Ukraine-Russia struggle newest: Kyiv receives our bodies of 1,212 lifeless troopers in ongoing prisoner change

Russia sent Tu-22M3 long-range bomber planes on a flight over the Baltic Sea yesterday, its defence ministry said, in the first such mission since Ukraine carried out a stunning 1 June attack on air bases in Siberia and the far north.

A number of Tu-22M3 and Tu-95MS bombers were destroyed or seriously damaged in those strikes, conducted by drones that were smuggled close to the airfields in trucks.

Russia regularly conducts heavy bomber flights as a show of strength and deterrence to its adversaries, but yesterday’s also appeared aimed at sending a message of business as usual despite the Ukrainian attacks.

The defence ministry said the Tu-22M3s flew for more than four hours over neutral waters of the Baltic, escorted for some of that time by fighter planes from foreign, presumably Nato, countries.

The Tu-22M3 and Tu-95MS, known to Nato respectively as Backfire and Bear-H, are part of a long-range aviation fleet that Russia has used throughout the war to fire conventional missiles at Ukrainian cities, defence plants, military bases, power infrastructure and other targets.

The Bear-H and the newer Tu-160M Blackjack are nuclear-capable aircraft which, alongside ground- and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, form part of Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent.

The US ambassador to Nato, Matthew Whitaker, said the high-profile Ukrainian drone attack on Russian strategic bombers at their air bases was “badass” but also “a little bit reckless, and a little bit dangerous”.

Asked about a report that US president Donald Trump viewed the attack as “badass”, Mr Whitaker told an event in Brussels: “I think on the one hand it was badass. On the other hand, I think it was also, you know, a little bit reckless, a little bit dangerous, and that’s what makes me nervous.”

Read all about the audacious Ukrainian strike deep inside the Russian territory here:

Defence secretary Pete Hegseth has admitted that Russia is the aggressor in that country’s three-year-old war against Ukraine even though he refused to state that it was in America’s interest for Ukraine to win the war and for Russia to lose.

Mr Hegseth, who appeared before the Senate Defence Appropriations subcommittee to defend his department’s fiscal year 2026 budget planning, was asked by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell — the subcommittee chair and former Republican leader —to identify the “aggressor” and “victim” in the conflict, which started in February 2022 when Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to invade Ukraine with the aim of toppling the democratically-elected government in Kyiv.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said Russia was determined to sow chaos in and destroy the south of his country as well as nearby Moldova and Romania, and called for increased pressure on Moscow to prevent further military threats.

Mr Zelensky, addressing a conference of southeast European leaders in the Black Sea port of Odesa, said collective efforts were needed to keep Moscow from causing further disruption.

“The security of Southeastern Europe and the Black Sea is indivisible… Today, we are forced to fight not only for our country, but also for this reality to become the cornerstone of a new regional policy,” the Ukrainian president said on Telegram.

“We are here in Odesa, a city that Russia wants to destroy, as it has destroyed countless other cities. Russian military plans are aimed at this region, and then at the borders with Moldova and Romania. We need protection now. But even more, we need long-term guarantees that this will never happen again,” he said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in a message to Russian president Vladimir Putin that his country will always stand with Moscow, state media reported this morning.

In a message for Russia Day, a patriotic holiday celebrating Russia’s independence, Mr Kim called Mr Putin his “dearest comrade” and praised their bilateral relations as a “genuine relationship between comrades-in-arms,” KCNA reported.

“It is an unshakable will of the government of the DPRK and of my own steadfastly to carry on the DPRK-Russia relations,” the North Korean leader was quoted as saying.

The DPRK stands for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

KCNA reported yesterday that Mr Kim had sent congratulations on Russia Day to Mr Putin.

Earlier this year, Pyongyang for the first time confirmed that it had sent troops to fight for Russia in the war in Ukraine under orders from leader Kim Jong Un after months of silence.

Talks with the US aimed at improving ties are not expected to yield quick results, Kremlin spokesperson Dmistry Peskov has said.

“There are many obstacles in bilateral relations, and it is unlikely that we can hope for any quick results,” he told reporters yesterday.

Relations between Washington and Moscow have deteriorated after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

The Biden administration provided Ukraine with consistent military and diplomatic support, though President Donald Trump has drawn criticism for attempting to improve relations with Moscow and suggesting Ukraine bears equal blame for the invasion.

However, Mr Trump recently voiced frustration about Russia’s war actions in Ukraine and the lack of progress towards a peace deal.

Cuts to US aid for Ukraine in the Trump administration’s forthcoming budget will lead to more casualties for Kyiv, a top Kyiv MP is warning.

Oleksandr Merezhko, head of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said any cuts to military aid to Kyiv would slash Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and play into Russia’s hands.

“Such a reduction will lead to more casualties on the Ukrainian side, including casualties among [the] civilian population,” he told Newsweek.

“Anyone in the US who is acting in support of the reduction of the military aid to Ukraine becomes morally responsible for the increased casualties among civilians.”

Ukraine has brought home the bodies of 1,212 soldiers killed in the war with Russia, officials in Kyiv said.

“As a result of the repatriation activities…the bodies of 1,212 fallen defenders have been returned to Ukraine,” Kyiv’s prisoner exchange coordination committee said on Telegram channel.

It released photos from the scene showing personnel of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at an undisclosed location, walking past several refrigerated trucks.

Some trucks were marked with emblems of “On the Shield,” a Ukrainian organisation involved in the retrieval and evacuation of military dead.

In Moscow, Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said Ukraine for its part had returned 27 bodies of Russian soldiers.

Kyiv and Moscow reached agreement at their most recent round of talks last week on a large-scale exchange of corpses of war dead, though the deal was marred by wrangling over its implementation.

On Sunday, Mr Medinsky said Ukraine had postponed taking the first 1,212 bodies. Russian officials also said that refrigerated trucks loaded with corpses waited for five days at the border before Ukraine accepted them.

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that special attention in the country’s new arms programme should be paid to the nuclear triad – land-based, sea-based and aircraft-launched weapons.

Mr Putin’s remarks, broadcast on state television, were made at a meeting of senior officials devoted to the country’s arms industry.

Last month, he said he hoped nuclear weapons would not be needed in Ukraine:

A concentrated, nine-minute-long Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv killed six people and injured 64, including nine children, Ukrainian officials said last night.

The attack followed Russia’s two biggest air assaults of the war on Ukraine this week, part of intensified bombardments that Moscow says are retaliatory measures for Kyiv’s recent attacks in Russia.

A new wave of drone attacks on four city districts was reported early this morning by Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov, including a drone that landed in a school courtyard and smashed windows. There were no other reports of casualties or damage.

Elsewhere, two southern Ukrainian regions, Mykolaiv and Kherson, were left without electricity yesterday after Russian forces attacked an energy facility, the governors said.

Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s northeast, withstood Russia’s full-scale advance in the early days of the war but has since been a regular target of drone, missile and guided aerial bomb assaults.