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Ukrainian forces launched one of the most massive air attacks on Russia since the beginning of the year overnight, in yet another night of cross-raids between the two warring countries. According to calculations by the Russian agency Tass, 555 drones were shot down in the past few hours in the skies of the Federation, over 190 of which over the Moscow region.
Airports blocked and refinery on fire
The four airports around the Russian capital would have been forced to suspend air traffic three times since yesterday evening. The large Mnpz refinery, already hit three days ago, would also have suffered new damage. The plant, about 15 kilometers from the Kremlin, not only produces three-quarters of the petrol consumed in the oblast but – with a processing capacity of more than 12 million tonnes of crude oil per year – is also an important cog in the Russian war machine. Images released by the media show some sections of the plant in flames, with columns of thick black smoke rising into the skies of the city.
Victims on both fronts
To overcome the growing difficulty in recruiting new personnel to send to the front, Kiev is increasingly focusing its operations on launching drones against strategic enemy infrastructures, often at a great distance from the border. Among the targets hit were also a railway bridge over the Northern Crimean Canal and an oil depot in the Rostov region, where the raid caused one death. Another Russian civilian reportedly died in the Belgorod region, while the Ukrainians reported three civilians killed in the Sumy region, the main target – together with Kiev – of the Russian attacks last night. About twenty people were injured throughout the Federation, most of them in Moscow. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha addressed the citizens of the capital on X, inviting them to ask Russian President Vladimir Putin “when he intends to stop the war of aggression”.
The diplomatic knot: the visit of Witkoff and Kushner
“All this in no way brings” a possible face-to-face meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Kremlin counterpart, Putin’s diplomatic advisor Yuri Ushakov observed in an interview with Vesti, returning to announce that White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will “soon” travel to Russia, once the negotiating commitments on peace with Iran have been resolved. The two’s visit to Moscow has been considered imminent for almost a month without any concrete follow-up, and Ushakov himself admitted that the clash with the Islamic Republic has distracted Washington from the Ukrainian crisis.
The G7 of Evian and the Costa initiative
Speaking of the G7 summit which concluded yesterday in Evian, Ushakov reproached European governments for “based on the erroneous assumption that the situation on the battlefield is changing in favor of Kiev” and for having “filled US President Donald Trump with harmful ideas”, who however – he added – “is a strong politician and remains firm on his positions”. Meanwhile, while the name of a negotiator shared by the Twenty-Seven is still missing, Brussels sources report a certain astonishment among EU diplomats at the initiative of the President of the European Council Antonio Costa, which they say they learned about from the media. Costa’s office confirms that “communication channels have been opened”, but warns that “nothing substantial was discussed”.