Ukraine army chief pledges to expand strikes on Russia

Ukraine’s top military commander vowed to increase the “scale and depth” of strikes on Russia in remarks made public on Sunday, saying Kyiv would not sit idly by while Moscow prolonged its three-year invasion.

Diplomatic efforts to end the war have stalled in recent weeks.

The last direct meeting between the two sides was almost three weeks ago and no follow-up talks have been scheduled.

Russian attacks on Ukraine have killed dozens of people during the interim, including in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, according to officials.

“We will not just sit in defence. Because this brings nothing and eventually leads to the fact that we still retreat, lose people and territories,” Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky told reporters including the media.

Syrsky said Ukraine would continue its strikes on Russian military targets, which he said had proved “effective”.

“Of course, we will continue. We will increase the scale and depth,” he said.

Medical workers help a woman in the yard of an apartment building destroyed after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, early on Monday. AP

Ukraine has launched retaliatory strikes on Russia throughout the war, targeting energy and military infrastructure sometimes hundreds of kilometres from the front line. Kyiv says the strikes are a fair response to deadly Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and civilians.

At least four people were killed in an overnight Russian strike on an apartment building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, while a strike on a Ukrainian army training ground later in the day killed three others, officials said.

In wide-ranging remarks, Syrsky conceded that Russia had some advantages in drone warfare, particularly in making fibre-optic drones that are tethered and difficult to jam.

“Here, unfortunately, they have an advantage in both the number and range of their use,” he said.

He also claimed that Ukraine still held 90 square kilometres of territory in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched an audacious cross-border incursion last August.

“These are our pre-emptive actions in response to a possible enemy offensive,” he said.

Russia said in April that it had gained full control of the Kursk region and denies that Kyiv has a presence there.

Moscow occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions as its own since launching its invasion in 2022 - in addition to Crimea, which it captured in 2014.

Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging a peace deal to prolong its full-scale offensive on the country and to seize more territory.

The Russian army said on Sunday that it had captured the village of Petrivske in Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region.

Russian forces also fired at least 47 drones and three missiles at Ukraine between late Saturday and early on Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said.

On Saturday, hundreds of Ukrainians observed the longest day of the year with a midsummer celebration of some of their oldest traditions, a display of cultural perseverance in a nation threatened by war.

Rooted in Ukraine’s ancient past of Slavic paganism the event, Ivana Kupala, features rituals and symbolism to honor the summer solstice, related to fertility, nature, purity and renewal - values that predate the region’s Christianization at the end of the first millennium.

At the open-air National Museum of Folk Architecture and Ukrainian Life on the outskirts of Kyiv, participants in embroidered shirts and blouses strolled among thatched-roof cottages, wooden churches and windmills dating to the 18th and 19th centuries. Women and girls wore vinoks - wreaths made from wildflowers - as they took part in folk dances, games and craft workshops.

Viktoria Phi, a master of folk art at the museum, taught visitors to weave the colorful flowered headdresses. She said that Ivana Kupala, which also has variations in other Slavic countries from the Czech Republic to Bulgaria to Russia, was a “small oasis” in the war in Ukraine, where people can “walk and enjoy nature, architecture, songs and dances.”

“It’s most popular among young people, and I am very happy when a family comes with young children,” she said.

Agencies