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Ukraine and Russia agree to swap dead and wounded but no progress toward peace

Update Ukraine and Russia agree to swap dead and wounded but no progress toward peace
Head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Medinsky speaks to media in Istanbul, Turkiye. (Reuters)
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Updated 02 June 2025

Ukraine and Russia agree to swap dead and wounded but no progress toward peace

Ukraine and Russia agree to swap dead and wounded but no progress toward peace
  • Talks take place day after large-scale drone attacks from both sides
  • Russia presents memorandum setting out Kremlin’s terms for ending hostilities

ISTANBUL: Representatives of Russia and Ukraine met Monday for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, but aside from agreeing to swap thousands of their dead and seriously wounded troops, they made no progress toward ending the 3-year-old war, officials said.
The talks unfolded a day after a string of stunning long-range attacks by both sides, with Ukraine launching a devastating drone assault on Russian air bases and Russia hurling its largest drone attack of the war against Ukraine.
At the negotiating table, Russia presented a memorandum setting out the Kremlin’s terms for ending hostilities, the Ukrainian delegation said.
Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who led the Ukrainian delegation, told reporters that Kyiv officials would need a week to review the document and decide on a response. Ukraine proposed further talks on a date between June 20 and June 30, he said.
After the talks, Russian state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti published the text of the Russian memorandum, which suggested that Ukraine withdraw its forces from the four regions that Russia annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured as a condition for a ceasefire.
As an alternate way of reaching a truce, the memorandum presses Ukraine to halt its mobilization efforts and freeze Western arms deliveries, conditions were suggested earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The document also suggests that Ukraine stop any redeployment of forces and ban any military presence of third countries on its soil as conditions for halting hostilities.
The Russian document further proposes that Ukraine end martial law and hold elections, after which the two countries could sign a comprehensive peace treaty that would see Ukraine declare its neutral status, abandon its bid to join NATO, set limits on the size of its armed forces and recognize Russian as the country’s official language on par with Ukrainian.
Ukraine and the West have previously rejected all those demands from Moscow.
In other steps, the delegations agreed to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action and to set up a commission to exchange seriously wounded troops.
Kyiv officials said their surprise drone attack Sunday damaged or destroyed more than 40 warplanes at air bases deep inside Russia, including the remote Arctic, Siberian and Far East regions more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) from Ukraine.
The complex and unprecedented raid, which struck simultaneously in three time zones, took over a year and a half to prepare and was “a major slap in the face for Russia’s military power,” said Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the Ukrainian security service, who led its planning.
Zelensky called it a “brilliant operation” that would go down in history. The effort destroyed or heavily damaged nearly a third of Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet, according to Ukrainian officials.
Russia on Sunday fired the biggest number of drones — 472 — at Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s air force said, in an apparent effort to overwhelm air defenses. That was part of a recently escalating campaign of strikes in civilian areas of Ukraine.
Hopes low for peace prospects
US-led efforts to push the two sides into accepting a ceasefire have so far failed. Ukraine accepted the proposed truce, but the Kremlin effectively rejected it. Recent comments by senior officials in both countries indicate they remain far apart on the key conditions for stopping the war.
The previous talks on May 16 in the same Turkish city were the first direct peace negotiations since the early weeks of Moscow’s 2022 invasion. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the fact that the two sides met again Monday was an achievement in itself amid the fierce fighting.
“The fact that the meeting took place despite yesterday’s incident is an important success in itself,” he said in a televised speech.
Zelensky said during a trip to Lithuania on Monday that a new release of prisoners of war was being prepared after the Istanbul meeting. The May 16 talks also led to a swap of prisoners, with 1,000 on both sides being exchanged.
Ukraine also handed Russia an official list of children it says were forcibly deported and must be returned, said Andriy Yermak, head of Zelensky’s office.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in 2023 for Putin and the country’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of abducting children from Ukraine.
The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Putin, said Kyiv had made a “show” out of the topic and that children would be returned if their parents or guardians could be located. He said 339 children were named on the list.
Zelensky said that “if Russia turns the Istanbul meeting into an empty talk, there must be a new level of pressure, new sanctions, and not just from Europe,” in an apparent reference to US threats to further penalize Russia.
“Without pressure, Putin will just keep playing games with everyone who wants this war to end,” he said.
The relentless fighting has frustrated US President Donald Trump’s goal of bringing about a quick end to the war. A week ago, he expressed impatience with Putin as Moscow pounded Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles for a third straight night. Trump said on social media that Putin “has gone absolutely CRAZY!”
Ukraine upbeat after strikes on air bases
Ukraine was triumphant after targeting the distant Russian air bases. The official Russian response was muted, with the attack getting little coverage on state-controlled television. The Russia-1 television channel on Sunday evening spent a little over a minute on it with a brief Defense Ministry statement read out before images shifted to Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian positions.
Zelensky said the setbacks for the Kremlin would help force it to the negotiating table, even as its pursues a summer offensive on the battlefield.
“Russia must feel what its losses mean. That is what will push it toward diplomacy,” he said Monday in Vilnius, Lithuania, meeting with leaders from the Nordic nations and countries on NATO’s eastern flank.
Ukraine has occasionally struck air bases hosting Russia’s nuclear-capable strategic bombers since early in the war, prompting Moscow to redeploy most of them to the regions farther from the front line.
Because Sunday’s drones were launched from trucks close to the bases in five Russian regions, military defenses had virtually no time to prepare for them.
Many Russian military bloggers chided the military for its failure to build protective shields for the bombers despite previous attacks, but the large size of the planes makes that challenging.
The attacks were “a big blow to Russian strategic air power” and exposed significant vulnerabilities in Moscow’s military capabilities, said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Edward Lucas, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, called it “the most audacious attack of the war” and “a military and strategic game-changer.”
“Battered, beleaguered, tired and outnumbered, Ukrainians have, at minimal cost, in complete secrecy, and over vast distances, destroyed or damaged dozens, perhaps more, of Russia’s strategic bombers,” he said.
Front-line fighting and shelling grinds on
Fierce fighting has continued along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, and both sides have hit each other’s territory with deep strikes.
Russian forces shelled Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, killing three people and wounding 19 others, including two children, regional officials said Monday.
Also, a missile strike and shelling around the southern city of Zaporizhzhia killed five people and wounded nine others, officials said.


Goodbye Lenin? Russians flock to see Bolshevik leader’s tomb before it closes for repairs

Goodbye Lenin? Russians flock to see Bolshevik leader’s tomb before it closes for repairs
Updated 10 June 2025

Goodbye Lenin? Russians flock to see Bolshevik leader’s tomb before it closes for repairs

Goodbye Lenin? Russians flock to see Bolshevik leader’s tomb before it closes for repairs
  • Famous mausoleum set to close for two years
  • Large lines of Russians form to see Lenin’s body

MOSCOW: Russians are flocking to catch what some fear could be a final glimpse of the embalmed body of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin before his tomb on Moscow’s Red Square, long a place of pilgrimage for communists, closes for repairs until 2027.
The mausoleum, which houses a waxy-looking Lenin replete in a three-piece suit inside what is purportedly a bullet-proof, blast-proof glass case, is due to be structurally overhauled after an inspection uncovered problems.
Once a popular attraction for Western tourists and still a favorite for Russians visiting the capital from the regions, the red and black granite structure is expected to close in the coming weeks, with repair work set to last until June 2027.
Officials say that the body of Lenin, who died in 1924 after helping to establish the world’s first socialist state, is not going anywhere and that the central hall where he lies in state will not be touched.
But news of the temporary closure has seen long lines form to get into the mausoleum, with some visitors fearing it could be their last chance to see Lenin.
“From a historical point of view, I want to witness his being in a mausoleum because I think Lenin will be buried at some point, maybe in the future or near future,” said Tatyana Tolstik, a historian from Ulyanovsk, the city on the Volga where Lenin was born.
A young woman called Snezhana, who did not give her surname, said she wanted to “dive into the past” because she was also unsure how long it would be possible to visit the mausoleum.
The Communist Party, which ruled the country from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, is fiercely opposed to the removal of Lenin’s body, and Gennady Zyuganov, the party’s veteran leader, has said President Vladimir Putin has assured him it will not happen on his watch.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied plans to permanently close the mausoleum.


Singapore-flagged ship carrying toxic oil explodes off Indian coast

Indian Coast Guard ships extinguish a fire on a Singaporean-flagged cargo vessel off the coast of Kerala on June 10, 2025.
Indian Coast Guard ships extinguish a fire on a Singaporean-flagged cargo vessel off the coast of Kerala on June 10, 2025.
Updated 10 June 2025

Singapore-flagged ship carrying toxic oil explodes off Indian coast

Indian Coast Guard ships extinguish a fire on a Singaporean-flagged cargo vessel off the coast of Kerala on June 10, 2025.
  • 18 members of the vessel’s crew rescued, while 4 remain missing
  • Alert for Kerala coast as containers drift between Kozhikode and Kochi

NEW DELHI: India’s Coast Guard and Navy were struggling on Tuesday to extinguish a fire on a Singapore-flagged cargo ship that exploded in the Arabian Sea, triggering an alarm over its load of 100 tonnes of bunker oil.

The MV Wan Hai 503, en route to Mumbai from Sri Lanka, reported an internal container explosion on Monday, which triggered a major fire on board as the vessel approached the coast of the southern state of Kerala.

The Indian Coast Guard said the situation was “critical” as its ships engaged in an overnight operation to douse the flames and rescue 22 members of the vessel’s crew.

Four crew remain missing. Two of them are from Thailand, one from Indonesia and one from Myanmar, according to Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority, which sent a team to assist the Indian rescuers.

Containers falling from the ship were reported drifting between Kerala’s Kozhikode and Kochi, triggering an alert by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services over a potential spill of what it identified as 100 tonnes of bunker oil.

Bunker oil is a thick, heavy and viscous fuel used to power large ships, especially cargo vessels and tankers. It is one of the dirtiest and most polluting fuels.

It contains sulfur, heavy metals and carcinogens. If spilled, it is difficult to clean up and may persist for months or years in the marine environment, suffocating coral reefs and killing fish and seabirds.

“Caution is advised about a few containers beaching between Kozhikode and Kochi,” the INCOIS said in a notification, adding that there was an “estimated 70-80 percent probability” that the containers that went overboard from the MV Wan Hai 503 might drift south-southeastwards from the accident location for the next three days.

The incident took place just two weeks after a Liberian-flagged vessel carrying hazardous cargo sank off Kerala’s coast.

The vessel went down with cargo containing calcium carbide and more than 84 metric tonnes of diesel, and 367 metric tonnes of furnace oil.

Diesel and furnace oil are both classified as marine pollutants that are toxic to marine life and can contaminate coastal ecosystems.


UK civil servants told to quit if they disagree with Gaza policy

UK civil servants told to quit if they disagree with Gaza policy
Updated 10 June 2025

UK civil servants told to quit if they disagree with Gaza policy

UK civil servants told to quit if they disagree with Gaza policy
  • Over 300 Foreign Office staff signed letter to foreign secretary expressing concerns
  • Britain facilitating potential ‘violations of international law’ by exporting weapons to Israel

LONDON: UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office staff have been told to quit their jobs if they disagree with government policy on Gaza.

More than 300 civil servants signed a letter sent to Foreign Secretary David Lammy last month, outlining concerns over UK arms sales and “complicity” in “stark … disregard for international law” by the Israeli military in the Palestinian enclave.

In a response to the letter, sent by the department’s two most senior civil servants Nick Dyer and Sir Oliver Robbins, signatories were told: “(If) your disagreement with any aspect of government policy or action is profound your ultimate recourse is to resign from the Civil Service. This is an honourable course.”

One official who signed the initial complaint told the BBC: “(There is) frustration and a deep sense of disappointment that the space for challenge is being further shut down.”

The letter is the fourth such case of civil servants contacting senior officials to air concerns about the UK’s position on the war in Gaza.

Signatories to it, which was sent on May 16, include overseas embassy staff and employees based in London.

Topics raised included potential breaches of international law, the death toll in Gaza, and Israeli settler activities in the occupied West Bank.

“In July 2024, staff expressed concern about Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law and potential UK government complicity. In the intervening period, the reality of Israel’s disregard for international law has become more stark,” the letter said.

It added that Israel’s actions, including its blockade on food aid entering Gaza, have led “many experts and humanitarian organisations to accuse Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war,” and that the UK is facilitating potential “violations of international law” by continuing to export weapons to the country.

The letter also noted that “the Israeli government has made explicit plans for the forcible transfer of Gaza’s population.”

In the response, Dyer and Sir Oliver said it “might be helpful” to “remind” signatories that the FCDO has systems in place to address staff concerns with policy, including the “ultimate recourse” of resignation.

The “bargain at the heart of the British Civil Service is that we sign up to deliver the policies of the Government of the day wholeheartedly, within the limits imposed by the law and the Civil Service Code,” they wrote.

A former FCDO official told the BBC that the rhetorical reply “simply provides the government with supposed ‘plausible deniability’ for enabling breaches of international law.”

The official added on condition of anonymity that the FCDO has not learned the lessons of the 2016 Chilcot Report after the Iraq War, which raised suggestions of “ingrained belief” within the civil service requiring systems to challenge “groupthink” in future.

The FCDO said in a statement: “There are systems in place which allow (staff) to raise concerns if they have them.”

A spokesperson added: “Since day one, this government has rigorously applied international law in relation to the war in Gaza.

“One of our first acts in government was to suspend export licenses that could be used by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.

“We have suspended direct exports of F-35 parts for use by Israel, and we categorically do not export any bombs or ammunition which could be used in Gaza.”

The UK government has previously said it believes Israel to be “at risk” of breaking international and humanitarian law in Gaza.

Last September, 30 export licenses for arms were suspended over fears of “clear risk” that they may be used illegally, but over 300 remain in place.

The war in Gaza has killed well over 50,000 Palestinians and left millions displaced and without access to basic resources.

Last year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.


Ukrainian woman searches for husband lost in action two years ago

Ukrainian woman searches for husband lost in action two years ago
Updated 10 June 2025

Ukrainian woman searches for husband lost in action two years ago

Ukrainian woman searches for husband lost in action two years ago
  • Families of missing soldiers draw hope from prisoner swaps
  • Uncertainty on both sides of the war since Russia invaded
CHERNIHIV: When gaunt Ukrainian soldiers dismount from buses as part of prisoner swaps with Russia, Mariia Pylnyk tries to find out anything she can about her missing husband from the freed men, and hopes, just maybe, that he will be among them.
Holding up a photograph of Dmytro Pylnyk, lost in action in early 2023, she has many questions. What happened to his unit when it was ambushed by Russian forces? Was he captured by Russia? Could he eventually be released?
The mass prisoner swap last month was an opportunity for people like her to ask troops just out of Russian captivity about missing loved ones who they believe, or simply hope, are prisoners of war. The alternative is unthinkable.
“I hold out great hope that someone has heard something, seen something,” Pylnyk, 29, told Reuters at a recent exchange in May, flanked by other relatives of those missing in action.
“My son and I are waiting for (his) dad to come home. Hope dies last. God willing, it’ll all be okay and dad will come back.”
Precize numbers for soldiers missing in action are not made public.
For Ukrainians, and for Russians on the other side of the conflict, it can be hard to find out even basic information. Pylnyk says she has written to government agencies and Russian authorities and learned almost nothing.
Ukrainian officials say more than 70,000 Ukrainians have been registered missing since 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion. The majority are from the military but the figure also includes civilians.
Another 12,000 have been removed from the list after being identified among the dead or returned in exchanges.
Petro Yatsenko, a spokesman for the Coordination Council that arranges prisoner swaps from the Ukrainian side, said Russia had never notified Kyiv which soldiers it is holding prisoner. Ukraine collects that data by other means as best it can, he said.
Pylnyk and others like her share information in online chat groups and use it to try to piece together what happened.
“Misfortune brought us together,” she said. “After two years of this, we’re like a family.”

LAST PHONE CALL
Dmytro Pylnyk, an electrician by trade, was drafted into the army in late 2022. He phoned home often so that his wife did not worry but last called on their son Artem’s third birthday on Feb. 27, 2023.
He was deployed from Kharkiv region toward Bakhmut, a small city that later fell to Russian forces after fierce fighting.
His unit’s convoy was caught in a Russian ambush, Mariia Pylnyk said she had learned.
“The guys ran any which way,” she said, citing conversations with commanders who told her 41 soldiers were missing in action.
Two were captured and have since been released. One, who was freed in an exchange at Easter and had lost both his arms, was unable to share any valuable information, she said.
The second refused to talk.
The pace of prisoner swaps has increased in the last month.
Ukraine and Russia each released 1,000 prisoners in a three-day exchange last month, the only tangible outcome of direct talks in Istanbul.
A prisoner swap of under-25s on Monday was the first in a series of exchanges also expected to include each side repatriating the remains of thousands.
Mariia Pylnyk has given her son’s DNA to the authorities so that if Dmytro is confirmed killed in action they will be notified.
“We all understand that this is war and anything is possible. But to this day, I don’t believe it and I don’t feel that he is dead. I feel like he’s alive and God willing he’ll return,” she said.
NO SIGNAL TO CALL
She lives with Artem, now five, in Pakul, a village in the northern Chernihiv region that was briefly occupied by Russians. She has not told Artem his father is missing in action.
“He knows that dad is a soldier, dad is a good man, dad is at work and just doesn’t have any signal to call,” she said.
She takes comfort from seeing families reunited and never allows herself to cry in front of her son.
She used to work in a shop, but Artem has often been ill. The angst of the last two years have taken their toll on her health too. She receives state support.
Pylnyk has vowed to find her husband but has often not had time to attend prisoner swaps while looking after their son.
“Only a weakling can give up, you know, throw up their hands and say that’s it, he’s not there,” she said, adding that she was very emotional when she attended last month’s big exchange.
“When I was there, the fighting spirit awoke in me that I needed. I have to do this. Who else will do it but me?”

Los Angeles’ image is scuffed since ICE raids and protests, with World Cup and Olympics on horizon

Los Angeles’ image is scuffed since ICE raids and protests, with World Cup and Olympics on horizon
Updated 10 June 2025

Los Angeles’ image is scuffed since ICE raids and protests, with World Cup and Olympics on horizon

Los Angeles’ image is scuffed since ICE raids and protests, with World Cup and Olympics on horizon
  • Los Angeles is still reeling from January’s deadly wildfires — and with the World Cup soccer championships and the 2028 Olympics on the horizon
  • Mayor Karen Bass has been urging residents to come together to revitalize LA’s image. Instead, a less flattering side of Los Angeles has been broadcast to the world in recent days

LOS ANGELES: This isn’t the image Los Angeles wanted projected around the globe.
Clouds of tear gas wafting over a throng of protesters on a blocked freeway. Federal immigration agents in tactical garb raiding businesses in search of immigrants without legal status. A messy war of words between President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Photos captured several Waymo robotaxis set on fire and graffiti scrawled on a federal detention center building, while videos recorded the sounds of rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades hitting crowds.
In a city still reeling from January’s deadly wildfires — and with the World Cup soccer championships and the 2028 Olympics on the horizon — Mayor Karen Bass has been urging residents to come together to revitalize LA’s image by sprucing up streets, planting trees and painting murals so LA shows its best face to nations near and far.
“It’s about pride,” she’s said. “This is the city of dreams.”
Instead, a less flattering side of Los Angeles has been broadcast to the world in recent days. Protests have mostly taken place in a small swath of downtown in the sprawling city of 4 million people. As Trump has activated nearly 5,000 troops to respond in the city, Bass has staunchly pushed back against his assertions that her city is overrun and in crisis.
Bass, in response to Trump, said she was troubled by depictions that the city has been “invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals, and that now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming our federal agents. I don’t know if anybody has seen that happen, but I’ve not seen that happen.”
The series of protests began Friday outside a federal detention center, where demonstrators demanded the release of more than 40 people arrested by federal immigration authorities.
Immigration advocates say the people who were detained do not have criminal histories and are being denied their due process rights.
An international city
Much like New York, Los Angeles is an international city that many immigrants call home. The city’s official seal carries images referencing the region’s time under Spanish and Mexican rule. Over 150 languages are spoken by students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. About half of the city’s residents are Latino and about one-third were born outside the US
Bass faulted the Trump administration for creating “a chaotic escalation” by mobilizing troops to quell protests.
“This is the last thing that our city needs,” Bass said.
Los Angeles resident Adam Lerman, who has attended the protests, warned that protests would continue if the Trump administration pushes more raids in the city.
“We are talking about a new riot every day,” Lerman said. ”Everybody knows they are playing with fire.”
It’s not the publicity LA needs as it looks to welcome the world for international sporting events on a grand scale.
“At this stage in the process, most host cities and countries would be putting the final touches on their mega-event red carpet, demonstrating to the world that they are ready to embrace visitors with open arms,” said Jules Boykoff, a Pacific University professor who has written widely on the political and economic impacts of the Olympic Games. The scenes of conflict are “not exactly the best way to entice the world to plan their next tourist trip to the US to watch a sports mega-event.”
A mayor under pressure
The federal raids and protests have created another dicey political moment for Bass, who has been struggling with a budget crisis while trying to recover from political fallout from the wildfires that ignited when she was out of the country.
She’s been careful not to discourage protests but at the same time has pleaded for residents to remain peaceful. The mayor will likely face backlash for involving the Los Angeles Police.
And she needs to fight the perception that the city is unsafe and disorderly, an image fostered by Trump, who in social media posts has depicted Bass as incompetent and said the city has been “invaded” by people who entered the US illegally. Los Angeles is sprawling — roughly 470 square miles (750 square kilometers) — and the protests were mostly concentrated downtown.
“The most important thing right now is that our city be peaceful,” Bass said. “I don’t want people to fall into the chaos that I believe is being created by the (Trump) administration.”
On Monday, workers were clearing debris and broken glass from sidewalks and power-washing graffiti from buildings — among the structures vandalized was the one-time home of the Los Angeles Times across the street from City Hall. Downtown has yet to bounce back since long-running pandemic lockdowns, which reordered work life and left many office towers with high vacancy rates.
Trump and California officials continued to spar online and off, faulting each other for the fallout. At the White House, Trump criticized California leaders by saying “they were afraid of doing anything” and signaled he would support Newsom’s arrest over his handling of the immigration protests.
If Los Angeles’ image was once defined by its balmy Mediterranean climate and the glamor of Hollywood, it’s now known “primarily for disaster,” said Claremont McKenna College political scientist Jack Pitney.
“A lot of perception depends on images,” Pitney added. Right now, the dominant image “is a burning Waymo.”