Ukraine Update Day 1,080…Ukraine Makes Numerous Deep Military Attacks across Russia…

President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the assault as “brilliant” and “perfectly prepared.” He said Ukraine used 117 drones to take more than a third of Russia’s cruise missile carriers and had safely transported those who helped with the attacks out of Russia before the strikes began.

“These are Ukrainian actions that will definitely be in history textbooks,” he wrote on Telegram on Sunday.

Russia’s Defense Ministry called the operation a “terrorist attack” and confirmed in a statement published by Russian state newswires that airfields had been attacked by drones in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions. “Several units of aircraft caught fire,” the statement read.

Russian warplanes carry out daily attacks on Ukrainian cities, and Kyiv has long lamented that it has been unable to thwart such bombardments, in part because its partners have imposed restrictions on using Western-supplied weapons for deep strikes inside Russia. The operation Sunday demonstrated that Ukraine has in the meantime found a way to deploy its own weapons to reach previously unattainable targets……

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• The commander of Ukraine’s land forces, one of the most senior positions in the country’s military, announced on Sunday that he was tendering his resignation, saying he felt “responsibility” for the deaths of at least 12 soldiers killed in a Russian strike on a training ground earlier that day.Maj Gen Mykhailo Drapatyi has been in charge of Ukraine’s vast wartime land army since November last year. “This is a conscious step dictated by my personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy at the 239th training ground, which resulted in the deaths of our soldiers,” Drapatyi wrote on Facebook. An earlier statement from the land forces’ Telegram page said 12 soldiers had been killed and 60 wounded by a Russian missile strike on a military training site, the latest in a string of similar attacks.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address, said he would summon senior commanders, including top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, to consider the circumstances of the strike. “This is not the first strike of its kind when Ukraine has lost personnel. I have called a meeting … to deal with this,” he said. “We need all our fighting men at the front to defend Ukraine.” Russia’s military issued a statement saying its forces had launched a missile on a Ukrainian military “tent camp” in central Dniepropetrovsk region.

• Ukraine said on Sunday it had destroyed Russian bombers worth billions of dollars as far away as Siberia, in its longest-range assault of the war. In a spectacular claim, Ukraine said it had damaged $7bn worth of Russian aircraft parked at four airbases thousands of kilometres (miles) away, with unverified video footage showing aircraft engulfed in flames and black smoke. A source in the Ukrainian security services (SBU) said the strikes hit 41 planes that were used to “bomb Ukrainian villages”.

• Several Russian and Ukrainian media outlets reported that Ukraine had carried out the operation by launching drones from lorries parked near military airfields deep inside Russia. Ukrainian officials told the media that the operation – codename “Spiderweb” – had been in preparation for more than 18 months. The drones were first smuggled into Russia and later concealed under the roofs of small wooden sheds which were loaded on to trucks and driven to the perimeter of the airbases. The roof panels of the sheds were lifted off by a remotely activated mechanism, allowing the drones to fly out and begin their attack, the official said.

• Zelenskyy praised the attacks as a “brilliant operation” that was “aimed exclusively at military targets” and caused “truly significant losses” for Russia. Those who assisted in the operation had been withdrawn from Russia on the eve of the attacks and were safe, he said. Russia has said several “participants” have been arrested.

• Russian investigators on Sunday said they believed “explosions” had caused two bridges in the border regions of Kursk and Bryansk to collapse overnight, derailing trains, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens. The incidents were being treated as terrorism. In Bryansk, which borders Ukraine, a road bridge collapsed onto a railway line late on Saturday, derailing a passenger train heading to Moscow and killing at least seven people. A rail bridge in neighbouring Kursk also collapsed overnight, derailing a freight train and injuring the driver, officials said. Kursk also borders Ukraine. Separately, railway track on the Unecha-Zhecha section in Russia’s Bryansk region was damaged without casualties, the national operator, Russian Railways, said.

• The attacks came just ahead of the second round of direct peace talks between the two sides in Istanbul. After days of uncertainty over whether Ukraine would even attend, Zelenskyy said defence minister Rustem Umerov would meet Russian officials. The first round of the talks more than a week ago yielded the biggest prisoner exchange of the war – but no sense of any consensus on how to halt the fighting.

• The two sides will in Turkey present their respective documents outlining their ideas for peace terms, according to US envoy Keith Kellogg, though it is clear that after three years of intense war, Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart. Russia’s lead negotiator, presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, was quoted by Tass news agency as saying the Russian side had received a memorandum from Ukraine on a settlement. Zelenskyy had complained for days that Russia had failed to provide a memorandum with its proposals…..

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Two Russian Bidges also collapsed in area’s close to the Ukraine…

Russian officials said Sunday that seven people were killed and at least 76 others injured after two bridges collapsed in neighboring regions, derailing a freight train and a passenger train.

Daily Kos grunt report for Today….

Putin ‘stalling…Graham/Blumenthal….

Russian President Vladimir Putin is stalling at the peace table while preparing a new military offensive in Ukraine, two senior U.S. senators warned Sunday, arguing that the next two weeks could shape the future of a war that has already smashed cities, displaced millions and redrawn Europe’s security map.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal spoke to The Associated Press in Paris after meeting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and touring neighborhoods shattered by what they called the worst Russian bombardments since the full-scale invasion began.

In Paris for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron — who they say is “100% aligned” with them on the war — the senators warned the window to prevent a renewed assault is closing.

A sweeping U.S. sanctions bill could be the West’s last chance to choke off the Kremlin’s war economy, they said — adding that they hope their firsthand findings will shift momentum in Washington and help bring a skeptical President Donald Trump on board.

“What I learned on this trip was he’s preparing for more war,” Graham said of Putin…..

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ISW….Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 1, 2025

• Ukraine conducted a large-scale and simultaneous series of drone strikes against multiple air bases in Russia on June 1.
• Ukraine continues to innovate its drone technology and tactics to achieve operational surprise and successfully target Russian military infrastructure in the rear.
• Ukraine’s drone strike operation against strategic Russian aircraft may at least temporarily constrain Russia’s ability to conduct long-range drone and missile strikes into Ukraine.
• Russia will likely struggle to replace the aircraft that Ukrainian forces damaged and destroyed.
• Russian officials and milbloggers continue to blame Russian leadership for failing to defend Russian military infrastructure from Ukrainian drone strikes — a widespread complaint throughout the war after successful Ukrainian strikes.
• Russian state media and milbloggers attempted to frame Ukraine’s strikes against legitimate Russian military targets as undermining Russia’s nuclear stability and as grounds for a Russian nuclear response – mirroring the Kremlin’s repeated nuclear saber-rattling throughout the war that has aimed to prevent Western support for Ukraine.
• Russian officials blamed Ukraine for the collapse of two bridges and subsequent train derailments in western Russia on May 31, likely as part of efforts to justify the recent launch of Russian offensive operations in Sumy Oblast and the Kremlin’s disinterest in peace negotiations to end the war.
• Russian forces conducted their largest combined drone and missile strike of the war that included over 400 drones against Ukraine on the night of May 31 to June 1.
• Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Mykhailo Drapatyi submitted his resignation following a Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian training unit on June 1.
• Russian forces continue to adapt their strike packages in an effort to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky established a delegation to participate in peace negotiations to end the war as Russian officials continue to flout their own proposed negotiation mechanisms.
• Russian forces recently advanced in Sumy Oblast and near Toretsk.