Russia-Ukraine war live: Putin’s losses “rise to over 500,000”, Kyiv’s attack on nuclear radar triggers alarm

A Ukrainian drone attacked a Russian Voronezh M early warning radar near the city of Orsk in the Orenburg region from a “record distance,” a Kiev intelligence source said on Monday.

The source told Reuters the attack was carried out by Ukrainian military intelligence on Sunday and did not say whether it caused any damage. The city of Orsk is about 1,500 km from the nearest parts of Ukrainian-controlled territory.

One person was killed and three injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian region of Oryol on Monday, the region’s governor, Andrey Klychkov, said via the messaging app Telegram.

According to Klychkov, one drone crashed into a gas station, damaging it, and later a second one crashed into it, killing a firefighter.

Ukraine’s drone attack on a Russian nuclear missile tracking facility has raised doubts in the West about the wisdom of attacking the infrastructure of a nuclear power with nuclear weapons.

Kiev said the attack hit the Armavir radar station on the border with Krasnodar on Thursday last week. The target was an important facility that supports Moscow’s conventional air defense and is part of the nuclear warning system.

The attack was criticized by experts in the West. Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists, said the move to attack the key Russian nuclear facility was “not a smart decision by Ukraine.” “Bombers and military sites in general are different because they are used to attack Ukraine,” he said.

Norwegian military analyst Thord Are Iversen said an attack on a unit of Russia’s nuclear warning system was “not a particularly good idea, especially in tense times.”

“It is in everyone’s interest that Russia’s ballistic missile warning system works well,” he said.

Since his capture, 26-year-old Russian soldier Alexander has had little choice: clothing, meals and working hours in the prisoner of war camp are strictly regulated.

But Ukraine allows Alexander to call home his family in Kursk, a Russian city about 100 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, and he says that has helped him stay grounded.

For Ukrainian prisoners of war, this is a lifeline that is inaccessible. Now angry Ukrainian families are demanding an end to telephone conversations with imprisoned Russian soldiers.

Imprisoned Ukrainians do not receive any phone calls and even letters are rare. Their families usually only learn of their fate when comrades released in exchanges inform them.

Vladimir Putin, on his third foreign trip since his re-election in March, arrived in former Soviet Uzbekistan yesterday. He met with his counterpart Shavkat Mirziyoyev before the start of official talks.

Mr Mirziyoyev met the Russian President upon his arrival in Tashkent in the evening and the two heads of state travelled together in a car.

Photos and video footage published on the Kremlin’s website and by Russian news agencies show Putin visiting the New Uzbekistan park in Tashkent and laying a wreath at a monument to Uzbek independence.

Russia is open to broader cooperation with Uzbekistan in the area of ​​gas supplies, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, adding: “The possibilities here are very extensive.”

Since beginning his fifth term as Russian President, Mr Putin has already visited China and Belarus.

The Kremlin chief has rarely traveled abroad since Moscow began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Askold Krushelnycky Reports from Sumy, near the border with Russia. About three hours’ drive from the fierce fighting around Kharkiv, the area is preparing for its own attack by Moscow troops:

Russia has lost more than half a million soldiers in its invasion of Ukraine, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said.

A total of 501,190 Russian soldiers were killed or injured on the battlefield, with 1,110 casualties in the last 24 hours, the Ukrainian military said in its update yesterday.

Russia also lost 7,662 tanks, 14,803 armored combat vehicles, 17,639 vehicles and fuel tanks, 12,953 artillery systems, 1,083 multiple rocket launchers, 814 air defense systems, 357 aircraft, 326 helicopters, 10,425 drones, 27 ships and boats and one submarine, the General Staff said.

None of these figures have been confirmed by Russia, which treats information about its losses in Ukraine as a state secret.

Chilean politicians have met on the other side of the world to bolster their claims in Antarctica as tensions rise over Russian activities in the area.

Members of Chile’s parliamentary defense committee flew to an abandoned air base to attend a meeting billed as a demonstration of national sovereignty.

Committee member Camila Flores highlighted Russia in particular as a threat, saying: “We will sit in Antarctica to demonstrate our sovereignty and to protect and support our national integrity in the face of any threats.”

Russian artillery fire killed three people yesterday in three different cities in the Donetsk region, regional officials said.

The civilians died in Siversk in the north of the region and further south in Krasnohorivka and Chasiv Yar, prosecutors in the Donetsk region said. Russia illegally annexed Donetsk, although it has only a limited military presence in the oblast.

Another civilian died near the town of Chuhuyev southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where at least 14 people were killed in an attack on a hardware store on Saturday.

The Russian military has advanced towards Khasiv Yar, the gateway to other cities in the Donetsk region. The city is considered crucial to Russia’s military objectives in Ukraine.

Russia claimed that a Ukrainian drone strike in western Russia killed one person and injured three others.

One of the drones hit and damaged a gas station, another later crashed on it, killing a firefighter, said the region’s governor, Andrei Klitschkov.