Ukrainian Air Defense Systems Repel Overnight Drone Strikes  

Latest developments:

Yevgeny Prigozhin's media holding group is to be disbanded, the director of one of its outlets said, a week after the collapse of a brief mutiny staged by his Wagner Group fighters against the Russian military establishment and Prigozhin’s subsequent exile to Belarus. The Kremlin gave Wagner fighters the choice of being integrated into Russia's armed forces or returning home.





Poland will send hundreds of police officers to strengthen security along its border with Belarus, the Polish interior minister said Sunday. “Due to the tense situation on the border with Belarus I have decided to bolster our forces with 500 Polish police officers from preventive and counterterrorism units,” Mariusz Kaminski tweeted, adding the officers would join the border guards already at the frontier.





Papal envoy Cardinal Matteo Zuppi said Sunday his mission to Moscow on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was focused on humanitarian issues and had not involved any discussions of a peace plan. In May, Pope Francis asked Zuppi, head of the Italian bishops' conference, to carry out a peace mission there to end the war.

After a 12-day lull, Russia launched an overnight drone attack across Ukraine’s capital. One person in the Kyiv area was reported injured by falling debris.

Officials in Kyiv didn’t provide the exact number of drones that targeted the capital city and its surrounding areas. But Ukraine’s air force reported that all eight Iranian-made Shahed drones and three Kalibr cruise missiles were shot down by air defense systems, said Colonel General Serhii Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Witnesses heard blasts resembling the sound of air defense systems hitting targets. There was no immediate information about the scale of the attack.

Kyiv, its surrounding area and a number of central and eastern Ukraine’s regions remained under air raid alerts for about an hour after 2 a.m. local time.

Farther south, a 13-year-old boy was wounded in overnight shelling of Ukraine’s partially occupied southern Kherson province, said Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, spokesperson for the Ukrainian administration of the province. “The child was hospitalized; there is no threat to his life,” Tolokonnikov added on state TV.

Four people were wounded as shelling continued Sunday morning in Kherson province. The regional prosecutor’s office wrote on Telegram that two of the four were wounded due to a targeted strike on a high-rise building.

In a Sunday morning update, Ukraine’s General Staff said that over the previous 24 hours, Russia had carried out 27 airstrikes, one missile strike and around 80 attacks from multiple rocket launchers, targeting regions in the north, northeast, east and south of the country.

Counteroffensive

Ukraine’s military reported intense fighting in the industrial east around Bakhmut, Marinka and Lyman in the country’s Donetsk province, where, reportedly, 46 combat clashes took place.

Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces spokesperson Serhii Cherevaty told state television that Ukrainian forces are making advances amid a “massive offensive” on the southern and northern flanks of the destroyed city of Bakhmut. The spokesman, however, did not mention how much progress they made. The details, he said, would be disclosed once Ukrainian forces had analyzed the situation and consolidated their positions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Sunday — the day the country honors its navy — to hear a report from the navy commander on prospects for the development of a naval drone and missile program, as well as present awards to service members.

In a tweet, the Ukrainian commander in chief said, “The enemy will definitely not dictate the conditions of the Black Sea and occupiers will have to be as afraid of approaching our Crimea and Azov Sea coasts as Russian ships are already afraid of approaching our Black Sea coast.”

Zelenskyy thanked “every warrior of the Ukrainian navy” for their sacrifices.

Ukraine – US support

Former U.S. Vice President and 2024 presidential candidate Mike Pence acknowledged in an interview with CNN Sunday, that “there’s debate, both in my party and around the country, about American involvement [in Ukraine], but I really believe that the majority of the American people understand that we are the leader of the free world and standing for freedom and supporting those that are fighting for their freedom is always the American cause.”

Pence’s comments came after his surprise visit to Kyiv last week.

Zelenskyy hailed Pence’s visit in a news conference with Spanish media in Kyiv but expressed concern about losing bipartisan support from the United States.

“There are messages coming from some Republicans, sometimes dangerous messages, that there may be less support,” he said.

Zelenskyy said that regardless of who wins the next U.S. presidential election, maintaining bipartisan support is “the most important thing for Ukraine.”

Pence reiterated his unequivocal support for Ukraine in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” TV show. However, he made it clear that Ukraine will not join NATO before the war is over, saying he believes Zelenskyy “would be open to a conditional invitation” to join the alliance once “the war is won.” Pence added that Zelenskyy “made it clear” he’s not looking for U.S. forces to fight in Ukraine.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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