attacks, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.

In the Zaporizhzhia region, “Russians hit a residential area with guided aerial bombs”, killing the girl and wounding a 16-year-old boy, Ivan Fedorov, head of the regional military administration, said on the Telegram platform.

Daily updates from the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) regarding frontline developments and casualty figures amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As of May 31, Russia has lost 987,330 troops after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 – including 1,250 troops over the past day, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. 

The figures are approximate estimations and include all troops who are put out of action for some time due to deaths or injuries. 

Senator Graham’s tough sanctions bill has 82 co-sponsors. Kyiv Post hasn’t heard from the remaining 18, but an analyst says the decision to proceed “shouldn’t be hard.”

WASHINGTON DC – As the US Senate is set to move ahead next week with Senator Lindsey Graham’s bipartisan bill imposing more sanctions on Russia over its three-year-old war in Ukraine, President Donald Trump said Friday night that he does not know yet whether he supports the legislation.

“I have to see it. I’ll take a look at it,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland upon returning to the White House.

Centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, 53, faces off against right-leaning Karol Nawrocki, 42, in a runoff vote some analysts have described as a “clash of civilizations.”

Warsaw’s pro-EU mayor and a nationalist historian held their last day of campaigning on Friday for Poland’s presidency, with opinion polls predicting a close race in Sunday’s vote, which will determine the direction of the key central European EU and NATO member.

Centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, 53, faces off against right-leaning Karol Nawrocki, 42, in a runoff vote some analysts have described as a “clash of civilizations.”

Trump consistently pressed NATO countries to increase defense spending, asking for as much as 5% of GDP and saying Washington will no longer tolerate freeloaders.

The European Union’s diplomatic chief Kaja Kallas said Saturday the continent was beefing up defense spending after “tough love” from the Trump administration, as she called for stronger ties with the Asia-Pacific region.

Speaking at the Shangri-La defence forum in Singapore, Kallas was responding to comments by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who called President Donald Trump’s insistence on more military spending “tough love.”