Russia’s intensified offensive efforts are felt on the frontlines, the Ukrainian military says. Putin tries to wear Trump down, according to a WSJ column. Ukraine returns the remains of more than 6,000 soldiers, continues efforts to bring back war prisoners.
Russia’s intensified offensive efforts are felt on the frontlines, Ukraine’s military says
Russian forces have intensified their offensive in the Pokrovsk, Novopavlivka, Lyman, Kupyansk, Kharkiv, Toretsk and Kramatorsk directions, spokesperson for the Khortytsia operational-strategic group of forces, Major Viktor Trehubov said on national television on Monday.
“The enemy is very active. In the past day alone, [they launched] 46 attacks in the Pokrovsk direction and 32 toward Novopavlivka. That’s a very high number for the Novopavlivka direction where the enemy is especially active now. [There were] 14 attacks in the Lyman direction, 11 in the Kupyansk direction and seven in the Kharkiv direction. It is also quite untypical for the Kharkiv direction. Fifteen attacks happened in the Toretsk direction and 10 in the Kramatorsk direction. Such high levels of activity demonstrate that the summer intensification that we were anticipating and warning of is already here,” Trehubov said.
Russian forces are active in the Pokrovsk and Novopavlivka directions in an attempt to advance toward the administrative border of the region of Dnipro, he added.
Russia has fielded several corps and all available types of military equipment in the Pokrovsk direction, but is still unable to seize the city of Pokrovsk, he said.
“The most recent campaign they waged toward the city of Pokrovsk this year was unsuccessful, and they took heavy losses. They have shifted their priorities, part of their grouping which we associate with the Pokrovsk direction is headed westwards and is trying to break through toward the region of Dnipro, while another part is trying to advance on the eastern side of the area and break through to the north of the Pokrovsk-Kostyantynivka highway to further advance there. They likely aim to advance beyond Kostyantynivka, but [Ukrainian troops] are making all efforts to stop them there and throw them further back,” Trehubov said.
Russia continues to widely use small infantry groups and light vehicles and is able to penetrate unnoticed into Ukrainian orders of battle across the windbreaks, he continued.
Russia is intensely using glide bombs, but the efficiency of such attacks is low, he added.
Putin tries to wear Trump down, according to WSJ column
Russian leader Vladimir Putin will count on U.S. President Donald Trump merely losing patience with the idea of peace talks and giving up, says Leon Aron, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writing in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. His most recent book, from 2023, is “Riding the Tiger: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Uses of War.”
Vladimir Putin continues to confront Ukraine with absurd demands during so-called peace talks. Mr. Putin doesn’t want peace. He wants victory, and he’s playing President Trump to achieve it. Mr. Putin will drag on the war until Mr. Trump gets so bored of mediation and frustrated with U.S. assistance to Ukraine that he gives up on both. One possibility is that Moscow is trying to drag out the war to advance on the battlefield and demoralize the Ukrainians. Yet neither objective looks realistic.
Leon Aron argues that Putin’s strategy is to “wear Trump down” and win the war in Ukraine by exploiting President Donald Trump’s impatience with both peace talks and military aid. America’s departure would be a boon to the Kremlin. Mr. Putin’s bet on a U.S. exit is plausible. Mr. Trump’s recent rhetoric on the war signals hopelessness, ignorance and moral myopia.
Mr. Trump’s moral indifference means he has no motivation, much less urgency, to help Ukraine. Moscow’s measured “flexibility” is keeping futile negotiations alive until Mr. Trump wearily disembarks, the column reads.
Ukraine returns remains of more than 6,000 soldiers, continues efforts to bring back war prisoners
Ukraine has received more than 6,000 bodies of its killed service members since last week when repatriation of the soldiers’ remains agreed at talks in Istanbul began. The final stage of the process took place on Monday, Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Rustem Umerov said.
“Since last week, when the implementation of the Istanbul agreements began, we have managed to bring back over 6,000 bodies. Each of them undergoes identification. Because behind every one of them is a name, a life, a family waiting for answers,” Umerov said, adding: “Thank you to everyone who has carried out this difficult but necessary work every day. We are not stopping. Ahead lies the next stage: we continue the fight to bring back our prisoners of war. We bring them back. We remember…”
The handover of the soldiers’ remains is part of the agreements reached between Russia and Ukraine during their second round of talks in Istanbul at the start of the month. Russian and Ukrainian delegates met for a second round of direct talks in Istanbul on June 2, agreeing to swap all sick and seriously wounded captured soldiers, prisoners under the age of 25 and bodies of dead soldiers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi earlier said that of the 6,000 bodies of Ukrainian service members that Russia planned to hand over to Ukraine, only 15 per cent had been identified.
Ukraine has returned the remains of 15,801 soldiers since the invasion. The figure stood at 9,744 in May 2025 followed by five rounds of repatriation of the bodies of dead soldiers in June.