Russia’s defence ministry has announced it is preparing “massive strikes” on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in retaliation for a drone campaign by Kyiv attacking warehouses and oil and gas facilities.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the move would be an “appropriate response” to Ukraine’s “path of escalation” and said that Moscow had been “fairly systematic” in attacking Kyiv’s military infrastructure.
Ukraine has targeted online retailers Wildberries - often referred to as Russia’s Amazon - and Ozon, accusing the companies of selling goods that have aided the military, claims that they deny.
Meanwhile, CIA director John Ratcliffe is reported to have floated a trilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Donald Trump during his mysterious visit to Moscow, according to two sources briefed on the matter cited by Axios.
Talks between Ukraine and Russia were paused in February when the US invaded Iran, and little progress has been made since.
At least 38 people were killed in the deadliest Russian attack on Ukraine this year. The strikes hit an ammunition depot in the Kyiv region, sparking a fire in the Bucha district overnight that spread to surrounding areas.
Zelensky said cases had already been opened on charges of official negligence.
Russia’s defence ministry has warned that it has “begun preparations to launch massive strikes against Ukraine’s energy facilities”, in a post on Telegram on Sunday.
The ministry described the move as retribution for Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy facilities.
Ukraine is preparing for further talks with representatives of President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday.
“There will be more details tomorrow. We will do everything we can so that war does not remain the only option for how events unfold further.
“It is important that America shares many of our views on the situation,” the Ukrainian leader said in a televised statement.
President Trump did not brief some senior White House officials ahead of the director of the CIA’s visit to Russia earlier this week, it has been reported.
John Ratcliffe, the chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, flew to Moscow from Latvia on Tuesday in a visit that had not been publicly announced. Reports, though, of an unmarked U.S. C-17 military cargo plane flying into Russia that day quickly sparked rampant international speculation about the visit.
U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that Trump had sent Ratcliffe personally. The message being given to the Kremlin by Ratcliffe was also not shared with military figures and aides who normally would have been briefed on such a trip.
Capitalising on the Hormuz crisis to ramp up action in Ukraine will have consequences, Ratcliffe warns Putin in secret meeting
Every morning, Antonina Kulhava wakes up to the whirr of Russian drones.
After checking local alerts to ensure her family and friends are safe, she commutes to her job as a humanitarian deminer at one of Ukraine’s many fields littered with bombs. Her team face grave danger as they comb through craters of mud left by missiles, in fields once tilled by farmers.
Ukraine is one of the world’s most heavily mined countries with between 20 to 25 per cent of its surface covered with potentially dangerous weapons. This amounts to more than 139,000 square kilometres of land, a size larger than England and Wales combined.
The existence of these mines is devastating for civilians, contributing to one of the world’s highest rates of civilian casualties. Children are among those at risk if the mines are not safely cleared.
Ukraine has been littered with mines since Putin invaded the country in 2022, posing a devastating risk to civilians. Antonina Kulhava, a humanitarian deminer, tells Maira Butt how she is trying to make her country safer
In 2023, a year into Russia’s unprecedented invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv was producing around 800,000 drones a year. By 2024, that number had more than doubled to two million.
Fast forward to last month – when President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the country was now churning out more than 10 million units annually with plans to double that number to 20 million by this time next year.
The rapid rate and intensity of production is having an impact. Just this week, Russian president Vladimir Putin was forced to acknowledge that attacks on the country’s refineries and energy infrastructure were having an effect.
“There are no critical consequences from such attacks, there have not been and cannot be,” he told a conference of business and economy leaders, trying to downplay their scale.
Ukraine is striking deeper into the heart of Russia than ever before with swarms of drones that have led Russians into a panic.Experts say that Kyiv’s resourcefulness is a result of studying Moscow, Maira Butt reports
Earlier this week, a C17A Globemaster III descended into Moscow’s Vnukovo airport. Although it was hopping in from Riga, Latvia, the plane had originated at Andrews Air Force Base, close to Washington DC. On board was John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA. After being whisked into the Russian capital in a motorcade, a few hours later, Ratcliffe was up in the air again and on his way home.
Who Ratcliffe met was not clear. The visit had not been announced in advance in the US, while Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed to have no knowledge or information about the arrival of a US Air Force plane.
Not surprisingly, there has been much speculation as to why the most senior figure in US intelligence had gone to Moscow in person. After all, if Ratcliffe had an important message to share or communicate, there were other, easier and safer ways to do so than spending hours in a plane travelling to Russia.
The mysterious mission to Russia by the US intelligence boss is most likely not a sign of how much America fears Putin, but of how much trouble they think he’s in, says Peter Frankopan
Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces has claimed that over 1,400 Russian troops have died over the last 24 hours in a post on Facebook on Sunday.
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) paints a bleak picture of Russian casualties in data released earlier this year.
Between February 2022 and June 2026, there have been as many as 450,000 Russian battlefield deaths and 1.4 million casualties, it says.
