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As Russia intensifies attacks, Ukraine air defenses under strain

As Russia intensifies attacks, Ukraine air defenses under strain
A woman carries her dog following a Russian attack on a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP)
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Updated 30 May 2025

As Russia intensifies attacks, Ukraine air defenses under strain

As Russia intensifies attacks, Ukraine air defenses under strain
  • Despite peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow, Russia has launched the heaviest assaults on Ukraine since the start of war with more than 900 drones and 90 missiles over last weekend alone

KYIV: A wave of massive Russian aerial attacks has stretched Ukraine’s air defenses, raising fears about Kyiv’s reliance on Western systems to protect its skies in the fourth year of Russia’s invasion.
As the two sides open peace talks and Kyiv pushes for an immediate ceasefire, Moscow has launched its heaviest air assaults of the war, pummelling Ukraine with more than 900 drones and 90 missiles in a three-day barrage last weekend.
Ukraine downed over 80 percent of the incoming projectiles, but more than a dozen people were killed.
Experts worry how long the country can fend off the nightly attacks if Russia maintains — or escalates — its strikes.
“Ukraine’s air defenses are stretched thin and cannot guarantee protection for all cities against persistent and sophisticated Russian attacks,” military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady told AFP.
Russia’s drone and missile attacks have become more complex — and harder to thwart — throughout the war.
Kyiv’s air force says around 40 percent of drones launched recently are decoys — cheaper dummy craft that mimic attack drones and are designed to exhaust and confuse air defenses.
Russia increasingly sets drones to fly at a higher altitude — above 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) — and then dive down onto targets.
“At that altitude, they’re more visible to our radars but unreachable for small arms, heavy machine guns and mobile fire teams,” air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat told RBK Ukraine.
In addressing the threat, Ukraine is trying to strike a balance between pressing the West to deliver new systems and not wanting to concern a war-weary public at home.
“There’s no need to panic,” a Ukraine military source told AFP.
“We’re using all air defense systems that are available in Ukraine now, plus helicopters and aircraft. We are fighting somehow,” they said.

Moscow has the capacity to fire 300 to 500 drones a day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this week.
“By scaling up the use of Shaheds, they are forcing us to resort to expensive options,” military analyst Sergiy Zgurets said, referring to the Iranian-designed drones that are packed with explosives to detonate as they crash into buildings.
“This is a war of attrition that must be based on economic grounds — we must shoot down Shaheds with less sophisticated alternatives,” he said.
Ukraine uses several tools to protect its skies — from advanced Western fighter jets and air defense batteries like the US-made Patriot anti-missile system, to small mobile air defense teams armed with guns.
New technology has also become vital, such as the electronic jamming of drones to make them drop from the sky.
Increasingly, interceptors are being deployed — smaller, cheaper drones that take on enemy drones mid-air.
“We are already using them. The question now is when we will be able to scale up,” Zelensky said of the interceptors.
He too sees the issue as one of economics.
“The question is no longer about production capacity... It is a financial issue,” he told journalists.

Beyond drones, Russia is also deploying super-fast ballistic missiles, which are much more difficult to intercept.
“The biggest vulnerability lies in defending against ballistic missiles,” said analyst Gady.
A midday strike last month on the northeastern city of Sumy killed at least 35 people, while a hit near a children’s playground in Zelensky’s home city of Kryvyi Rig left 19 dead, including nine children.
To fend off ballistic missile attacks, Ukraine relies on a small number of Patriot systems.
They are concentrated around Kyiv, leaving other areas more exposed than the relatively better-protected capital.
Gady said the current supply of missiles for them is “sufficient” given the level of Russian strikes at the moment.
“But it is generally insufficient when compared to Russian ballistic missile production.”
Ukraine also faces potential shortages given delays in US output, according to Zgurets, creating “gaps” in Ukraine’s “fight against enemy hypersonic targets and ballistics.”
Deliveries of other key Western systems are expected over the next 18 months, but uncertainty is high given President Donald Trump’s criticism of aid for Ukraine.
US packages approved under predecessor Joe Biden are trickling in, but Trump has not announced any fresh support.
“Delivering air defense systems to us means real protection for people — here and now,” Zelensky said in a recent call for Western backing.
On a visit to Berlin on Wednesday, he said: “Defending our cities requires constant support with air defense systems.”


India’s Modi arrives in Kashmir to open strategic railway

India’s Modi arrives in Kashmir to open strategic railway
Updated 15 sec ago

India’s Modi arrives in Kashmir to open strategic railway

India’s Modi arrives in Kashmir to open strategic railway
  • Modi is launching a string of projects worth billions of dollars for the divided Muslim-majority territory
  • His office broadcast images of Modi at a viewing point for the Chenab Bridge, a 1,315-meter-long steel and concrete span
SRINAGAR, India: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Kashmir on Friday, his first visit to the contested Himalayan region since a conflict with arch-rival Pakistan last month, and opened a strategic railway line.
Modi is launching a string of projects worth billions of dollars for the divided Muslim-majority territory, the center of bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947.
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan fought an intense four-day conflict last month, their worst standoff since 1999, before a ceasefire was agreed on May 10.
His office broadcast images of Modi at a viewing point for the Chenab Bridge, a 1,315-meter-long (4,314-foot-long) steel and concrete span that connects two mountains with an arch 359 meters above the river below.
“In addition to being an extraordinary feat of architecture, the Chenab Rail Bridge will improve connectivity,” the Hindu nationalist leader said in a social media post ahead of his visit.
Modi strode across the bridge waving a giant Indian flag to formally declare it open for rail traffic soon after his arrival.
New Delhi calls the Chenab span the “world’s highest railway arch bridge.” While several road and pipeline bridges are higher, Guinness World Records confirmed that Chenab trumps the previous highest railway bridge, the Najiehe in China.
The new 272-kilometer Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla railway, with 36 tunnels and 943 bridges, has been constructed “aiming to transform regional mobility and driving socio-economic integration,” Modi’s office says.
The bridge will facilitate the movement of people and goods, as well as troops, that was previously possible only via treacherous mountain roads and by air.
The railway “ensures all weather connectivity” and will “boost spiritual tourism and create livelihood opportunities,” Modi said.
The railway line is expected to halve the travel time between the town of Katra in the Hindu-majority Jammu region and Srinagar, the main city in Muslim-majority Kashmir, to around three hours.
More than 70 people were killed in missile, drone and artillery fire during last month’s conflict.
The fighting was triggered by an April 22 attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir that New Delhi accused Pakistan of backing – a charge Islamabad denies.
Rebel groups in Indian-run Kashmir have waged a 35-year-long insurgency demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.

Six-year-old girl among Myanmar group arrested for killing retired general

Updated 3 min 13 sec ago

Six-year-old girl among Myanmar group arrested for killing retired general

Six-year-old girl among Myanmar group arrested for killing retired general
Myanmar’s military has arrested a six-year-old child as part of a group it labelled “terrorists” for the daytime killing of a retired military officer and diplomat last month, a junta-run newspaper reported on Friday.
Cho Htun Aung, 68, a retired brigadier general who also served as an ambassador, was shot dead in Myanmar’s commercial capital of Yangon on May 22, in one of the highest profile assassinations in a country in the throes of a widening civil war.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in a February 2021 coup, overthrowing an elected government led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and triggering widespread protests.
The junta’s violent crackdown on dissent sparked an unprecedented nationwide uprising. A collection of established ethnic armies and new armed groups have wrested away swathes of territory from the well-armed military, and guerrilla-style fighting has erupted even in urban areas like Yangon.
“A total of 16 offenders — 13 males and three females — were arrested,” the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
In an accompanying graphic, the newspaper carried the image of the six-year-old child, identified as the daughter of the alleged assassin.
Her face was blurred in an online version of the newspaper seen by Reuters, but visible in other social media posts made by junta authorities.
A junta spokesman did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Golden Valley Warriors, an anti-junta insurgent group, said they killed the retired general because of his continued support for military operations, including attacks on civilians, according to a May 22 statement.
The junta claims the group is backed by the National Unity Government — a shadow government comprising of remnants of Suu Kyu’s ousted administration that is battling the military — and paid an assassin some 200,000 Myanmar Kyat ($95.52) for a killing, the state newspaper reported.
NUG spokesperson Nay Phone Latt denied the shadow government had made any such payments. “It is not true that we are paying people to kill other people,” he told Reuters. Since the coup, Myanmar’s junta has arrested over 29,000 people, including more than 6,000 women and 600 children, according to the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, an activist group.
Fatalities among civilians and pro-democracy activists verified by AAPP during this period amount to more than 6,700, including 1,646 women and 825 children.

Russia sees bleak prospects for expiring nuclear arms pact given ‘ruined’ ties with US

Russia sees bleak prospects for expiring nuclear arms pact given ‘ruined’ ties with US
Updated 16 min 10 sec ago

Russia sees bleak prospects for expiring nuclear arms pact given ‘ruined’ ties with US

Russia sees bleak prospects for expiring nuclear arms pact given ‘ruined’ ties with US
  • President Vladimir Putin in 2023 suspended Russian participation in New START, blaming US support for Ukraine
  • But Russia would remain within the treaty’s limits on warheads, missiles and heavy bomber planes

Russia sees little chance of saving its last nuclear accord with the United States, due to expire in eight months, given the “ruined” state of relations with Washington, its top arms control official said in an interview published on Friday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also told TASS news agency that President Donald Trump’s proposed Golden Dome missile defense project was a “deeply destabilizing” factor creating formidable new obstacles to arms control.

His comments were among Moscow’s bleakest yet about the prospects for the New START agreement, the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the two countries, which caps the number of strategic warheads that each side can deploy.

President Vladimir Putin in 2023 suspended Russian participation in New START, blaming US support for Ukraine, although he said that Russia would remain within the treaty’s limits on warheads, missiles and heavy bomber planes.

But if the treaty is not extended or replaced after it expires on February 5 next year, security experts fear it could fuel a new arms race at a time of acute international tension over the conflict in Ukraine, which both Putin and Trump have said could lead to World War Three.

The Federation of American Scientists, an authoritative source on arms control, says that if Russia decided to abandon the treaty limits, it could theoretically increase its deployed nuclear arsenal by up to 60 percent by uploading hundreds of additional warheads.

Ryabkov described Russia-US ties as “simply in ruins.”

“There are no grounds for a full-scale resumption of New START in the current circumstances. And given that the treaty ends its life cycle in about eight months, talking about the realism of such a scenario is increasingly losing its meaning,” Ryabkov told TASS.

“Of course, deeply destabilizing programs like the Golden Dome – and the US is implementing a number of them – create additional, hard-to-overcome obstacles to the constructive consideration of any potential initiatives in the field of nuclear missile arms control, when and if it comes to that.”

Trump said last month he had selected a design for the $175-billion Golden Dome project, which aims to block threats from China and Russia by creating a network of satellites, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, to detect, track and potentially intercept incoming missiles.

Analysts say the initiative could sharply escalate the militarization of space , prompting other countries to place similar systems there or to develop more advanced weapons to evade the missile shield.

Ryabkov’s comments came in the same week that Ukraine stunned Moscow by launching drone strikes on air bases deep inside Russia that house the heavy bomber planes that form part of its nuclear deterrent.

Russia has said it will retaliate as and when its military sees fit.


Bolivia justice minister accuses Morales of ‘terrorism’ over road blockades

Bolivia justice minister accuses Morales of ‘terrorism’ over road blockades
Updated 25 min 17 sec ago

Bolivia justice minister accuses Morales of ‘terrorism’ over road blockades

Bolivia justice minister accuses Morales of ‘terrorism’ over road blockades
  • Supporters of the former president have began blocking roads leading to La Paz, the seat of government
  • Protests have snowballed into a wider revolt over President Luis Arce’s handling of a deep economic crisis
LA PAZ: Bolivian Justice Minister Cesar Siles accused ex-president Evo Morales of “terrorism” on Thursday for allegedly ordering his supporters to cut off supplies to La Paz after he was banned from contesting August elections.
Siles said the government had filed a complaint against Morales for “terrorism, public incitement to crime and attacks on the security of public services,” among other crimes, over the campaign of road blockades that has paralyzed central Bolivia since Monday.
Supporters of the former president – who served from 2006 to 2019 – began blocking roads leading to La Paz, the seat of government, over the electoral authorities’ refusal to allow Morales to run for a fourth term in August 17 elections.
The protests have since snowballed into a wider revolt over President Luis Arce’s handling of a deep economic crisis, marked by severe shortages of hard currency and fuel.
Many of the protesters have called on Arce, an ally-turned-foe of Morales, to resign.
A leaked audio message on Thursday appeared to capture Morales calling on his supporters in the country’s agricultural heartland to shut down two key roads leading to La Paz.
The government reported more than 40 blockades nationwide on Thursday, which the minister of economy said were causing daily losses of $100 to $150 million.
Around 30 police officers have been injured in clashes with protesters since the beginning of the week, according to Gabriela Alcon, deputy minister of communication.
Morales, 65, was barred by the Constitutional Court from seeking re-election but attempted in vain to register as a candidate last month.
He faced a similar situation in November 2019 when the government of right-wing president Jeanine Anez accused him of “sedition and terrorism.”
Morales had allegedly called on supporters to maintain blockades which caused food and fuel shortages in La Paz.
Morales is also wanted on charges of human trafficking over his alleged sexual relationship with a minor while in office.
He has firmly rejected the charges as a case of “judicial persecution.”

Polish foreign minister takes aim at Musk after Trump clash

Polish foreign minister takes aim at Musk after Trump clash
Updated 26 min 45 sec ago

Polish foreign minister takes aim at Musk after Trump clash

Polish foreign minister takes aim at Musk after Trump clash

WARSAW: Poland’s foreign minister poked fun at Elon Musk late on Thursday, returning to a social media spat from March after the Tesla and SpaceX boss spectacularly fell out with US President Donald Trump.
Warsaw’s top diplomat Radoslaw Sikorski found himself embroiled in an extraordinarily public clash with Musk and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March after he said Ukraine may need an alternative to the Starlink satellite service.
Amid a flurry of posts on his social media platform X, Musk had told Sikorski to “Be quiet, small man.”
On Thursday simmering tensions between Musk and Trump exploded into a public feud, as the president threatened to cut off government contracts to companies run by the world’s richest man. Musk suggested Trump should be impeached.
Sikorski took aim at Musk in a post on X, saying “See, big man, politics is harder than you thought.”
There was no immediate response to the post from Musk.