Here’s where things stand on Sunday, June 1:
Fighting
The governor of Russia’s Bryansk, Alexander Bogomaz, said seven people were killed, and 30 were injured in a train derailment in the region bordering Ukraine. Moscow Railway said in a post on Telegram that the derailment and bridge collapse was a result of “illegal interference in transport operations”. Ukraine’s military did not immediately comment.
A Russian attack killed a child and wounded another person in the Ukrainian village of Dolynka in Zaporizhia, the region’s governor said.
A man was also killed by Russian shelling in Ukraine’s Kherson region, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russian forces launched an estimated 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine on Friday and overnight. Ukrainian forces destroyed 42 of the drones, it added.
Russia’s military said it captured the Ukrainian village of Vodolahy in the Sumy region and Novopil in the Donetsk region.
The announcement came after Ukraine ordered the evacuation of 11 more villages in the Sumy region, saying Russia had amassed some 50,000 troops in the area.
Politics and diplomacy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia did not “look very serious” and had given “no clear information” on what it plans to achieve at peace talks in Istanbul, Turkiye, next week.
He did not comment on whether Ukraine would participate in the new round of negotiations, though Russia has said it would send a delegation led by Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister.
China’s embassy in Singapore criticised French President Emmanuel Macron for comparing the defence of Ukraine with the need to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, saying that “the two are different in nature and not comparable at all”.
Russia’s war on Ukraine will be at the top of the agenda when German Chancellor Friedrich Merz meets with United States President Donald Trump on Thursday at the White House, according to a spokesman for the German government.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said new rules set to regulate foreign ships crossing Swedish territorial waters from July 1 come amid “a growing number of concerning incidents in the Baltic Sea”, as Russia’s so-called Shadow Fleet continues to run into problems.
Weapons
British Defence Secretary John Healey announces plans to build at least six new factories producing weapons and explosives, saying that “the hard-fought lessons from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine show a military is only as strong as the industry that stands behind them.”
