Russia has launched fresh massive aerial attacks on Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today announced that Russia has launched one of the largest-scale air attacks against Ukraine in recent times, involving 550 targets, including at least 330 Russian-Iranian ‘Shahed’ drones and ballistic missiles.
He claimed that Ukraine managed to shoot down 270 aerial targets, while another 208 drones were jammed by electronic warfare. Zelensky mentioned the Russian strike affected not only the capital city of Kyiv, but also the Dnipro, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Chernihiv regions, and 23 people are known to have been injured so far.
Meanwhile, US President Trump expressed his dissatisfaction with the situation in Ukraine, stating that no progress is being made in the settlement of the conflict, after a telephonic conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On the other hand, Russia and Ukraine engaged in a fresh prisoner of war exchange today, under the agreement reached by the two countries in Istanbul last month. The two warring parties had agreed to free all heavily wounded, ill and under-25-year-old captive troops during the talks in Istanbul.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky published photographs of freed Ukrainian troops, wrapped in blue and yellow flags, saying most of them had been held in Russian captivity since 2022. The Russian Ministry of Defence also confirmed the POW swap and said the freed Russian servicemen are receiving necessary psychological and medical assistance in Belarus. Both parties, however, did not specify the number of those returned.
