Archive June 2, 2025

What is the situation as of Monday, June 2:

Fighting

• In an attack that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Kyiv’s “longest-range operation,” Ukraine claimed to have destroyed $7 billion of Russian bombers at air bases as far away as Siberia.
• According to Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari, who is based in Moscow, the “simultaneous large-scale attack” was “launched from within Russia” and targeted “Russian planes that have been attacking Ukraine.”
• According to a SBU intelligence service official in Ukraine, the operation involved loading explosive-laden drones onto trucks that were driven around the air bases and hiding them inside the roofs of wooden sheds. According to them, at least 41 Russian warplanes were killed.
• According to Russia’s Tass news agency, there were no casualties in the military or the general population and that “some of the participants” had been detained.
• The air force of Ukraine reported that Russia had launched 472 drones at the country overnight, the most of the conflict’s nightly total. Additionally, Moscow launched seven missiles.
• According to Ukraine’s Land Forces, a missile attack on a Ukrainian military training ground on Sunday morning resulted in the deaths of 12 soldiers and the injuries of more than 60 others.
• Mykhailo Drapaty, the commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, said he felt “personal responsibility” for the soldiers’ deaths after the assault.
• At least seven people were killed and 69 were hurt in Russia when a bridge in the Bryansk, Ukraine’s border, collapsed onto a passing passenger train. The bridge collapsed as a result of an “illegal interference in the operation of transport,” according to Moscow Railway in a post posted on Telegram.
• A freight train reportedly derailped in Russia’s Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, in a second bridge collapse, according to the area’s acting governor.
• According to the acting governor, debris from destroyed drones fell on private homes in Kursk, which led to a drone attack by Ukraine on Kursk that also sparked fires.

diplomacy and politics

A second round of peace talks is scheduled to begin today in Istanbul, Turkiye, and Zelenskyy confirmed that Ukraine was sending a delegation led by Rustem Umerov, the country’s defense minister.
• Moscow has received Ukraine’s “version of the memorandum on a peaceful settlement,” according to Vladimir Medinsky, a former cultural minister who will lead Russia’s delegation in Istanbul.
• Zelenskyy did point out that Russia has not yet released its own memo. The Ukrainian president stated in a post on X that “we don’t have it, the Turkish side doesn’t have it, and the American side doesn’t have the Russian document either.”
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio also discussed “several initiatives aimed at a political solution to the Ukraine crisis,” according to TASS, along with their American counterpart. &nbsp,
• In a presidential election in which aid to Kyiv, Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO, and Ukrainian refugees were top priorities, exit polls indicate that the two candidates are very close and the race is still too close to call.

After an attack in Boulder, Colorado that the FBI director described as a “targeted terror attack,” a male suspect has been taken into custody, according to police.

Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said on Sunday that the man was apprehended following calls to the police dispatch of a person who was “setting people on fire,” while underlining that the information was “very preliminary.”

Redfearn claimed that he had been taken to the hospital and that he was not yet able to identify the suspect. According to him, the victims suffered a variety of injuries, ranging from “very serious to more minor” injuries.

The Boulder attack took place close to a memorial walk for the Israeli prisoners still living in Gaza.

Agents were present, according to FBI Director Kash Patel, who described the incident as a “targeted terror attack” in a statement.

However, Redfearn claimed that a motive was too early to speculate.

He claimed that at this time, “we are not calling it a terror attack.”

I ask that you join me in considering the victims, the victims’ families, and everyone who was involved in this tragedy because it happened on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Boulder’s Pearl Street.